One advantage of having a unique domain for your blog is you can export your entire blog from WordPress to TypePad or vice-versa. Even if you are loyal to one platform, you never know with mergers and such if there will be a desire to make a change down the road. So, do this. You will thank yourself some day – that much I can guarantee you.
The aforementioned words were pulled from a popular post I wrote over a year ago entitled TypePad vs WordPress – Own Your Blog. Little did I know that that about six months later Six Apart, the parent company of TypePad would be sold to VideoEgg – creating a new organization known as Say Media.
I had the feeling right then that it might be time for a change, but I elected to keep an open mind.
I enjoyed many productive years blogging on the Typepad platform and remained loyal for specific reasons. Let’s take a look at those first, and then I’ll explain why I moved to WordPress last week – and how I pulled off the move without a hitch.
5 Advantages to Blogging on TypePad
1. Simplicity – The primary advantage TypePad offers over WordPress is that it is easy to establish a blog to which you can map over your domain and own your content. It’s practically a matter of pushing a few buttons.
2. Customer Service - If ever need help with your blog you always have access to the step-by-step tutorials in the searchable Typepad knowledgebase. Additionally, you can also open a help ticket and you will get a personal response from TypePad within 24 hours.
This may be one of the best reasons to blog at TypePad. It’s an invaluable service if you are challenged with technology – and one of the key reasons I stayed there as long as I did.
At WordPress you go to the community forums for answers, where unfortunately it may be some time before you get a response. I have observed the frustration of bloggers searching for a week or more to resolve their issues.
3. Own Your Content – Both TypePad and WordPress allow you to link your blog to a unique url that you own. This enables you to migrate from one platform to another while preserving all of those permalinks that are forever your source of traffic.
If you skip this essential step when building your blog, you become what has been described a digital sharecropper – one who builds traffic for the owner of the platform, not for you and your brand. Indeed, this is the focus of Say Media – which I learned while personally meeting with them here in Chicago.
4. Community - The community at TypePad is much smaller than that of WordPress, and smaller communities tend to breed familiarity. I was very impressed a few years ago that TypePad was monitoring their brand on Twitter and reached out to me in response to my tweet.
Regrettably, most of the folks I met are now gone.
5. Security – Because Typepad hosts your content, it is to their benefit to protect it both for you and them. I’ll admit that in five years on Typepad I never experienced any downtime – and they also did a great job of managing comment spamming.
5 Advantages to Blogging on WordPress
1. Flexibility - The simplicity of Typepad inherently limits your ability to customize and adapt. You rely on Typepad to do this, and while I was on board, they managed to do this well. In fact, they actually integrated the Facebook Like button 3 months before WordPress – and that greatly helped to grow my community.
However, this means that when new developments come along they are forced to pick and choose. Those choices may not be the right ones for you, because they have to serve the majority.
This is one of my primary reasons for my switching to WordPress, and what I meant when I said in my first post here on WordPress that I needed to get on a faster horse. Technology is changing so quickly that you really have to be ready to run or you may get run over.
2. Functionality – There are thousands of developers creating countless WordPress plugins – pieces of software that enable you to accomplish just about anything with your blog. Some of them can be problematic, so you have to ask around and choose carefully.
Two that I chose are the Hello Bar that drops down to encourage newsletter subscriptions, and the Wibya Bar that sits at the bottom of the page to encourage sharing.
Another advantage to WordPress is the ability to choose from themes that provide the capability to design your blog to look exactly like a typical website, while also giving you the freedom to easily make updates. After a great deal of study, I chose the Genesis framework for its security, deep SEO capabilities, and its attractive themes.
3. Own Your Content – The process for owning your blog at WordPress is both the same and different from how it works at TypePad. TypePad hosts your blog on their servers and you map your domain over your TypePad domain.
With WordPress.org you arrange your own hosting. Not wanting to take any risks with this vital step, I hired John Hawkins at 9Seeds to do this for me, who also helped me find reliable hosting at InMotion Hosting for a very reasonable cost.
4. Community – What can I say, WordPress is where the cool kids hang out. WordPress is much like Apple – it’s the choice of afficianados that always want to be on the cutting edge.
Just remember that most of these aficionados are skilled with technology. If that does not describe you, than you will need someone to help you get everything set up – which you will most likely have to pay for.
