A Welsh View

TypePad Still Sucks

About a month ago I wrote a post about how TypePad's changes to the compose editor and rest of the backend sucked. Well, it still sucks.

Yesterday I noticed something that I missed when I posted my first rant and that's the ability to search posts. Yep, you can no longer search for old posts using the backend. That means that if you need to alter an old post, like I wanted to yesterday, and the post is fairly old, you've got no chance. When you've got 16,500 posts, the prospect of traipsing through them 5, 20 or 50 posts at a time searching for a post is not something that I relish.

I thought that maybe the search feature had moved or maybe it was just missing from my account but according to TypePad the feature has been removed and don't have a timeline on when this will be implemented.

Typepad Support did offer one 'helpful' solution to the problem - search my site using Google! What use is that to me? What am I supposed to do when I find my post? Perhaps if I could alter the URL structure in the admin section I could edit it but this is what an average post URL looks like - http://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00d8341c793d53ef00e5503c7e7f8834/post/6a00d8341c793d53ef00e5539b7be18834/edit

How can something so fundamental be removed?

Typepad's New Compose Editor And Site Changes Suck

About two weeks ago TypePad started rolling out some new changes which included a new Compose Editor. Yesterday, it was my turn to experience the improved(?) TypePad. Out of all the changes I don't think there's anything that I like about them. After just 24 hours of using it I've asked TypePad if there's a way I can revert back to the old system.

My main gripe is that I have to change the way I work and now means that posting takes longer.

Here is a run down of the main problems that I've come across.

HTML

On the old system I didn't like using the Rich Text editor so opted for the version that allowed me to enter HTML tags. I got on fine with this and the editor allowed me to do pretty much what I wanted. Now you have the option of a Rich Text editor (that allows you to view HTML) and a Markdown editor. The Rich Text Editor is useless for composing posts with HTML tags as it decides to add/remove tags that you enter and if you enter tags in the HTML tab of the editor and then switch to the Rich Text tab they can disappear.

I switched to the Markdown editor to try and solve this problem and whilst for the most part it works, there are still problems with it such as it not recognising pressing enter after entering a link (see this Peculiarosities post from yesterday). This post does a better job of explaining this problem.

Editor Buttons

The buttons on the Compose Editor have been replaced with chunky new buttons that are just way too big. Also, if you opt to not use the Rich Text editor rather than removing buttons that you can't use they are just greyed out. It would make more sense to remove the unusable buttons to save space.

Editor Rearrangement

It appears that TypePad may have taken some inspiration from Wordpress and shifted some parts of the editor to the right side of the text editor. This may be great for new users but for 'veteran' users means changing the way we work.

System Font

The font used to in the non-Rich Text versions of the editor (HTML or Markdown versions) now feature an ugly system font.

Previewing Posts

Previewing posts now involves opening a new window. Previously you could preview a post and if satisfied with it save and publish the post. Now, after previewing the post you need to close the preview and and then save the post. I'm not sure what the beneift of this change is.

Page Titles

The page titles of the editor used to be something like this - New Post | Posts|... but now have been changed to TypePad - Compose New Post. The old structure meant when you had lots of tabs open in your browser (I always have about 30+ open) you could easily know which tab to click on if you wanted to create a post or view stats. Now, they all look the same!

URLS

The URL structure has changed. This is relatively minor but when you're not the type of person that uses bookmarks and types in URLs manually and have been used to typing in the same TypePad URLs for the past 5 years, changes like this can throw you off. The old URLs still work but I'm guessing that they will stop eventually.

Stats

Stats are now even more pointless than they were before. In the old system gave the title of the post that was being accessed, e.g. Incredible Photos Of One Of Earth's Last Uncontacted Tribes. Now the URL is shown e.g. blog/2008/05/incredible-phot.html. I know which one I would prefer to see.

Another problem with the stats was that when I accessed them it would display the stats of a blog that I no longer use and is not even first in the list. AWV is first in the list of blogs registered in my account but the third blog in the list was being displayed. I fixed this by deleting all blogs except AWV as that's the only one that I use but it could be annoying if I wanted to keep more than one blog.

