TypePad seems to creaking under the strain of its own success. For some weeks now, I’ve been observing (and experiencing) constant server timeout problems when posting to this blog. And I’m not the only TypePad user who’s in this position.
In July, I posted with some frustration on the constant difficulties I encountered at that time. I tend to write posts offline using ecto for Windows, and this is what I said in July:
[…] What’s been happening is that, on average, about two posts out of five don’t publish correctly usually due to a server time-out or data-receive error. That’s generally been the case for many months. It means I then have to log in to TypePad and re-publish from there. A real pain.
I did have lots of discussion with TypePad support in July/August and I do appreciate some of the tech issues they had at that time. And I’m certainly not having a go at TypePad with some minor little irritations or frustrations about the odd server difficulty here and there.
No, this is far more serious.
My experience for the past month or so is that I will encounter a problem with every other post I try and publish. For 50% of the time, I will get a server timeout error when publishing. Sometimes I get a ping timeout error. In all cases, publishing posts takes an awful long time, 2-3 minutes in most cases for each post I’m trying to publish. That’s ridiculous.
It gets worse – I have similar timeout errors when I try and publish comments and trackbacks. For those, I have to log in to my TypePad account and do it from there, which is when I actually see server timeout errors like this:
Gateway Timeout
The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.
That’s the most common and frequent error message. Sometimes there’s one like this:
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Whether I get server errors or not, everything just takes so much time. I sit mesmerized by the "Waiting for TypePad…" message in the browser status bar or the "Adding post to server…" message in ecto. As I said, with every post being published, and with every comment and trackback, it’s 2-3 minutes each time. Sometimes 4.
I even had an really alarming issue earlier this month when a US colleague sent me a screenshot of what he got one time when he visited my blog. The error said:
Access to the weblog you have requested has been suspended.
He said he was getting a similar error for his blog as well.
Although TypePad support said it was a temporary error, this type of thing is definitely not good at all. Anyone seeing that message on a business blog would likely be wondering about you and what’s going on.
Using TypePad is worse every day from mid afternoon (my time) onwards. I’m in Amsterdam so that’s 6 hours ahead of the US east coast. That slowdown clearly coincides with when everyone over there gets up in the morning and starts blogging.
I like the TypePad service very much. I’ve been a subscriber since July 2004 and I’m paid up through to August 2006. Even though I will soon be re-locating NevOn to a new location on my own server – most likely using WordPress, although I still haven’t fully made up my mind yet – I will still keep this TypePad account open.
When I speak to companies about corporate blogging, TypePad always enters the conversation. It’s a service I often suggest to people to use in their experimenting stages, or even use the service for their actual business blog. Yet based on my own experiences since mid year, I’m beginning to worry about saying that now.
Is TypePad really suitable for business blogging? is a question Rich Brooks asked yesterday writing in Business Blog Consulting. Debbie Weil is asking a similar question. And I see today that Toby Bloomberg is asking the same thing as well.
I’m asking, too.
[EDIT] Just after publishing this post, I saw in my RSS feeds a post about these issues by Mena Trott, co-founder of Six Apart who owns the TypePad service.
It’s good to read Mena’s post and see that Six Apart is acutely aware of the issues such as I’ve described here. Even better, her post includes detailed commentary from her husband and co-founder Ben Trott on what’s been happening and what they’re doing to address and resolve all these problems.
The bottom line:
[…] Our operations team—and the rest of the company—have been working day and night to understand and overcome these issues. And yet, as a user of the service myself, I can fully understand why that might not sound good enough. But we’re committed to providing an amazing service for our customers, and we have been really, really striving to deliver that over the past month. We’re working very hard to make November and beyond a better experience, and to get back to the quality of service that you’ve always received from TypePad.
Over the next week you should see significant improvement in performance as we get extra equipment on line and finish moving data off of heavily loaded servers. By the end of the move we will have five times the bandwidth we had before, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars of new equipment, and room and power to add more equipment as needed.
We apologize for the poor service you’ve experienced over the past couple of weeks, and also for the lack of official communication on Mena’s Corner or Everything TypePad. At the same time, I know that an apology sounds hollow until we’ve fixed these issues and the service is stable once again.
We’re going to do a better job of giving you updates on our status as we work to improve the service. Thank you for your loyalty, and we’re working very hard to earn back your trust.
That’s good for enough for me for the moment. Benefit of the doubt time. For a little while longer.
Thanks for the update, Neville. My problems have been very minor in comparison. Mostly can’t get site stats when I try. I’ve been wanting to try ecto, but have been waiting for an all-clear signal from you before I do.
Eric, you’re lucky not to be experiencing these problems. In July, TypePad support said some of these server problems were related to the size of a blog’s database.