5. Security – One of the shortcomings of TypePad is that you cannot download and back-up all of your content – not as a bonafide mirror copy. To be perfectly honest, the back-up feature at Typepad is pretty much useless.
Like everything else on Typepad it’s easy to use, but worthless from the standpoint that your content is stripped of titles, photos, video, and just about everything else that contributes to its value.
I was very fortunate to discover Alec Kinnear and his team at Foliovision. They have a great deal of experience migrating blogs from Typepad to WordPress – and they also specialize in SEO.
When you have blogged for years and have thousands of articles, categories, and comments that have been indexed by Google and other search engines, you absolutely want to keep that intact. Foliovision made that happen.
Additionally, Alec helped me use a WordPress plugin to back-up my content should anything go wrong with my hosting service. Since the hosting service is doing their back-ups too, doing my own gives me that much more confidence.
There is No Right or Wrong
The choice between Typepad and WordPress depends upon your personal situation. I’m hopeful that this information will help you to make the best choice for you.
Are you blogging?
If not, here is a article I wrote on how to start a blog that covers just about everything.
If you are already blogging, here’s one on 5 ways to make your blog posts outstanding.
What do you think? Which platform is right for you and your blog?
Feel free to leave a comment below – and please share this with your social community on Facebook or Twitter.
Until tomorrow, Jeff
Photo Credit: Phil Oakley
Hi Jeff,
For me it’s the CMS aspect of WP that counts and also tools such as Thesis Themes which make SEO etc so easy.
Ivan
A big yes on the CMS Ivan. WP is not only ore flexible but more robust as well. It took me a while to learn but now I’m getting that time back.
Jeff
Thanks so much for the kind words Jeff about our Typepad to WordPress service. It was great working with you too! I started on Typepad way back in the day myself for many of the reasons you mention.
My own experience is that the customer support was only willing to help with the most basic issues and what started as a world leading platform only went backwards with time.
What we recommend at Foliovision is to start on WordPress.com for free (to see if you have a taste for weblog writing and regular posting) but on your own domain (your own domain only costs $15/year).
Moving from WordPress.com to self-hosted WordPress is a lot easier than the Typepad to WordPress migration.
We have a detailed T2WP guide for the DIYers. Migrating is still harder work than it needs be so we are standing by to provide a turnkey service for established sites who cannnot and should not afford to take any risks with Google rankings and traffic.
We’ve met so many great people doing Typepad to WordPress conversions that I’ve forgiven SixApart for trapping me in Typepad for years.
Thanks for being part of Foliovision, Jeff!
It was a pleasure working with you and your team Alec. And I’m really beginning to feel comfortable here in my new home – learning all the new gadgets and such.
I’ve still got plenty of work to do, but the heavy lifting is done!
Jeff
Well said Alec – I didn’t realize I was not reading the full length of your comment when I was in my dashboard.
One thing that I’m really enjoying with WordPress is the speed of the load times. I lost more than a few posts on TypePad because my browser timed-out before my content was saved.
Hey Jeff…. so, you needed to hire two outfits to make the move to Wordprss work for you… And you had to spend how many hours researching and making sure that the switch was the best move for you? For me, the question is how many hours does that take me away from the central point of my blog in the first place? I have several friends who use WordPress, and it does seem like a great product… but for me, Typepad allows me the least amount of fuss for investment of time…and money. There’s no doubt that WP offers a lot of options, and the community is indeed huge….even though it’s my sense that they are first and foremost terrific blog platform geeks, who relish in just that, aps, code and the like. Me, I’ll stick with the writing, press a button to backup my stuff to my own harddrive (and backup again) and not worry about my content being on either my system, or, another host company… and with the expense of that as well. I’ll miss seeing you on the Typepad interface. Love your articles… whatever the platform!
Hi Kevin,
I hear what you are saying. That’s why I started with Typepad too. But there are two issues with Typepad which make it difficult to recommend to a new blogger.
1. It’s difficult to migrate away without damage to your site and loss of permalinks (if it were easy, then there would be no reason not to start a site on Typepad).
2. If you go beyond simple weblog writing, Typepad has real limitations in terms of handling of images and SEO and ecommerce functionality.
But I certainly hear you about the hassle of maintaining a website. All things considered, for an important site, self-hosted WordPress gives you a lot more power.