Conclusion

I think that just about covers it. Actually it doesn't. I was just about to place the majority of the post in the extended post section so that people could choose to 'Read more'. Apologies to those that had to put up with my rant.

I'm not the only one who has been annoyed with these changes. I contemplated moving to Wordpress in the past but decided that it would be easiest to stay here. I will probably adjust to these changes (even though I shouldn't have to) but if I don't I will have to consider Wordpress again.

If anyone at TypePad reads this post, please fix some of these problems.

Typepad Hacks

On my travels around the internets tonight I came across a nifty little site that could be beneficial to Typepad users. Typepad Hacks addresses the problems associated with Typepad and as it is read by Typepad staff it seems a good place to post your gripes.

Typepad Is Slow!

Typepad is in 'degraded service' mode and is a nightmare to work with so I'm off down the pub. Hopefully it will be better when I get back.

TypePad Outage Interview

Niall Kennedy interviews Anil Dash about Typepad's major outage. There's a transcript and audio interivew. The interview really reveals a lot about the Typepad architecture and the way the company works.

What Is Faketypepad.com?

I just experienced something weird whilst accessing the Typepad members area. When typing in the address (www.typepad.com/t/app) I received a message saying www.faketypepad.com could not be found. This occurred for a few minutes and then I was able to access the members area again. Did anyone else experience this?

I've just tried posting this and I'm still getting the message. Firefox gives me a popup saying that www.faketypepad.com can't be found and IE just gives me a 404 page. Has Typepad been hacked?

Update: It looks like things are ok at the moment. Other people are experiencing this as well it seems.

Update: Dan Leonard says that www.faketypepad.com is a testing server that Typepad use and according to Typepad's Paris offices the problem has been fixed.

TypePad Down

You may or may not have noticed that AWV (and the TypePad site and service) was down briefly earlier on. Apologies for that. After this outage I think I've made my mind up regarding the amount of compensation I am going to ask for.

TypePad Offer Compensation

I, as well as every other TypePad subscriber, have just received an email from Barak Berkowitz, CEO of Six Apart, giving subscribers an update on the problems that they have been experiencing.

As a way of apologising for the poor performance of late, subscribers are to be given an extra 15 days of service plus the option of getting more compensation. Depending on how affected you have been you can elect for an extra 15, 30 or 45 days of free service or decline the offer of additional compensation.

What a great way of making users feel guilty about taking the extra compensation (at least that's how I feel). By giving users a range of options most will probably feel guilty about taking the most expensive one.

Whilst I did get annoyed by the constant problems I do understand how difficult it can be. I'll probably decline the offer of extra service. If you're a TypePad subscriber, what will you choose?

Update: Almost immediately after posting this the dreaded 'proxy errors' have returned. Maybe I should go for that compensation after all.

More Typepad Gripes

Further to my moan about Typepad, I have another gripe. I sent off a ticket today to ask why the stats that Typepad provide have changed so that they no longer provide the number of visitors within the last hour. The reply I got suggested that I boycott the stats system provided by Typepad (the particular part of the stats system was too intensive so was scrapped) and go with a thrid party system like Sitemeter.

If I pay for a service why should I even entertain going with a third party service when Typepad provided me with what I needed. Granted I do use Sitememter to confirm stats when the Typepad service isn't working but I shouldn't be required to rely on it.

The response I got from Typepad said..

We believe system reliability should be our number one priority and we're making every effort to ensure that the TypePad application performs at the level that our users have come to expect. To that end, some server-intensive counts in the Stats system have been removed. We expect that this will help with server load and overall performance.

Well I expect Typepad to work with all the bells and whistles that were there before and if I am paying for something then I don't want to pay for something that I consider to be half a service.

Basically Typepad are saying that if I'm not happy with their stats service then I should be looking elsewhere. How the hell is that going to help their business?