Re ecto for Windows, the latest version 1.8.3 is definitely worth trying. Released a couple of days ago to fix some rather signficant bugs. This version has direct support for tags. Give it a go.
http://ecto.kung-foo.tv/
TypePad is a great place to start and certainly one up on Blogspot but that’s it. MT is OK but I’ve never successfully migrated from 3.16 to 3.2 – I’ve given up on that.
More important, they’re operting a selective service by which I mean Steve Rubel is holding them up as a model for service ‘cos he got a personal email from the CEO. He must be one of the chosen few.
The latest outtage (Tues night my time – CET) took everyone offline for a period and they DIDN’T notify users – at least not by direct means. Also, it’s spell checker is erratic and they say that it doesn’t support embedded HTML coming from other sites because much of it isn’t standsards copliant???!! So they say – use Notepad to strip HTML – errr…’scuse me?
I’m migrating most of my stuff over to WordPress but I’m also looking at Drupal and CivicSite as longer term contenders for rich blog/wiki/forum convergence hosted by OSS specialists.
TypePad may have ‘growing pains’ but it’s no excuse for NOT having a redundant server setup…
It is frustrating, Dennis, I agree. It’s now 5.25pm as I write this comment and of course everything is like wading through thick mud. It took me 10 minutes to get your comment live here. Ridiculous. Plus I see the comment count shown for comments to this post is incorrect. That must happen when the gateway timout happens, as did occur when I tried to publish your comment.
Nevertheless, Mena Trott’s post is a good effort to say what’s happening and what steps they’re taking to fix the problems. It’s certainly not a model of service, though, as Steve mentioned in his post (to which I left a comment).
But it’s still benefit-of-the-doubt time. If those issues are not resolved quickly, though, then I’d say it becomes a major issue of credibility, which bloggers will post about. And move away, no doubt.
Unfortunately I have to agree. I have got to the point where I press post and then go and make myself a cup of tea. I doubt very much any of this would be a problem if TP wasn’t gorwing so quickly. So the answer is simple. Stop taking new customers until the problems are sorted out and existing customers are happy.
Much like Eric, the challenges I’ve encountered are minor in comparison to others. I’ve had great success with the Help Ticket system, though I’ve read others recently who haven’t.
One reason I’m probably not moving is that while TypePad is going through some growing pains, they’ll have (hopefully) cleared hurdles other blogging software haven’t encountered yet. To move after this hurdle has been cleared may be setting yourself up to go through the same elsewhere. The grass is not always greener elsewhere.
James, I do think they genuinely want to keep existing customers happy. I also think that if things are not fixed within weeks, customer loyalty will become exceedingly stretched.
Mike, I agree with you that TypePad support is terrific. Always very responsive and very helpful. Yet the problems still aren’t resolved.
I’m moving to my own server solution, but the reason for the move isn’t because of all the problems here. There are things I want to do with my blogs that I can’t easily do with a hosted blog service like TypePad and which I can more easily do with my own blog setup.
I started planning this move some 3 months ago. If I were only now starting out on my thinking about the future of my blog development, undoubtedly these TypePad problems would be a big influencing factor.
Neville and co. –
We’re truly, deeply sorry about this whole problem, and I know the operations team is working as hard as they can to ensure this never happens again. Apart from Bena nd Mena’s post – if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Hi Neville,
Cant say I’ve ever shared your posting problems as never had a post fail. I write off-line and use BlogJet for all my posts. The comment/trackback approval can be a little slow (30 seconds max once the approval button is ok’ed).
I suspect it’s more luck and maybe timing helps me miss the peaks as posting in the evening (local) and we are GMT + 12 here.
I am also having annoying,time wasting problems with TypePad. I haven’t been able to log into my account since September 29. When I attempt to login, I’m told I’m about to redirected to an unsecure server. I’m asked if I want to to go there. Since I dont, I click “no” and I’m sent back to the login prompt.
I also tried logging on using a link Kymberlie at TypePad provided after I filed a help desk ticket. It did not work. I kept getting a message that said my logon attempts were invalid. This despite the fact that I had the correct logon name and password.
On October 28, I received a message from Six Apart CEO Barak Berkowitz explaining why customers were having trouble with TypePad. This was after almost a month of futile attempts to logon. I had no clue TypePad was having the problems it’s having.
I’ve spent hundreds of dollars with Six Apart and will continue to use Movable Type. In fact, I’ve duplicated my TypePad blogs using Movable Type and have given them there own domains. They are now hosted at Hostway here in Chicago instead of on Six Apart’s servers in California. However, months of content is still locked in at TypePad.
Finally, since I’m paid up until the Fall of 2006, I’ll keep the account until it expires. However, I don’t intend to renew. Perhaps by the time the account expires I will have throughly mastered Movable Type.
TypePad Blues
I have been having an annoying, time wasting experience with TypePad, Six Apart’s hosted blog program, since September 28. When I attempt to log into my account, I get a message that says: You are about to be redirected to…