Support tickets required three or four followups to get anything done. Frankly I’d rather explain my issue to a competent programmer and get the issue fixed the first time and than spend a week emailing a ditzy tech support worker who neither understands nor reads what s/he is sent.

What is worse about Typepad is trying to leave. Typepad hold you hostage – you can’t take your URLs and Google rankings with you. Here is my experience moving from Typepad to Wordpress.

I would suggest starting at Wordpress.com (on your own domain). When you have enough content up to need ads or a commercial message and you’ve proven to yourself that you will stick to your writing, then move your site to hosted Wordpress. Go for a premium host with telephone support. Bad hosting support might leave you in similar circumstances as Typepad.

Whatever you do, don’t get started at Typepad as you can’t move your content without a great deal of pain.

Alecs last blog post..MIR geht es gut at the Fidelio-Wettbewerb Konservatorium Wien

So, what are the main reasons for choosing Typepad as my blogging platform?

1. I want a hosted solution, I don’t want to fiddle around with software.
2. I need to be able to customize my templates in an easy manner.
3. I need to be able to display commercial content.
4. I need to find the answers I really need in the support/help section.

http://www.husdal.com/blog/2007/09/why-blog-on-typ.html

So I am on the prowl to compare the paid blogging service of TypePad and WordPress2.0. Why? I have a hunch that many people see the paid option for TypePad and assume it must be better… Also, I have read problogger’s writeup stating that &#…

I used blogger as my training wheels for the first year. It was time to grow up. Still have a lot of customizing and tweaking to do but looking forward to the journey of taking it to the next level.

Live Your Dreams,

Jill Koenig

http://www.GoalGuru.com

Wendy, I look forward to meeting you at BlogHer. I’m moderating the panel on blog to book.

So in your case, I do think you and TypePad are a perfect fit.

I totally agree that the HUGE learning curve with Wordpress is a CON. I know it does great things, but if you don’t know exactly what you are doing it is VERY easy to “break” or you have to pay someone to help you code it properly. Plus a lot of the WP themes out there are not SEO friendly and that adds a whole other issue.

Typepad may not have plugins, but it does have a lot of widgets and built in conveniences like publicizing your blog automatically to a lot of service. It also has an advanced Template feature that allows you to do a lot of customization. I have found the Typepad Support team to be very helpful and responsive. And lately, it’s been eating spam like crazy…I have very few issues with Spam, so I wouldn’t say it’s not as good as Wordpress.

As others have mentioned we also have pages and more new features are rolling out every day to compete with Wordpress.

I definitely envy some of the fun things you can do with Wordpress, but I don’t envy the time investment you have to make since I work full time outside my home.

Thanks for a GREAT post Wendy!

Because of their incredible features/low price, I use them for my own “play” projects but don’t recommend them to clients because of the number of complaints that generates down the road.

I usually recommend HostRefugee to small clients who don’t need a ton of features; it includes cPanel/Fantastico, though usually I install WordPress for them so that all the best plugins are there and configured.

I’ve also heard great things about A Small Orange, and they also have cPanel/Fantastico.

However, since TypePad doesn’t support 3rd-party plugins, I don’t know how you could use it there (unless I’m missing something).

If Six Apart themselves decided to run with it, it would find its way into the main program, but otherwise I think TypePad users are out of luck.

I apologize for that because I am one that likes to “get my hands dirty” and install everything manually. However, I do have to say they both have outstanding customer service that would likely assist with any WP installation difficulties.

As soon as I get that big Digg, I will let you know how they hold up.

Blue Host blipped a tiny bit through three big Diggs around here – but on the fourth, my site was up and down for a week (hmmmm… still need to write a post about that one!).

It’s to be expected on a shared host – at some point, you will outgrow it and it’s not their fault (and it’s a good problem to have!)