The ups And DOWNS Of Typepad

Yesterday I read this post from Ben and Mena Trott about the crappy service that Typepad punters have been getting lately (and when I mean crappy, I mean almost unusable.) and thought that it was good that they were being honest with their users (albeit a little too late), but then I read the comments on a post that Scoble made and my viewpoint changed completely.

This comment (from Rick) is not only very funny but also sums up Typepad pretty well...

Oh heck, we’ve just seen a failure in a piece of networking equipment that had never failed before, and so on, ranging from hardware failures to software failures. We are cute. We are cute. We need more money. We apologize for the poor service you’ve experienced over the past four years, and also for the lack of official communication from our blogs. We need someone who knows how to run an actual company. We’ve seen failures in our storage servers. We’ve seen failures in our software. We’ve seen failures in our hardware. We’ve seen failures in our networking equipment. There are a number of big issues that have always bothered us about all of our products. But we are still cute. We are cute. We need more money. Some people have the innate ability to consistently write wonderfully, but for the rest of you, we have a whole menu section of blogs. We are cute. We are cute. It’s quite unbelievable that we’ve been doing this for four years. This has been a bad year for TypePad’s performance and general availability, and we’d like to talk about a number of the issues we’ve faced, how frustrated they make us. But never mind that, check out Project Doomed Comet. Oh this running a company is hard. I like Westies. Building Speill Checick and WYSIWYG is a lot harder than it seems. We can’t scale. But we are still cute. I mean just look at us. Cute as a bug.

As another commenter on Scoble's post points out, the problems that Typepad have been experiencing are "fully preventable".

I'm hoping that their planned maintenance for Saturday night/Sunday morning helps the problem. Either that or I will have to do more blogging in the morning as that is the only time that the service is usable.

When Will TypePad Sort Out *Their* Spam Problem? - Part 3

Further to my post this morning, TypePad have basically said that it's up to me to sort out the spam. I don't want to sort out the spam myself. The reason why I constantly report the spam I get to TypePad is because not only will it stop me from getting anymore from them but it will also stop others from getting it. Oh well, expect fewer posts as I start trying to block keywords, email addresses and URLS ;o)

When Will TypePad Sort Out *Their* Spam Problem? - Part 2

I posted an article on Monday about the problems I'm having with spam attacks on my blog and what Typepad are doing, or rather are not doing, to solve the problem. I hadn't planned on posting a follow-up to the post but seeing as nobody from Typepad has read the post (or at least they haven't commented) and after what has happened overnight I think I need to post a follow-up.

Overnight I was attacked by a comment spammer using the same IP addressto spam me about 50 times over a period of 5 hours. Now I doubt I'm the only TypePad subscriber being spammed by the spammer (although I could be wrong) so why haven't TypePad got a system in place to recognise when a spam attack is in progress. Whilst this is just a major inconvenience and thankfully they don't happen regularly, what happened next really annoyed me.

Late last night I reported a few spammers to TypePad including this one...

Name: hold
Email: ola.cappsey@bigpond.com
URL: h**p://hotwave(dot)com/wwwboard/messages/7864.html
IP: 207.248.240.118

TypePad responded at 23:57 BST telling me that they had been banned globally, presumably using the approach I mentioned on Monday (a combination of factors including "URL, email address, and content submitted with the comment").

At 02:11 BST, 2 hours after the previous spams, I received this spam...

Name: ahhh
Email: ola.cappsey@bigpond.com
URL: h**p://artsforhealing(dot)org/wwwboard/messages/9465.htm
IP: 207.248.240.118

Notice anything similar? Yep, the spammer who was banned globally is still allowed to spam TypePad blogs using the same IP address and email address.

In my latest ticket I've mentioned that this person has been able to continue spamming and it will be interesting to see what their reply is.

When Will TypePad Sort Out *Their* Spam Problem?

It's about that time again when I have my regular TypePad moan. Yeah I know its pointless but I love a good moan and TypePad always gives me plenty to moan about. This time my moan is about spam, both comment and trackback.