For “just blogging”, WordPress.com has many advantages over Typepad and few disadvantages (there’s the odd site with some commercialisation but few advanced features which would actually still fit Typepad but not fit WordPress.com). The big advantage of WordPress.com is the jump up to self-hosted when the time comes is easy and inexpensive.
Keep in mind that Jeff’s site is stronger and better now after the move. We do a lot of internal carpentry and cleaning when we do our T2WP moves so our clients don’t just get the same old site back on a different platform. They get a supercharged, totally clean site with vastly enhanced SEO with no broken links or broken images or borky javascript (we switch TP image popups to Lightbox for instance).
Just the thorough site cleaning is probably worth about half of our fee on its own for a larger site.
Thanks for the kind words Kevin.
There are definitely pros and cons to both sites. For example, I could follow comments more easily on TypePad – so excuse me for taking a day to get back to you.
Alec makes some good points – especially photos. On WP I can easily post charts that require higher definition to be legible.
Though as you say, as long as we are communicating, I don’t really care what platform anyone uses. We all have to find the one that makes us comfortable.
Jeff
Hi Jeff,
You should be able to set an option in the back end for email notifications for every new comment under Settings/Discussion.
I agree about communication, but no one should ever have their writing/permalinks held hostage on someone else’s server. Which was very much the case with Typepad and is still somewhat the case now.What made me so cross about SixApart/Typepad is that I couldn’t move away when I wanted to, despite pretty good technical skills at the time.
I’ve only started about a month ago. I chose WordPress because, umm, everyone – I thought – used WordPress. I read a few articles about how user-friendly it was and all that.
Anyways, I’m not good with technology and I realized that WordPress was complicated.
I think, after reading your post, I’ll transfer whatever content I have to Typepad. Unless you can suggest anything else? I’m only interested in writing, with occasional photos, and getting some feedback. That’s all. No plugins or sophisticated technological details. Just a platform where I can write and be read, comment on others and find interesting content.
Thank you!
There’s always WordPress.com for simple sites. It’s a lot easier to move a site from WordPress.com to self-hosted than to move a Typepad site into self-hosted.
We’ve done a lot of moves in every direction.
Khalid – If you’ve just started you may as well re-start where you feel comfortable. I agree with Alec that WordPress.com is a good place to start if you think you may move later. Whether you choose TypePad or WordPress be sure to map your blog to a domain you own so that you can move should you desire to do so. I never imagined I’d leave TypePad, but the time came when I had to do so.
Hi Jeff,
Your content has been of great value to me, especially your series comparison of Typepad and WordPress.
My outstanding question is this “really how difficult is it to actually set up and maintain a WordPress.org blog?”
I want to have the benefit of WordPress.org to run ads and utilize the more advanced plug-ins. However, I do realize there is some level of technical savviness needed and I I’ve read all of the Pros/Cons lists and even the info on WordPress.org and honestly, the way that they explain it would scare the hell out of any “new” blogger.
I’ve been casually blogging on Posterous for a few years, mostly as a lifestream for my family back home, and have really enjoyed it.
I’ve decided to forge my and create a more topic focused blog, with the hope of one day getting some real readership and hopefully be able to monetize.
Alisa – My personal feeling is that setting up your own WordPress.org blog takes some expertise. I’ve mentioned some folks here that I recommend that can help you.
If your budget is really tight, you can set up a blog on wordpress.com (which is not that difficult). You’ll want to pay the $15/year for having your own unique url, and then migrate to WordPress.org when the time is right.
Good day,
I wanted to know if there is site where i can feature my own ads and have my own domain name that is not blogger, thx
Earthichick – See my previous comment to Alisa. You can do that on WordPress or TypePad, and you can have also use your own url on both.
This article was very helpful to me and helped me in deciding which site to use…Thank you!
Mellinda – You are welcome! Thanks for you comment.
Clear and concise. Anticipating a lot more like this.
Great and useful post. Why did you choose WordPress over Tumblr and Blogger?
Thanks,
Scott
Scott – Very simple – You own your content on WordPress when you set up hosting to a URL that you own.
Jeff
On typepad users can sign into their social network (fb/twitter/linkein … etc) to comment on posts (that I presume are auto posted/notified on to their fb (etc) wall). I do not see this feature on WordPress which requires a user to either provide an (unauthenticated) email or login using a wordpress account.
