Nobody is speaking up in defense of Typepad, and as a beta tester since it first came out in 2002, I suppose I might note a few points (I manage about 30 Typepad blogs, many migrated from Movable before that, and am getting ready to start working in Wordpress, for a new project).
Several things a good designer can do with Typepad that some people seem to struggle with on Wordpress (although I'm not anticipating having any trouble with it myself), which is CSS modifications, and sidebar or menu modifications. I've yet to encounter blog software I can't twist up royally, and use for all kinds of things it was never intended (altho blog software keeps evolving to add plug-ins for things that I've already kludged out earlier, which ends up making my work in vain). So while, design-wise, Wordpress is luring me with wider design possibilities than Typepad, it is only out of my own laziness, because I am convinced that if I took the time, I can adapt ANY site CSS for use in Typepad. But the beauty of blog software is that it is a quick and dirty CMS, and I just don't want to take the time, and I want to move into a completely different look and feel. Typepad has both Custom CSS and Advanced Templates. I actually built all my Advanced Templates before they came out with the Custom CSS features, around about 2005 or so. What was handy for me, and a key point I want to make, is that it was SO EASY (the user interface for content input). I was teaching at the time in Montana, and while we were moving the student newspaper to Expression Engine (powerful, but a difficult user interface for newbies), it was WAY QUICKER to just punt my students all to guest accounts on my Typepad class blog, and have them branch out and start building their own blogs from that. Semesters are too short, esp if you are the kind of professor that also makes students READ wonky stuff and DISCUSS things, rather than just play on the computers all day. That's the rub, eh? Typepad hasn't dominated just because it is easy to use, but because PEOPLE LIKE using it, and that makes them feel encouraged to post, to stick with their blogs, to be enthusiastic as they step up to start a post. McLuhan would point out, the kinds of conversations you have by candlelight are far different than the kinds of conversations you have under fluorescent light. Here we are, interaction designers, and nobody is talking about the subtle colorations the blog input interface brings to the kinds of things one writes about, and how writers FEEL about the interface. One of my Montana students then later took an internship at the LA Times, where he reported to me that they were running Typepad blogs out through the LA Times shell, this before Six Apart even started officially offering the business tools for Typepad. He said he noticed an interesting effect (because he was working with the journalists on these blogs). The journalists would automatically start to prefer putting their stories into Typepad, while procrastinating when they had to approach their regular, "official" newspaper CMS. I know this as well from CNN, where they didn't have comparative data, but the CMS was such an awkward old clunker, it made ordinary journalists view their interaction with it as a necessary evil. Imagine what happens to writers when you take away the "evil" part of that. So yeah, I'm lazy, and I just realized the other day that I haven't touched the CSS of my Typepad Advanced Templates in a long time, and they are starting to show their age, and Typepad may be too. Not its user input interface tho. And I also remember this from back in the day, when I was on Radio Userland blogs and migrated THAT design (which was not CSS based, EVIL) to Movable. It was like night and day. But Movable is still powerful, but also showing its age. I just don't trust its guts, cuz it messed up my SQL stuff terribly, and the comment spam on even password-protected blogs was simply unforgivable. But those kids, Ben and Mena Trott, now probably long gone from Six Apart, they had it going on, you know? You know that Movable and Typepad were running their feeds automatically to index.rdf files in the early 2000s. Why are some people having to work to tool up their Wordpress stuff for RDF? I've taken it for granted for almost 8 years. Blah. If you want the best control over your CSS, you can't beat Typepad. Custom CSS is brilliant, even if I've only needed it for teaching. That's just cuz I was too lazy to move out of my Advanced Templates, but if I had to start from scratch now, I'd be in nothing but the Custom CSS stuff. But I am looking forward to a fresh start, and a powerful new Wordpress theme I'm looking to try out. Chris On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 12:08 AM, Elena Melendy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Santiago and Jeff. Thanks for your replies. Jeff, I've barely > skimmed the Joomla site but will take a closer look. > > Santiago: Actually, you've understood my problem exactly. I chose > WordPress initially because I thought the best solution for me would > be to modify an existing theme, and WP is reputed to have the > greatest number of free high quality themes. > > I soon discovered that themes designed by others were not going to > work for me, and that in any case, modifying them was more difficult > than simply editing the CSS. I've accepted that I'm going to have > to build my own templates--but I'm going to have to build them no > matter which CMS I choose. > > Drupal claims that it works on a different conceptual model, which I > find interesting. One thing I like about it--this may be relevant to > the discussion at large--is that the site administration interface is > very easy to use. > > Elena > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=31537 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