For as long as I can remember (according to the help tickets raised I think I started getting spammed around about the middle of May, 2004) I have been spending way too much time reporting spammers and cleaning up spam comments/trackbacks. For some reason I feel the need to keep reporting the spam I get to TypePad Support so that hopefully some of the spammers can be stopped from spammer me and others again. Whilst I always get a prompt response from support I wonder if I'm wasting time.

Whilst they say that they are "globally banning" them using a combination of factors such as "URL, email address, and content submitted with the comment", I'm a little sceptical about how effective it is. I have received comment spam from the same email address two days after it was supposed to have been globally banned. Are TypePad Support so fed up with comment spam that they can't be bothered to deal with it?

Of course I'm not the only TypePadder, or the only blogger, receiving comment/trackback spam, but if I'm paying for a service, rather than using a free blogging tool such as WordPress I expect to be given better spam tools or to receive less spam. Incidentally, according to some reports WordPress handles spam better than TypePad.

I realise that I could make users obtain a TypeKey before posting but I don't like restricting. I've already had to turn trackbacks off*, I don't want to scare away the few commenters I have by making them register for a TypeKey. Comment moderation is also another option but I fail to see the point of it (i.e. I don't want to moderate comment spam).

According to a comment made by Anil Dash earlier this month on Fred Wilson's blog, A VC, there is now a dedicated 'spam czar' who is focusing on the "highest-pagerank blogs to make sure they're protected and that we're understanding all the new behaviors spammers are using". What about the rest of us?

He goes on to say...

"I know it's [a] small consolation, but the TypePad blogs that are affected by spam reflect something around the top 5% of all blogs, in terms of traffic/ visitors/ pagerank. So there's some prestige in being targeted by them."

Why I am even moaning about it? After reading that I feel like I should be honoured.

--------------

* To anyone in TypePad who may read this post. Will there ever be a tool to clean remove trackbacks from old posts? I switched off trackbacks a while back but I still have about 8,000 of posts that still allow trackbacks, hence the reason why I still get plenty of trackback spams.

Typepad/Google AdSense Help

I'm looking to ad some horizontal Google text ads beneath my banner. I've upgraded my membership so that I now have full control over the site. Can someone give some tips on what files need to be changed and how to do it?

New TypePad Features Coming Soon?

Mena Trott has hinted that there could be some new TypePad features released this week. Maybe some of the bugs (inability to use HTML border) caused by the last release will be fixed. Hopefully the database issues they are currently experiencing won't affect the release.

Typepad Woes

Any other Typepadders getting this error constantly?

Gateway Timeout

The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

I'm been getting it today and all weekend and it's really bugging me. Stupid crappy Typepad.

Typepad's Lack Of HTML Support

One of the many things that I didn't like about the Typepad upgrade was that they no longer support using HTML in your posts. Instead you have to use XHTML. At least that's what I think has happened (is this right?). I'm no web designer so I don't keep up with changes so have made no effort to learn XHTML.

Ever since I started blogging I have been adding HTML to my posts such as borders around images and spaces between them. I worked fine so I didn't see the need to start using XHTML. I've already mentoned that the old border="" attribute no longer works and I have just noticed that the vspace and hspace attributes no longer work either. Does anyone know an alternative that I can use to hspace and vspace?

The thing that really gets to me is that Typepad have not mentioned that old HTML will no longer work.

Typepad Sucks

Typepad sucks. Plain and simple. Not only do they mess people's designs up (take a look at the blogmap to the right or the tightly packed archives list down on the bottom left), fiddle around with the comment notification system and overlook simple bugs (that have been reported) that should have been fixed in their latest release but now their system is practically unusable. For the last hour I have been trying to access the site to post and check stats but have been unable to get in. This is not isolated to today; it has been going on ever since they implemented their new system. Sort it out Typepad.

Some Typepad users may be interested to know that the Typepad system is #82 in PCWorld magazines 100 best products of 2005. Based on what?

