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My Work
A list of all the work I've done.
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About Me
It's really just a bunch of random facts :p One day I'll put up more I swear.
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Flickr
I've been keeping a photo journal since the middle of 2008. Mostly just random pics of daily things, which I post here every month.
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GitHub
My repository of code. It's really not much to look at, but I like to keep things as public and open source as possible.
Web App Wed – TypePad
This is Web App Wednesday, the one day a week I’ve allotted to talk about web applications so that I don’t blab about them too much…
This week I’m talking about TypePad… One of the for-most blogging platforms out there, and definitely one of the leaders. But,, I’m a little confused about a few things, and I was hopping some of the TypePad people out there can set me strait.
Here is my Beef
In general ‘Free‘ Blogging is going to incorporate a (dot)something into your domain name, for example visualcoma.typepad.com or visualcoma.blogspot.com or visualcoma.wordpress.com, there’s really know way around that. Even ‘Free‘ has a price, although it’s not money.
In my mind your domain name is ‘Real Estate‘ it has value and it can give value to your content. The more sources pointing to your Domain.com the more the search engines like you. Especially if you’re really cool and you have some real heavy hitters that like you.
About a week ago I decided to check out TypePad to see what all the fuss was about, but I didn’t get very far. I just couldn’t bring myself to put my credit card in and pay to have visualcoma.typepad.com. So I stopped there, but TypePad didn’t. Later that same day I got an email from them asking if they did something wrong.
me –>> “Well, Yeah you did something wrong. The first thing you wanted from me was my Credit Card info…”
here’s the email and what I was thinking…
Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand that most sites are going to charge you for what you see below. There is no doubt that these things have to cost money. I’m wondering this, “Does TypePad offer the ability to mask your domain name with a name you’ve personally registered with out paying for the Premium Package.”
The reason I ask is that I’ve seen more TypePad users take their blog serious than other platform users, while still leaving the ‘(dot)typepad’ in their name.
My Point is this…
If you are serious about your blog than why aren’t you focusing on establishing a domain name with ‘Real Estate‘ value. If you are a Musician, Author, Publicist, Marketing Developer, Designer, Charity or anything of personal value than you Need to be creating a Brand for yourself that doesn’t include someone else’s name.
The simple fact is this.
Blogging has quickly become the latest trend/necessity for online marketing and publishing. Don’t go jumping the gun and get the first piece of land you hear about or see. Browse the market, find out what other people are using and get more than five opinions. There are millions of Blogs out there, trust me 5 opinions is not a hard number to find. Remember, if your goal in Blogging is anything more than a journal to your family and friends than it’s worth your time to do your homework…
Here are a few Options
WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Habari, b2evolution, Moveable Type
5 Responses to “Web App Wed – TypePad”
I’m a typepad user, and I dig it. I have tried setting up a wordpress site, and I found myself just getting frustrated a lot. And that is fairly ironic considering that I am a software developer by trade. I use the Pro level, and edit my own CSS and mess with the graphics more than most, as well as use my own registered domain name.
As I have dealt with wordpress, and become more comfortable with the differences, I can tell you this. What you are paying for with typepad, is service and convenience, there is no provider that has served me as well as Six Apart. If I have a problem, I submit a ticket, and it gets fixed… I like that. The only real thing i have to think about is what to write on my blog. Oh, and the anti-spam features of Typpad are second-to-none.
There are, of course, some things that I wish Typepad did as well as wordpress, and there are some features of wordpress that I wish were more “typepad-esqe” but when it comes down to it, I like typepad the best. It just feels more like what I want.
Wow, that was a long answer to your question… if you have more feel free to email or yell really loud :-0
wow, that was a good answer.
I’ve been totally miffed about typepad for the longest time and have been seriously wondering about the whole domain name thing. I like your take on typepad, and it seems like they’ve been good to you. Glad to hear it, that’s cleared up a lot of my biases toward it.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I’ve gotta agree; I don’t understanding people building a huge blog empire that depends on somebody else’s platform. What happens if Typepad goes under or decides to do something stupid or jacks their rates sky high?
So far as anti-spam capability, the free Akismet plugin for WordPress works great!
As to convenience and service, I can understand ScottMocha’s reasoning. For some people, the hassle of setting up and maintaining their own blog just isn’t worth it.
What about this? Does anybody know if your blog is likely to get more traffic if you’re part of the .wordpress.com or .typepad.com sites? Or does smart keywording and decent SEO practices do just the same thing for you? If you have better potential for traffic to your blog, that would be a strong argument for being part of one of these blogging domains/services.
Jonathan,
I think your right that it’s just not worth it for some people to be self hosted, course it all depends on who your hosting with. Im with bluehost and they’ve helped with all types of wordpress issues. (mostly lame ones that I had when I first started) its the same as anything, once you get into the flow of how things work it’s a cake walk.
As far as the SEO question between TypePad and WordPress, I’m not sure. I haven’t been able to get into typepad to see how much they’ll do for you. I know with wordpress there are a crap load of plugins to choose from like Platinum SEO and All in One SEO. (lots of good stuff from those.) Honestly I think its all about how you use your KeyWords, Tags and Categories. I’ve noticed a lot of searches coming in from very specific tags that I’ve used over and over.
Also I think it really depends on how many times you post using the same titles and things like that. A good example is Brody Harper. If you type in Stats Suck into google, you get Brody; if you type in Positive Post, you get Brody. A huge reason for that is the consistency of his posting on those topics and how many links are generated with in each post thanks to the ‘Mr. Linky’.
Also having a large amount of incoming links is important, especially if you have a lot of people with high page ranks linking to you. (5 and up is good to have)
anyway, I could honestly go on and on… Their may be a difference between typepad and wordpress on this issue, but it really comes down to the Author in the end.
take it easy… and i hope i didn’t blab to much…
I’m a wordpress hosted user, but started blogging with blogger. I thought the overall feel, for the template I was using, was cheap-looking, but the one thing I loved was the fact that it allowed you to use your own domain name for free. And it wasn’t just a redirect, it had full permalinks and everything. I thought that was really cool, but needed the flexibility in coding that wordpress hosted offered. I know for most that means you have to buy a server, but I already had server space with other projects I was working on, so wordpress hosted was a no-brainier.