Why I Won't Use a Typepad blog
Thursday, May 15, 2008 by jethrojones
I have been using Blogger as my blogging platform of choice for two and a half years. It is very easy to use, pretty fast, and I don't have too many complaints. My biggest complaint is that it doesn't host files. That frustrates me, especially when I try to help teachers use it for school, and they can't attach their files to it. You can use Google Docs, but I have found that Google Docs requires a paradigm shift for most people that they aren't quite willing to make.
When I write for The Apple Blog I use Wordpress, which many people have mentioned is much better than Blogger. So far, I do like it a lot. It works well if you know a little more about computers because you can customize it much more than you can Blogger. Blogger is much more simple, and that has its own appeal as well.
Do you know which platform I refuse to use? Typepad. And here is why: their comment system stinks! Whenever I want to post a comment, I click the submit button. The Web site sends the request to show me a page that says my comment has been submitted, so I think it is all done. Well, that is wrong, because this happens every time: about 20 minutes later, I browse through my tabs to see what is open, sometimes to see if anyone has responded to my comments. When I do this on a Typepad blog, I get the screen below:
It is still waiting for me to put in the correct Captcha letters/numbers. Despite the fact that I hate these things, I always mess up the Typepad Captcha. In the picture above, can you see where I messed up? I sure can't. But, sure enough, I had to enter another response to this Captcha. So this happens every time I post a comment on a Typepad blog. I don't think I have ever entered the Captcha correctly on the first try. By the third try, I just give up. Typepad makes it so hard to leave a comment, it is just ridiculous.
If they make it so hard to leave a comment, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to even enter a post! Typepad can do some things to make it a better system:
Have a Good Life.
When I write for The Apple Blog I use Wordpress, which many people have mentioned is much better than Blogger. So far, I do like it a lot. It works well if you know a little more about computers because you can customize it much more than you can Blogger. Blogger is much more simple, and that has its own appeal as well.
Do you know which platform I refuse to use? Typepad. And here is why: their comment system stinks! Whenever I want to post a comment, I click the submit button. The Web site sends the request to show me a page that says my comment has been submitted, so I think it is all done. Well, that is wrong, because this happens every time: about 20 minutes later, I browse through my tabs to see what is open, sometimes to see if anyone has responded to my comments. When I do this on a Typepad blog, I get the screen below:
It is still waiting for me to put in the correct Captcha letters/numbers. Despite the fact that I hate these things, I always mess up the Typepad Captcha. In the picture above, can you see where I messed up? I sure can't. But, sure enough, I had to enter another response to this Captcha. So this happens every time I post a comment on a Typepad blog. I don't think I have ever entered the Captcha correctly on the first try. By the third try, I just give up. Typepad makes it so hard to leave a comment, it is just ridiculous.
If they make it so hard to leave a comment, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to even enter a post! Typepad can do some things to make it a better system:
- Have the anti-spam question, Captcha, or whatever it is, on the page where you leave your comment. Don't make us think there just isn't one.
- Change the Captcha system. Perhaps it times out after too much time. It is easy to let it sit there for a while when you expect your comment to just appear.
Have a Good Life.
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In re commenting user experience, it's a litle bit funny that when I click on the "post a comment link" on your page, I get a tiny pop-up window (in FF1.5) for the comment entry, which is too small to see the content in it, is not resizeable, and has no scrollbars!
FWIW, most of the time when you see a CAPTCHA on TypePad, it's because the blog is specifically configured to always ask for a CAPTCHA. For TypePad blogs that haven't been specifically set up otherwise, the CAPTCHA will only come up for comments that are suspiciously spammy.
Steve, Boy, do I feel sheepish! Baaaaah (from Aladdin). I get it in a pop up window as well, but it does have scrollbars in FF 2.0. Well, not anymore. I disabled the "open comments in a pop-up window" option in Blogger. Hopefully, if you respond to this comment, your commenting experience will be better. ;)
Have a Good Life.