Bliggity-bloggity-boo!
As those of you who use Blogger know, it's rife with issues. Posts get eaten, photos take forever to upload (or just flat-out refuse). So, I decided to give Typepad a try. They have a 30-day free trial offer, and then there are three levels of membership w/ the cheapest being around $4/month. Well, after playing around with Typepad for five minutes, I've really come to appreciate Blogger, despite all of its idiosyncrasies.
First off, Typepad seems to have a very complicated interface. Of course it offers many more features, and you can customize your template in detail without having to hack into the code, but I wasn't able to figure out how to get a similar look and feel to what I have on my current blog. Unless you get the premium membership, it doesn't look like you're allowed to access the HTML code at all (at least, I couldn't find it in my five minutes of looking around). I upgraded to premium (after all, it's a free trial...), and didn't like what I saw when I did get access to the code. It was broken up in a whole bunch of different spots and was formatted kind of crappily. I much prefer the Blogger template where all the code is just laid out for you on one page.
So, five minutes after signing up for my free Typepad trial, I canceled it. I've decided that Blogger is more flexible AND it's free. It would be nice to have the photo album and category features, but they're just not enough of a draw to me. I think it would be a great tool for someone who doesn't like to touch the code at all but wants to customize their template like crazy, but for me, that's much of the fun of blogging! And I'm not willing to pay $15/month for that privilege. So there.
I found a great website last night while roaming around the net - it's called Spin|Knit. Check it out! Not only does he have great knitting on his blog, but if you click on the little "Visit the shop!" link on his sidebar, you can actually BUY some of the beautiful handspun yarn that you were just drooling over in his blog posts. There are some other cool things as well, like handmade journals and jewelry. Plus he's a Minnesotan. I'm holding strong to my yarn diet as of today, but I might have to binge as of January 1st...
Bill is home sick today, poor guy. He looks like death warmed over. He got Sydney's cold and then some. I'm really crossing my fingers that Owen and I don't come down with it, although Owen is definitely fighting it by sleeping a lot and being crankier than normal when he is awake. Fight, baby boy, fight! I hate to think of all the things that Sydney is going to drag home from preschool this winter. Well, what doesn't kill us only makes us stronger, right? And since we're all going to be killed off by the bird flu soon anyway, why sweat a few little colds?
No knitting to show today since I've started working on a couple top-secret designs. I'm going to try to work up a couple submissions to Amy Singer's new book, "No Sheep For You". I still haven't heard back about the two designs I submitted in September. Keep your fingers crossed for me! I figure if I keep putting them out there, eventually someone will buy one...
First off, Typepad seems to have a very complicated interface. Of course it offers many more features, and you can customize your template in detail without having to hack into the code, but I wasn't able to figure out how to get a similar look and feel to what I have on my current blog. Unless you get the premium membership, it doesn't look like you're allowed to access the HTML code at all (at least, I couldn't find it in my five minutes of looking around). I upgraded to premium (after all, it's a free trial...), and didn't like what I saw when I did get access to the code. It was broken up in a whole bunch of different spots and was formatted kind of crappily. I much prefer the Blogger template where all the code is just laid out for you on one page.
So, five minutes after signing up for my free Typepad trial, I canceled it. I've decided that Blogger is more flexible AND it's free. It would be nice to have the photo album and category features, but they're just not enough of a draw to me. I think it would be a great tool for someone who doesn't like to touch the code at all but wants to customize their template like crazy, but for me, that's much of the fun of blogging! And I'm not willing to pay $15/month for that privilege. So there.
I found a great website last night while roaming around the net - it's called Spin|Knit. Check it out! Not only does he have great knitting on his blog, but if you click on the little "Visit the shop!" link on his sidebar, you can actually BUY some of the beautiful handspun yarn that you were just drooling over in his blog posts. There are some other cool things as well, like handmade journals and jewelry. Plus he's a Minnesotan. I'm holding strong to my yarn diet as of today, but I might have to binge as of January 1st...
Bill is home sick today, poor guy. He looks like death warmed over. He got Sydney's cold and then some. I'm really crossing my fingers that Owen and I don't come down with it, although Owen is definitely fighting it by sleeping a lot and being crankier than normal when he is awake. Fight, baby boy, fight! I hate to think of all the things that Sydney is going to drag home from preschool this winter. Well, what doesn't kill us only makes us stronger, right? And since we're all going to be killed off by the bird flu soon anyway, why sweat a few little colds?
No knitting to show today since I've started working on a couple top-secret designs. I'm going to try to work up a couple submissions to Amy Singer's new book, "No Sheep For You". I still haven't heard back about the two designs I submitted in September. Keep your fingers crossed for me! I figure if I keep putting them out there, eventually someone will buy one...
posted by knittinmom at 9:38 AM
5 Comments:
Thanks for the tip on Typepad. I'm barely literate enough to handle Blogger, so I don't foresee any switches in the near future, especially after reading your post. You are too funny about the bird flu! As a half micro-major, I can assure you that indeed we *will* all be killed off by the bird flu. :-) Hope Bill feels better soon. And there's nothing worse than sick babies! Hope Owen fights it off. Good luck on your designs, too!! I don't need to keep my fingers crossed because I KNOW they're going to get snatched right up. Then I'll be able to say I knew you when.... :-)
Crossing my fingers . . . although I agree with Chris that you are going to do just fine on your own. But I'm behind you 100% and let me know if there is anything I can help you with.
Good to know Typepad is not so user friendly. I've found with Blogger, if you save as draft every so often, and use Picasa or Photobucket for pictures, it's not so bad. (Except for the other day, when I couldn't log in for about 7 hours!!!)
We use Typepad for a blog that we write about Sam's autism and progress. I actually like Blogger better, too, and I am a total HTML illiterate. But it seems way easier to tinker with your template in Blogger.
Good luck with your pattern submissions. Where do you hear about these books in progress, or would you have to kill me if you told me? ;)
wow. i'm blown away by the whole book submission thing. that's really really great!
i wish i had enough time to actually knit more. i'd get more stuff done, i could spend more time thinking of neat stuff to knit up, and i would actually get to do it within that month rather than some time by the end of the year if that.
it's a good thing you spocked out typepad. i know some people like it, but i must agree that if it's free and user-friendly, no sense try something else.
you ever hear of airborne? it's an herbal effervescent tablet with multi-vitamins to strengthen your immune system or something. i don't know if it works, but i like the lemon-lime flavor. it tastes like soda...
Did you check out BlogSpirit? I couldn't figure out what the catch was but it seemed to offer a lot of features for free that include photo albums and categories.
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