Typepad Connect

Typepad have just launched a beta service called Typepad Connect which improves the commenting facility on blogs including this one. Take a look at the video there to see what is involved but it should make commenting on blogs more fun and useful.

[I'll probably change the design of the blog to give the new comments more room when I get the chance]

[Update: I have turned it off as it appears to be pretty broken in a number of ways at the moment]

Comments

[Russell]

Must confess that after returning to blogging after a gap, the tech used in linking different blogging platforms has moved on in both positive and perplexing ways. I'm looking forward to when this all becomes a bit more interoperable between the Typepads and Wordpresses of this world.

[Euan]

I totally agree Russell and once Six Apart have got this working I'll add it again to the blog. I had even been considering the pain of moving domains and software to move to Wordpress and Disquss just to get the functionality you speak of. Hopefully I now won't have to.

[Bernie Goldbach]

I really want Typepad Connect to work, and I'm considering downgrading my blog from its advanced templates.

[Euan]

Me too.

The feedback I gave them was as follows:

The presentation of the comments on my blog is too clunky and not configurable enough. Almost every comment triggers a scroll bar and this is partly made worse by the fact that the images are bigger than they need to be and I can't choose a smaller size.

Despite the fact that I tried three times to update my profile the changes were never recorded either on the Connect profile page itelf or as the image icon for my comments on my blog.

The fact that I now have two pages to manage comments, the blog management page and the connect page, is a bit of a pain and the connect page hasn't picked up all of my comments even on my own blog!

I know this is in beta and I am not being negative but having waited forever for Typepad to do something cool and having been on the brink of the non-trivial move to Wordpress or a while it was frustrating to get all excited about TypePad Connect and then have to de-install it so fast!

[Anil Dash]

Sorry for the frustrations here, Euan -- we did get your feedback and the good news is the TypePad Connect team is working feverishly on a whole bunch of upgrades for the service. I'm sure we'll get to all of your requests over time. :)

[Euan]

Thanks Anil - looking forward to it.

[JudgeRight]

Wow. I just got the notice today that SixApart was upgrading. I had just began my new site on WordPress but intended to keep the VOX site going as my happy place. So, this is good information and am glad I didn't immediately try it out. I've been quite satisfied with the way things have been working except for the comment spammers which thankfully are being dealt with.

I'm going to give a lot more time before I integrate the connect. I get frustrated way too easily to be the early adopter.