The Geeks Blog

"As many of you have heard, we here at Six Apart (the company behind Movable Type) are developing a new personal publishing service called TypePad, based on the Movable Type platform, but focused on being a central, hosted service which users of any skill level can sign up for. As we've been gearing up for our beta launch of the service, we wanted to take the time to give our Movable Type users more of a background about what the service is and how the development of TypePad will advance the state of the art for the Movable Type platform." That is the opening of an email that is sure to weed out the many blog hosting options that are available due to the complexity of hosting one's blog and using Movable Type, and remove a potential revenue source. This is one service I will closely follow as it grows and matures.

I mentioned awhile back that Movable Type's makers, Ben and Mena Trott, had announced they were doing a service based on Movable Type, where they host the blog and you pay a monthly, or yearly, fee. I also said I would sign up for a beta if they had one. A short while ago I was asked by form email to fill out their beta tester questionnaire, and I did so right away, being as honest as possible of how I blog and stuff. Well, I got word from Mr. Brad Murphy, formerly of brad.murphy.name, last night who told me he had been accepted in the second round of beta testing of the TypePad service. Assuming they did all the invitations at once, I assumed I had not been accepted, likely due to my disinterest in using my main blog there when the service goes live.

I am happy, though, to let you all know that not only have I been accepted, but I have already done a lot of work to get a blog set up and testing it out thoroughly. They did ask us not to post screen shots and stuff, but I will still tell you how it goes, and tell you of it's progression. The interface is typical of Six Apart, clean and well laid out. It allows a lot of very cool things, like book and music lists that enable you to automatically make them into Amazon affiliate links for yourself(the default is Six Apart's), and I love the built inability to add blog roll's, photo albums, and to create new blogs, though I wish it were possible to assign multiple locations, like the one I really would have liked as well, geek.blogs.com. Overall, I am impressed, and I expect to make that a sweet home away from home quickly.

Ok, so I wanted to keep you all up to date on the beta deal. I plan to move a lot of the stuff from here over there, or I should say copy. I plan to bookmark there at the same time as I do so here, in an effort to move things a little more synchronised between the two, and ensuring I don;t try to get in way over my head with 10 posts a night between the two, and having a life. I am not sure when I will make the copy, nor what time things will get synced properly, but the comments are truly the biggest issue at this point, which is a good thing, but web space is becoming an increasing worry. I have 325 on Blogo, and 200 on TypePad. I know a lot of my Blogo stuff is not blog, but too much for my liking is blog, and that might take a lot of space. I'll keep you up to date.

Ok, so the word has gone out that there is likely about a week left of the TypePad beta, but first we will have what they are calling the five days of TypePad, where us the beta testers who have used the service can tell you all about the daily selected feature of the service. At the end of the week I am told we can talk about anything, post screen shots, and we will have access to pricing information. Todays feature, for instance, is the template builder. This is a decent set up, with the ability to either have it arrange your blog itself, which might be problematic if their code gets a bug, or you can edit the templates yourself ala Movable Type. It allows you a little control, or a lot. It's up to the user to choose what they want, but the choice is a nice thing for the non geek.

So, why wait, you might say. Why not post yesterday. Well, that's because the 2nd day was moblogging, and I have very little experience with it other than to ensure that the blog by mail works. Beyond that, it is all foreign to me, and I really do not know what all it entails. I do, though, admit that I am familiar with the third day, Photo Albums. The set up for creating a photo album is great, with an easy to use interface allowing you to interactively move pictures throughout the album, add titles and names, and then to add using the Template builder I mentioned Monday, though I honestly wish it were easier for the last one. Right now, you have to publish the photo album, then go into template and check that you want the album, then go into layout and decide where it should go. There should be a link when publishing that says 'Publish and insert' or something. As well, I worry without a site folder view that when working in template builder, they will not be able to locate the correct info.

Now we come to the most useful of all the TypePad features, in my mind. TypeLists are like blog rolls, but on speed. Not only can you do people lists, but you can do music and book lists too, both of which produce images of the covers, and link to Amazon, which as I have blogged before, it is possible to have them link to your associate ID so you can get a little cash to cover the costs of the service at the same time. For instance, on the music one on the Geek TypePad Beta Blog, I have Johnny Cash, Darryl Worley and Kenny Chesney, while on the books I have pretty much every book in my house. I only wish I could do a more thing so people could see a full list, not just the 15-20 I have listed there. Overall, this is the best feature I found in beta.

Ok, so when I got home I had an email from Ben Trott that he sent to all of the TypePad beta testers, telling us the service is now ready to launch, and that it will do so on Monday. The pricing is also set, ranging from $5 to $15 a month, and they have also put up a comparison chart between the three levels of service. They all have a 30 day trial, and 2 months free if you pay for one full year. That, though, is where the similarities end. Basic doesn't have photo albums, which I know I would use a lot, and doesn't have the added security of PGP on email links(no idea what that is) not to mention the lack of advanced template with that. I guess we can tell what I wouldn't use. Having spent about a month in the service without too many problems, I would recommend either of the two higher level services for any new blogger.

Ok, well, after looking over things for the last hour or so, and examining my options on TypePad, I have decided that this will be the last post done on both sides of the Blogsphere by me. I just cannot justify blogging on Geek Blog and Geek TypePad Blog. this is not to say that TypePad isn't an awesome service, it really is, but I just can't justify moving off the Blogomania servers were I have most of my stuff. I would rather save the $15 US a month and renew my dwightwallbridge.com domain, though the other attempted business one registered at the same time will be left to expire due to the fact I cannot register the business name. I also want to get myself on a much better footing as well before I get into this. I will of course finish posting what is here by the 11th, no worries. Email me for a discount code, by the way.