TypePad Forgets Europe is Not on Long Weekend

While friend Neville Hobson is pleased-as-punch with TypePad's new services -- which do look impressive -- I find myself tearing out my hair.

You see, I am in the middle of a comprehensive redesign of Desirable Roasted Coffee. And, naturally, I want to test that design before inflicting it on you. But during TypePad's now-going-on 72 hours of "upgrade", I've learned a couple of things:

• TypePad's improved "design possibilities" may benefit those who want to use just any old template. But TP has also introduced a lot of new MTtags, with no documentation, to replace whole groups of old tags. Thanks a lot, folks! Now publish the documentation!
• During their upgrade, which I suppose is supposed to end about 18 hours from now, you aren't going to be doing any upgrades yourself. I see now why they advised US customers to just go to the bar for the weekend.

Don't get me (too) wrong: I like the new features as reported. But with shoddy (and it's always been shoddy) tag documentation and poor help-files (for weeks this spring, TypePad's documentation base was riven with dead links), TypePad is certainly positioning themselves for the turnkey market. If you want to open up the black box to see what's inside, you're on your own & God help you.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:00pm in Typepad | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (3) | TrackBack (0)