Julie's dashboard

Not sure why this is so hard. Use a links Typelist, with only one item. In that item, type your list in any order you want, as lines of text, or as list items. This way, you can also style each item with as much pizzazz as you want, subdivide lists with headers, etc. I use various styles in my sidebars and footers. See http://www.coffeehabitat.com/

All morning (7 to at least 9:45 AM, when I left the house) none of my Typepad blogs were available correctly. I either got a time out notice (when going to URLs that had mapped domains) or garbled HTML, non-graphic versions when I went to the Typepad URLs. I have other web sites through the same registrar using the same redirects, and they worked fine. When I was next able to look, at around 11:15 AM, they were okay.

I reported this here because I had other problems in Compose the previous afternoon, and got the email from Typepad that they were rolling out the "new" Typepad to all. It has been my experience the last several years that new roll outs are accompanied by new problems, so this post caught my eye and I responded.

I generally do not report errors or problems unless I think it may be a big, persistent issue, and roll out issues sometimes are. Otherwise, I wait them out or work around them. I've been a Typepad blogger since early 2005, and had nothing but praise, especially for the support team, in the early days. Now it is so tedious to construct a help ticket that I don't bother. (I know Typepad support knows me, and is familiar with this complaint; I won't air examples publicly now.)

So I don't know what else to tell you. Do I think this was some sort of Typepad issue? Yes. I have had problems that Typepad attributed to me, my coding, our outside sources only to finally admit something was wrong on their end or they did not know what happened. I feel the same way about Six Apart/Typepad as I do about Microsoft: they have some great products with wonderful functionality, but also a growth plan that seems to steam ahead hoping to be all things to all people, as fast as possible, even if it means rolling out products that aren't fully baked yet. I don't want a Swiss Army knife. I want a sharp knife and maybe a pair of scissors that stay sharp and work.

As noted on the status blog, some users had problems, which Typepad resolved. It was a Typepad and not registrar issue. – Julie, on July 28, 2009 18:53

My registrar (mydomain.com) is reporting no problems. Redirects to other web sites (not on Typepad) work fine. When I go to the non domain-mapped Typepad blog URLS (e.g., "nuthatch.typepad.com/beans" rather than "www.coffeehabitat.com" I get the same mess of unformatted HTML. – Julie, on July 28, 2009 13:22

So everybody who cannot access their Typepad blogs (me, too) has a registrar/host problem?

I'm unable to access any of my blogs. When I go to the root (nuthatch.typepad.com) I get my main blog in HTML only. Yesterday, there were numerous problems with the Compose editor showing up in HTML only, or not working at all that I struggled through.

This stuff happens every time Typepad rolls out "improvements." It's ridiculous.

E.Webscapes is a firm that actively promotes Typepad design. I was not very happy with them.