Adding Borders To Images In The New Typepad

Apparently the old way of adding a border to images (border="1") when posting on Typepad does not work anymore. Instead you need to use style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);". Why? Why did they change it? They either have to offer a way of adding a border by clicking a button or allow you to use the old way. I created a ticket about the lack of borders on images and got a generic reply about the design problems that they are having. I didn't expect anymore from them.

Thanks to Jim for letting me know about the new way of adding borders.

Site Almost Back To Normal

Thanks to Robin for pointing out that in order to get rid of the horrible bullet points that were on the sidebars of the site you have to open up each Typelist and press save. By doing so the bullets disappear. Now all I need to sort out is the missing border on images.

Crappy Layout And Crappy Comment Notifications

Apologies for the crappy layout on the site but Typepad have been tinkering around and have temporarily messed up the design. Not only that, they have been altering the comment notification emails again. When will they learn to leave them alone! They were fine as they were (not the first revision that they made but the original plain text ones).

The new notifications now come from typepad@typepad.com rather than the users email address which means that in my email client all comments look as though they have come from Typepad rather than from the user who sent the comment. This means that it is now impossible to quickly see who sent the comment. I used to enjoy being able to see who sent a comment so that I could read those from regular readers first but now I have to go through them blindly. I've submitted a ticket but I can't see them changing it back.

Has My Typepad Rant Had An Effect?

I've just noticed that Typepad have changed the status of some of the tickets to 'We're working on it' (not sure when it changed - it may well have changed before my rant). This is not on all bugs just a selection. Is this an indication of the bugs that are actually being worked on? Has this got any relation to the rant I had last week? Something that would be handy would be to see a list of either bugs that are being looked at or a list of all known bugs. This would save people posting numerous tickets for known bugs.

The Power Of Blogging, Or How I Ranted And Typepad Listened

Yersterday I had a big ol' rant about things that have been bothering me about Typepad. I had got a little worked up about lots of niggling problems that had been bothering me for a while and felt that I needed to share them with people and I hoped that Typepad would read it too.

As it happens they did read it, including Anil Dash who also commented on the post. He commented on the recent WYSIWYG interface and how it contained unnacceptable bugs, how the links in the comment notification emails were left out and how important they were and finally how they are always striving to improve Typepad.

I also had a good conversation with Brenna in Customer Support who was willing to listen to my problems and let me know about why new features are being introduced and that they are aware of all the problems and are working on them.

Problems associated with the new commenting notification emails (loss of formatting and no option to switch to plain text) are being looked at and will be introduced in the future. There are also some good new features planned for the future, although we will have to speculate what those are.

Overall I am happy with the service that I receive from Typepad and think that I am getting a very good deal particularly regarding my bandwidth (something that I have tried not to mention on my blog). Brenna pointed out that I failed to mention in my rant that even though I have a 3GB limit and I have been going way over my limit (around 167GB over my limit this month!), Typepad have been helpful by not charging me.

I'm pleased with the responses that I have received from Typepad.

Oh Cruel TypePad! Why Do You Mock Me?

Yesterday TypePad introduced a new format for their comment notification emails. They are now in HTML format rather than the old plain text and after conversations with TypePad support, it seems that they are going to stay like that and if you don't like it, tough. They do still send out plain text notifications but there is no option to choose them, instead you have to configure your email client to accept only plain text emails. What if you want to receive HTML emails from some senders but not TypePad? Tough! What if you email client (e.g. Gmail) hasn't got the option for receiving just plain text emails? Tough!

The fact that they have introduced this new format of notifications and don't allow users to select non-HTML emails has really gotten to me. It's not just this though, there are so many things that I don't like about TypePad. Yes, they do provide a good service in regards to blogs always being available and loading quickly but they seem to be more interested in providing a good service for the end-users, the readers of the blogs. What about those who spend a few hours day using their interface? Can't we get a good service? Can't we have a say in how things should be or what needs changing? No. It seems that if you have got a gripe about something related to the service you will just have to put up with it because Typepad knows best and the 'majority of users are happy'.

