Market My Novel

I took a break from Market My Novel while FolioVision moved the blog from Typepad to a hosted WordPress account.

There is a lot of dissatisfaction with Typepad among some bloggers today, but I have to say I didn’t leave so much because of that. Sure, I’d had poor customer service when I had questions, and felt stifled by designs, but Typepad really wasn’t a terrible platform. Just limited

For those unfamiliar with Typepad, it is an all-in-one service that is perfect for the above-average blogger who needs more than a Blogger, but not quite a Web site. It is especially effective for business people who don’t have time to fool with a more complicated blogging platform like WordPress. It also has some cool new features, thanks to a redesign with user input. (Unfortunately this design has social media aspects that I really don’t care for.  I go to blog, not follow people.)

However, I outgrew Typepad – at least for Market My Novel. I needed more flexibility in design and better SEO. I also wanted a platform that would allow me to create a password-protected "forum" type blog similar to what Laurie Sanders of Black Velvet Seductions uses for her writing classes. I was also extremely frustrated with the inability to easily share posts via Twitter and other social networks – something slightly corrected in the Typepad relaunch. I could not use the cool Tweetmeme button – which is in this blog now – which really caused me endless frustration.

For months I’ve tried to make the switch, but it wasn’t easy. When I started reading up on Typepad to WordPress conversation, I got the cold sweats.

Here are just a few examples of what I found:

• People lost all permalinks.
• All photos had to be manually replaced in posts – a nightmare for large blogs.
• Comments would not transfer.
• Typepad only allowed 100 posts to be moved at a time.
• More stuff that I cannot remember, but that fried my brain at the time.

I held off on switching, because frankly, I did NOT want to deal with all the drama of the switch. I work online full-time for clients and don’t want to spend a TON of extra time trying to move over my blog.

I figured when I did make the switch, I’d have to keep my Typepad account as an archive, to save my sanity, and just start fresh. It would mean losing a lot of good SEO, but that’s the breaks, right?

Then I came across Alec Kinnear with FolioVision. His site offers a DIY solution for frustrated Typepad users to switch to the WordPress platform. His company also offers a Typepad to WordPress service that I found incredibly reasonable.

After some research and finding terrific reviews of the FolioVision service, I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. Money is tight, but this is something I had to do – and the sooner the better.

Alec and his team got my blog transferred and looking terrific in a week. I had very few items that needed to be tweaked, which I thought was a miracle. I’ve worked with Web designers before and had some serious Do Overs for client Web sites.  However, the FolioVision team really read about what I wanted and set out to do that for me.

Market My Novel has a similar design, but much better navigation. Be sure to surf the site and leave your feedback in the comments. Let me know how you like it, what should change and what other content you’d like to see on this blog.

Of course in Googling today I found a series of different articles on Typepad to WordPress. I liked this one and wanted to share:

Moving from Typepad to WordPress: Pains and Problems

Forty First: Moving from Typepad to WordPress

How to move from Typepad.com to WordPress.com

A Nonexpert Moves from Typepad to WordPress Part I (visit links at bottom of post, too)