Pressed for Words

[Newbury Street. Boston; 9/26/10]

Busy and short of time here lately. One blog-related activity has been preparing to move over to WordPress. I think I have it set up (check it out), but I want to make sure everything got moved over before I pull the plug on TypePad. I exported my posts here and imported them there and it seems that everything came over, including my archives to 2004, unless there are gaps I haven't discovered. Will let you know when it's official!

Comments

[Lorianne]

I love the new WordPress site. I know exactly where your banner image comes from, as I shot a similar image the last time J and I were on Newbury Street! It's a wonderful palimpsest of colors and reflections.

I hope you like WP. I've been happy there since I made my own migration several years ago.

[Dave]

Hold on, Leslee. I don't know what you mean by "pull the plug," but your images are still located here. I don't know if there's any way to move those files en masse or not. Lorianne, what did you do when you moved from your old site (which I think was on MT)?

[Dave]

This post suggests there's no alternative to importing the images one by one (and also editing any internal links one by one): http://tpvswp.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/how-to-move-from-typepadcom-to-wordpresscom/
:(

[Leslee]

Thanks, Lorianne.

Dave: Oh crap, you're right. That could take a very long time...

[Jean]

The new template on Wordpress looks really good, though.

[Dave]

I do like the look of your site on WordPress (obviously, I'm partial to that style!). But yeah, I guess you have to ask whether it's worth your time to move all the images, or just stay on Typepad and continue to pay. There are a few conveniences on WordPress you'd miss out on, such as a better comments system, but also some indignities, such as the inability to opt out of the global tags system (meaning that readers who click on the tag or category links below each post go off-site to a WordPress.com-wide page: very user-unfriendly IMO).

[maria]

I too am considering a move to WordPress. Having lost the entire original alembic blog when the host went commercial big time and pulled the plug on blogs like mine (and somehow I missed any notification about it), I wouldn't care if I had to start from scratch. Though, my current blog on Typepad was moved (just the address, though) from WordPress.

You probably have plenty of time to decide which direction to chose. I do like the template you chose over at WordPress!

[Leslee]

Dave: Oh man, I don't like that at all! When I want to see what I posted to my categories, I only want to see what *I* posted. If that's the case, I may use the WordPress blog as a backup strategy and see if they ever change how they show categories, while keeping TypePad for the time being. Maybe I'll see if I can get a new theme for TypePad to make the old one look better, though. I can work on copying images to WordPress over time. Anyway, thanks for all the tips.

Maria: Yeah, you scared me with how you lost your last blog. We'll see what TypePad does when they go over to Say Media.

[Lorianne]

Dave, my old site was a privately hosted MT site, and most of my old photos are still on the old server. I've migrated some of the photos to Flickr, but there are enough still "there" that I continue paying hosting fees to keep those images until I can migrate them.

So yes, the photo-migration thing is definitely an issue, as is the weird tag/category links.

(FWIW, Leslee, what Dave's saying about tags and categories only applies to the tag & category links applied to the post itself. In your sidebar, if you display your categories, those go only to your post. So in theory, the global tags & categories applied to your posts can also attract more readers, since people can click through to your blog on Topic X after reading about Topic X elsewhere.)

[Leslee]

Oh! Okay then. That's good. Well, then I'll slowly migrate over my photos and see how far I get. Since I'm paying monthly for TypePad, albeit a small amount, I'll have to move everything over or lose it if I give up TypePad.

[Lorianne]

Another work-around for the global-category issue is to give your categories unique names that no one else would use! I have a category called "Life as Lorianne," for instance, that I don't think anyone else uses, so the global listing for that category only lists me!

But again, it's kind of cool to occasionally get readers from other blogs writing on the same topics you do. I've made peace with the global categories & tags on posts since I -- and my readers! -- can use the sidebar category links to surf "just" my posts. It's not the way I would have designed things, but I can accept it as a tolerable compromise.

[Roberta]

I like your new WordPress blog. It needs a more pizzazz-y font, I think. It doesn't affect the content which, of course, is the best part of your blog. But Helvetica? Honestly, don't mind me. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm Helvetisized up the ying yang. My blog is entirely Helvetica. Maybe I am trying to live vicariously through you ;)