No Sun. No Typepad. Not a good Day

I woke up this morning to find the first rains of the season had fallen hear in San Carlos, CA--never a favorite time of year for me. Sometime before 9 a.m. I discovered that Typepad--at least for me--was internally hemorhaging. I had three people--Richard Dudley, Dave Copithorne and David Parmet leave great comments and I wanted to quickly and glibly respond. It was not to be.

Typepad's performance was miserable, but I've learned to live with that and to keep my expletives supressed to the muttering level.  I live with it, because historically it doesn't happen that often. But then, I tried posting responses to the comments and when I hit post, came to a new-to-me dialogue box telling me to copy my comments, because Typepad had an error. I was invited to leave comments.

I tried hourly from then until now at nearly 2:30.  Finally success.  Most of my day has been a distraction. I'm in a snarly mood.  My dog, usually at my feet, has moved to safer space.  When I interviewed Six Apart's Mena Trott for Naked Conversations over on my other site, she had related an incident that she described as "like the first dent on a new car."

As far as I'm concerned, the Typepad performance in the last 2-3 weeks is more like a bashed-in fender. They blame it on an upgrade of a product I don't use and a move to a new server farm because they are so popular.  They won't be if they don't stop frsutrating users like me.

The sun just came out for the first time all day. My Typepad is running well enough to let me post this kvetch.  Please let this be the end of it.

Comments

[Rich Dudley]

FWIW - $10/month at DiscountASP.NET, and I'll even install dasBlog for you. I know Scoble says don't change the URL (Chaper 12), but that's better than a failing site. Plus, he'll give your new address some serious Google juice with only one link.

[Anil Dash]

Hi Shel... we definitely know TypePad hasn't been meeeting anybody's expectations, either yours or ours.

We're going to get the problem fixed and we're going to make it right for all our users. That's a promise not just from me but from Ben and Mena and Barak and everyone in our organization.

I hope you'll value the relationship you have with us in the same way that we value our ongoing relationship with you. Every web host is going to have problems, every application is going to have bugs. What I've learned from your blogging and the book in progress is that what matters is how transparent people are about the work they're doing, and how well they communicate about their progress. I hope you'll judge us on that, and I ask that you give us the chance to show you what we can do.

[shel]

Anil,

Thanks for you prompt and gracious response. Until today, my experience with all the fold at Six Apart has been purely Aces. I didn't mean to sound threatening. I simply said it was like a bashed-in fender. Fenders get repaired.

That being said, the experience today really sucked. Like a replaced fender, I just hope I don't have to go through it again.

[BJ Fogg]

As I read Shel's comments, I was agreeing with him: I've had problems with TypePad, almost to the point of switching my new blog to another service.

Then I read the comment by Anil and my view changed.

I learned something here . . .

My company has just started offering our internet service to the world, and YackPack is not perfect. People are likely to complain about this or that as we go forward. Here's the learning part: When people have gripes, if we don't respond like Anil -- quickly and transparently -- other people will pile on the complaints. It will snowball.

Anil stops the snowballing here. Nice work -- and an important example for me to see.

[Evan Erwin]

I have this problem with blogger, and it's just a management tool -- I don't even use their interface to write, just to update the template or investigate problems.

It's been having update problems and unfortunately there is NO place to find Blogger support, not even a "Hey, are we down? Let us know." link.

It really sucks, but I love its simplicity. Meh.