This seems to be a big disadvantage as it then prevents viral transmission of the post to social media sites and relies heavily on users to “push” it instead.
TypePad provides for user authentication using almost all social networks.
Or did I miss it on WordPress??
VK – That feature does indeed work when the blog is within the TypePad network of blogs.
I have every reason to believe the same is possible with WP – especially when the site is on WordPress.com.
I’m involved in a beta private community on a self-hosted WP blog and they are using a similar feature. I just don’t know how to do that.
The thing with WP is there is almost always a plug-in that will accomplish whatever you wish to do. It’s only a matter of finding it and validating its reliability.
One final note is many of us prefer to to push because it allows for customization. I use a variety of features such as Ping.fm and the ShareThis buttons to accomplish that.
Thanks for the great tips as usual Jeff. I have been contemplating a switch for quite some time now, and I am going to do it. I have reached out to your recommended providers, and that will save me a whole lot of time and energy so I can focus on what I do best, which is creating content. Hope you’re well!
Doing well Sean – thanks. I know John is stacked up, but it will be worth the wait. Alec and his team have the migration process wired, so that should go smoothly. You’ll be glad you made the switch – much easier to build and sustain traffic. Looking forward to visiting your new site!
Thanks Jeff. John and I connected, and will be speaking next week. How did you handle the migration combined with the design? In other words, did the three vendors work with each other (hosting, design, and migration)? If I hire John to do the design, and Alec to do the migration, ideally, I’d like to just tell someone “here is what I want…GO” and then voila, I have a new wordpress site with all of my content, and the hosting is ready to go.
Sean – You will have to be your own quarterback.
John will be the first to admit that he cannot handle the migration.
You can give him the lead, but Alec and his team are essential for migrating your content from Typepad.
I have clients that had Alec and Foliovision handle everything. They have that capability and can accomplish it all well.
One example is http://drbilldean.com. Foliovision did the migration and also built his site. He is pleased with the results – as I am with mine.
My reason for splitting things up is I wanted to use the Genesis/Studiopress framework – which is one of John’s areas of expertise.
Both are great companies that can get you to where you want to go. It’s a personal choice.
“you become what has been described a digital sharecropper – one who builds traffic for the owner of the platform, not for you and your brand.” I’m sorry,Jeff, I don”t quite understand the above statement. Will you explain further what you mean?
Gisele – Sure, just as a sharecropper who works the land only gets a portion of the fruits of his labor – with the majority going to the landowner, a site on platforms such as TypePad mostly builds traffic for the owner – which is TypePad.
This is why TypePad is focusing on celebrity sites such as Steve Martin and Paris Hilton. Their celebrity power builds traffic that brings in more potential ad revenue to the platform.
When you have a self-hosted WordPress site you own all of the traffic. And believe me, in the less than one year since I’ve been here I can tell you that traffic is much more sustainable than it was at TypePad.
Forgive me for being a bit dense. Are you saying that Typepad and/or WordPress somehow do things to drive traffic to particular blogs other than the steps I take myself in writing, tagging, sending to Social Media sites etc.?
Sure, there are featured blogs. Mine was featured for a couple of years.
http://featured.typepad.com/
And when you feature folks like Steve Martin, it’s a very safe play.
I knew I was over my head, now I’m just sinking. We have a blog on Blogger, and we are thinking about going over to WP, but worried I may be even more over my head there. Question: will I be able to do more w/ WP, such as adding a chat on the blog, video, or slideshow photos? We have a lot of ideas, but we are not sure how to implement them. And is there such a thing as a video where two people from two different states can combine the two videos into one? I may not be making much sense to you, and I apologize, but I am trying to learn. Thank you for your time.
hola me encanta su show………
This post on the pros and cons of TypePad and WordPress will help you to make the right decisions for your
Jeff, in your experience how easy is it to transfer a Typepad to a new owner (best way to go about this?)
Also best way to get in touch with you? Need to ask about hosting you mentioned above,
Thanks.
Mike – The process described here is the way I would go. I considered my move for the better part of two years before making the switch – doing plenty of research.
Foliovision preserved all of my content, including links, images, and comments. I’m sure it is easy for them because they have done it so many times, but I can only imagine how much is really involved.
You can reach out to me via the contact form on this site. Here’s the link: http://www.jeffkorhan.com/contact