I set up a trial account on TypePad recently and tried to port my blog over there. Unfortunately I failed; there were some serious flaws that made porting difficult or impossible. So, I’ve decided to stick it out with WordPress hosted on my own server after all. It all started when I decided to restart this blog (I know, it’s been a long time since I last wrote; more on that later). That’s when I realized that WordPress had gone through a couple of major iterations since my last install. When I installed the latest version (version 2.7), I noticed that plugins broke down, templates broke down, and the interface had changed. Rather than try to relearn everything and try to fix my broken down WordPress install, I decided to take another look at TypePad.
I really liked TypePad’s administrative interface. The backend was quite elegantly designed and, once set up, posting new entries was really intuitive. I also liked their default template selections. There were 100 different designs and you also had the ability to customize your own from a default installation. The customization process was as easy as click, drag and drop. There was no noticeable lag like there were when I first tried using TypePad way back in 2005. Thus, I really wanted to like TypePad; it was elegant and polished. Compared to the WordPress backend, TypePad was, in my opinion, miles ahead.
Unfortunately, when it came time to redirect my existing posts that were well indexed in Google, that’s when I realized it wouldn’t be possible to port my blog. There were two critical TypePad flaws:
Flaw Number One - You can’t change TypePad’s permalink structure
TypePad doesn’t give you much control over how your permalinks are formed. That means that if you have anything indexed in the search engines and have any incoming links, you’ll need to do a meta-refresh to transfer visitors clicking on old links to your blog. So, unless you have a handful of blog posts, moving anything more than, say, 10 posts, becomes a real hassle.
Flaw Number Two - TypePad’s extensions are “.html”
WordPress extensions are “.php” while TypePad extensions are “.html”. I don’t think anyone these days should have webpages with the .html extension. Having that really limits how you are able to expand your webpages when it comes time to integrate with a database or otherwise interact with dynamic php code. Php code (the language on which many plugins and extensions are written) requires webpages that end in “.php”. In TypePad, you can’t change the extensions of your pages because, as Flaw Number One noted above, you can’t change your permalink structure in TypePad.
The Take-Away
Stick with WordPress or another hosted solution (and on your own domain) unless you don’t care about losing your existing link equity or want to be locked into their system.
{ 4 comments }
I have always wondered about Typepad and why there hasn’t been a large push for it. Thank you for pointing out some of the flaws. I’ve only used Blogger besides my current self-hosted Wordpress blogs and I am still very new at this.
Carla, at one point, Blogger was a useful platform but I think with the ease of setting up blogs on WordPress.com or TypePad or even hosting your own WordPress or Movable Type, those other platforms offer much more flexibility when it comes time to customize or adapt your blog.
I have tried used typepad and success install but got alot bug so i have give up to use it.TypePad is still too young and far away from wordpress.I think typepad is too difficult to configure and even install.
Let me start out by saying: yeah, I’m biased.
thanks for the compliments on the overall TypePad structure, first of all. That’s always nice to hear.
I take your point on 301/true redirects and the hassle of import/export. That’s two big omissions we’re trying to fix as fast as we can but as elegantly as we can. Someone from our team can help you with this, or you can reach out to me via email and I’m always happy to talk you through how folks have done this in the past.
If you wanted complete control over everything and a way to structure your own URL’s, our Movable Type software is more easily compared to WP.org, where as TypePad compares more readily to WP.com.
Here’s another (admittedly biased) comparison chart we worked up.
I think you’re going to see amazing things from us in 2009, so I hope you’ll keep on giving us a shot. Let me know if there’s any help I can be.
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