The agony and the ecstasy of Typepad, my blogging service, shutting down

The past week feels a lot like a divorce, something I experienced in 1989 when the woman I'd been married to for 18 years and I split up. 

[There is supposed to be the Typepad logo here, but Typepad no longer will publish blog posts with images, at least for me, so I had to delete it.]

In this current case, the split-up is between me and Typepad, the blogging service that I've used for 22 years. Just as with my first wife, the divorce was the culmination of a lengthy period in which two parties steadily grew more distant until the split-up was total.

That happened last Wednesday, when Typepad sent out a message saying that as of September 30, they'd be shutting down. As noted in a blog post I wrote that day, I was crushed, but not surprised.

And like I said in a blog post I wrote for my Church of the Chuchless blog yesterday, it took less than a minute for me to realize that losing the posts I'd composed for my three blogs wasn't acceptable to me. 

Early on, like immediately after I read the shutdown message from Typepad, I wondered briefly — very briefly — if I wanted to preserve the blog content of 8,400 posts that I'd produced since 2003. A couple of questions flashed across my mind: "Hey, Brian, could you let go of your attachment to all of those posts and comments? Could you become a detached Buddha-nature sort of guy, accepting that all is ephemeral, including your blogs?"

An answer came almost as soon as the questions had been expressed: Hell, no! I'm attached to what I and others have written on my blogs; while they aren't eternal, I damn well want my blogs to be around as long as I am.

So the agony I initially felt at learning that the blogging service I'd grown to know and love for more than two decades had decided to call it quits, my determination to migrate those 8,400 posts to the WordPress platform kept me out of a deep depression — because I was a mixture of sad and mad.

Sad that I and other long-time Typepad bloggers soon wouldn't be able to use a blogging platform that, while decidedly old and creaky, was comfortable and familiar.

But just as a divorce can end up with both people being happier than they were together (this is the case with my ex-wife and me; both of us remarried), losing Typepad meant that I was getting a more modern and capable blogging service, Typepad.

The mad part had to do with Typepad's corporate overlords declaring that giving Typepad bloggers just a bit over a month to migrate all their content before it will be lost forever, was deeply irresponsible. As described in the post on my other blog, along with many other bloggers I've had to engage in a frantic search for expert help in migrating my 8,400 posts, along with with 10,000 photos and 1,000 other files, into new WordPress blogs.

Typepad could have given us until the end of 2025 to do the migrating. Or at least 2-3 months rather than just one month plus a few days. However, I guess whoever owns Typepad now (ownership changes regularly) cared a lot more about making money than treating long-time Typepad customers fairly. 

Understand: I've got no complaints about Typepad support staff. Currently they're akin to the employees of the Titanic who had to get panicked passengers on the doomed ship into lifeboats while also facing the reality that they also were on a sinking vessel. They're performing admirably, given the shitty circumstances they've been forced to deal with.

The ecstasy I'm beginning to feel comes from the fact that I'm confident that before too long I'll be writing away on WordPress, a blogging service that is to Typepad as a rotary dial phone is to an iPhone. Hugely more modern and capable. 

This morning I signed up on Bluehost, where my new WordPress blogs will be hosted. The Indian tech company, Glorywebs, that is handling the migration of my Typepad posts also is setting up three WordPress blogs. I've chosen the theme for the blogs, which looks way cool. I've salivated over all the capabilities that Bluehost offers and Typepad lacked.

To throw in a metaphor that appeals to my 76 year old male mind, though probably not to my wife's psyche, WordPress feels like a gorgeous young trophy wife who will be a pleasure to be with after splitting up with a decidedly over-the-hill Typepad who had stopped being fun years ago.

Change can be difficult. But change also brings opportunity, as in the classic Taoist "good news, bad news" tale. What seems like bad news can turn into good news, which can turn into bad news, and so on. At first Typepad shutting down seemed like bad news. Now I'm feeling more like it is good news. For now. Who knows what the future brings?

A Chinese farmer gets a horse, which soon runs away. A neighbor says, "That's bad news." The farmer replies, "Good news, bad news, who can say?"

The horse comes back and brings another horse with him. Good news, you might say.

The farmer gives the second horse to his son, who rides it, then is thrown and badly breaks his leg.

"So sorry for your bad news," says the concerned neighbor. "Good news, bad news, who can say?" the farmer replies.

In a week or so, the emperor's men come and take every able-bodied young man to fight in a war. The farmer's son is spared.

Good news, of course.