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Back in 2002, when blogging was the Next Big Thing, I was recruited to be a beta tester for a new commercial blogging platform from the creators of Moveable Type. It was a rather radical idea that you could pay for a hosted blog — and it offered many advanced features — so I signed on. When the software debuted as TypePad, I was given a steep lifetime discount for my help and feedback.
I continued blogging on the site for the next 22 years. TypePad hosted my personal blog, several short-lived special project blogs, and a collaborative blog that supported the writing of books with my coauthors.
Eventually, TypePad was acquired, and probably switched hands a few times. I kept using it, not only because of the great price I was getting, but because of inertia. A couple of years ago, when it became clear that it was only running on the benign neglect of its overlords, I considered switching to something else. But the weight of thousands of blog posts, some of which were still receiving a decent amount of daily traffic, kept me on the platform.
It wasn’t a shock when TypePad suddenly announced they were shutting down in September 2005. With just 30 days of notice, I scrambled to preserve not just my content, but the links as well. Damned if I was going to contribute to the Internet’s creeping link rot.
I was shocked that Bluehost, the owners of TypePad, didn’t offer any migration services. I reached out to Ghost to see if they had any migration support (they don’t) and WordPress.com Support simply didn’t understand what I was asking. (I may have been “talking” to a ‘bot.) TypePad Support provided me with a raw export, which included almost all of my content and graphics, so I decided to roll my own escape hatch, so to speak.
Which brings us to this new static site. Most of my old TypePad posts are preserved. The technology stack consists of AWS EC2, AWS S3, and Eleventy. On the authoring side, I’m no longer able to use the beloved MarsEdit. Instead, I’m using a mix of Ulysses and Drafts. It’s cumbersome, but functional. I’m not entirely pleased with where the blog is today, but in less than a month after shutdown, I have a functional, minimalist replacement running. Thanks for tuning in and sticking with me.