I'm not alone here. There are other people who are not happy with many aspects of the system and how support respond to tickets. Here's my response, which links to other people's views, to the introduction of the WYSIWYG interface. [Gah! Even as I compose this post I'm having to put up with bugs that have yet to be fixed]. Here's another rant from Fred Wilson of A VC.

Here's my list of things that I'm not happy about (feel free to add your own in the comments):

# File Manager - how it got a name like that I'll never know. It must be the most difficult file manager I've ever come across. Before the new file management system came into effect last year, when uploading images from within the new post screen, they were added into either the root (if no category was chosen) or into a category folder chosen for the post. At least that's how I believe things happened.

# Uploading Images - when uploading images from within a new post screen, they are dumped into a black hole known as 'uncategorized'. This mystery folder is not accessible from the so-called file manager without a little hacking of the URL.

# Service Can Be Slow - quite often the stats take a long time to load (and sometimes times out) and posts can time out. I get quite a few hits so maybe this affects the loading time of the stats.

# Deleting Posts/Comments - the process of deleting posts and comments is slow, even when there are only a few to delete. God help you if you get spammed and need to delete a load of comments/trackbacks.

# Automatic Deletion of Images - When deleting a post any associated images are also deleted. Whilst this sounds like a good idea, if two posts have been submitted (which does happen, e.g. when a post times out and you resubmit it) and you delete one of them, the image is also deleted. However, the remaining post will not have any images because they will have been deleted.

# Hacking TypeLists - there's no easy way of adding things like Google Adsense, stat counters and other such items. TypeLists need to be hacked in order to add them (e.g. making sure that the Javascript goes in the correct field (notes or title) and that convert notes to text is swtiched on. Heck, even the big guys have difficulties with this feature.

# TypeList Titles - there's no option to hide the title of a TypeList. This means that if I want to add say a stat counter, I would also have to give it a title of 'Stat Counter'.

# Photo Sorting - in photo albums, there is no way of sorting photos apart from renaming the photos of altering dates.

# Interface Is Not Intuitive - the interface is not at all intuitive. It is a chore to find things despite having used it for the last 18 months.

# Support - whilst TypePad support are quick to respond and are nice people, in general the responses are not helpful.

# Bugs Don't Seem To Be Fixed - bugs that I have reported back in November have yet to be fixed. Apparently they are only minor bugs and more important things need to be fixed/changed. So bugs that affect usability of TypePad are minor and not important whilst making the comment notification emails look pretty is important.

# Stats Only Partly Useful - some of the stats such as total number of hits and hits within the last hour are accurate but hits in a day and average number of hits are completely wrong.

# Overwriting Images - back in the good ol' days when you wanted to upload an image using the 'insert image' button in the new post screen and one already existed you were presented with the option to overwrite the image. This was useful if you had uploaded an image that was too large and wanted to replace it. Now if you upload an image and it already exists instead of being presented with the option of replacing the image, it is uploaded and appended with a number. This means that you waste space by having two copies of the image. According to TypePad, that's how it's always going to be from now on and they will not be reverting to the old system. Their advice to replacing the image: navigate to it using the file manager, upload the new image (which will replace the old one) and then link to it in the post using HTML. Hmmm, sounds little long winded to me. Oh, and what they fail to tell you is that if you have used the 'insert image' button on the new post page, you have no hope of finding it using the file manager as it is located somewhere within the bottomless pit known as the 'uncategorized' folder.

Whilst this list seems exhaustive I'm sure I'm missing a few more (I'm sure they could do more to combat trackback spams). It feels good to get all this off my chest but TypePad are not going to do anything about it because I'm in the minority and 'the majority are happy'.

What I want to know is, how do they decide on new features/changes? Obviously they ignore feedback from users and I'm not aware of any users who test new features for them (prove me wrong).

Ultimately I suppose TypePad (Six Apart) has gone the way of many start-ups. To start with you get great service and feel part of a community but as the company grows you lose that community and you end up being just another customer who they can afford to lose.

Please feel free to add you comments to this post or perhaps write your own rant on your blog. I'm hoping that someone at TypePad ends up reading this so feel free to pass it along or link to it.