Problems with TypePad

July 31, 2005 | By Duncan | Filed Under General

Reports are emerging that there may be some server problems with SixApart’s paid blogging service TypePad.

The well regarded TypePad user Neville Hobson writes that he’s been having serious issues with Ecto and TypePad for the last week, and also points to others with the same problems. Jeff Nolan is also reporting issues, as is Jeff Clavier and Jacob Better in his comments.

No word from SixApart that I can find on the problem. If your having any problems with TypePad at the moment, let us know in the comments.


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Comments

19 Responses to “Problems with TypePad”

  1. Cary on July 31st, 2005 11:31 pm

    Interesting…I haven’t had any problem with TypePad or ecto this week. I’m using ecto on the mac, though, so maybe there’s a problem on the Windows version. But I also haven’t experienced any posting problems on TypePad. I wonder what’s going on.

  2. Kevin Burton on July 31st, 2005 11:56 pm

    Yeah. It’s totally happening to me. I go to post an entry and 1/10 results in a number parse error and then ecto chokes.

    I have to delete the post and created it again and it works.

    I think… :)

  3. Anil on August 1st, 2005 12:17 am

    Thanks for the feedback, Kevin. We’re not hearing consistent reports of what the issue is (we’ve got a lot of people who aren’t having any problems), but I’m forwarding the few instances of problems on to our team to make sure they know this is a problem. If you have a moment to file a help ticket describing your specific problem, this will make it easier for us to track down.

  4. Kevin Burton on August 1st, 2005 12:31 am

    No problem Anil.

    If it happens again I’ll write down the error message and file a trouble ticket.

    Kevin

  5. Paul Lindner on August 1st, 2005 2:46 am

    Hi folks, haven’t heard of problems with Ecto. LifeBlog posts were having problems over the weekend after Akamai service was activated for Typepad. We’ve resolved that one.

    If there is a problem and we know about it we’ll post on http://status.typepad.com/ …

    Just to be sure, I’ll grep the error logs and look for odd patterns with Ecto. Just remember that those of us in the Typepad trenches are always on the lookout for our wonderful customers :)

    – Paul

  6. Neville Hobson on August 1st, 2005 3:59 am

    Alex Hung at ecto has posted a development build of ecto for Windows which he says will fix the connectivity with TypePad issue. His post strongly recommends TypePad users of ecto for Windows to install this build.

    http://ecto.kung-foo.tv/archives/001439.php

  7. Kevin Burton on August 1st, 2005 4:02 am

    My problems are happening on OSX btw and not on Windoze…

  8. Lisa on August 1st, 2005 6:00 am

    TP is absolutely having problems. I’ve been having trouble logging on, publishing, rebuilding…you name it. Ugh.

  9. Jeff Nolan on August 1st, 2005 5:31 pm

    Here’s the response I just got back from TP support:

    Thanks for the report and sorry for the inconvenience. We’re currently working on a database problem that is affecting weblogs with large numbers of posts, like yours.

  10. SB on August 2nd, 2005 2:54 pm

    Yes, I’ve been having problems for a couple of days now — glacially slow for posting and other tasks. This is the one area where I wish TypePad would do better — communication with customers.

    Flickr should be the model for companies like this. If TypePad would set up help forums, as Flickr does (Help, Ideas, and Bugs) they would find experienced users taking the load, and would have a place to keep in touch with their (happier) users.

    I love the service, but do get frustrated with this kind of communication black hole.

  11. Frances Flynn Thorsen on August 3rd, 2005 1:43 pm

    Messages were very slow to post over several days. There was a problem with Statistics also. For hours at a time it did not track visitors, and the numbers that were posted for averages continued to show numbers less than 1 a day. It seems to be cleared up now, however.

  12. Anil on August 3rd, 2005 2:06 pm

    SB, you raise some good points, and we’ll be taking them to heart. For our reference, when you say “I love the service, but do get frustrated with this kind of communication black hole.”… a lot of our customers find they love the direct communication they can get through our help ticket system. Have you tried that?

  13. SB on August 3rd, 2005 2:31 pm

    Anil, you are quite right, and I apologize for not mentioning it — Brenna is a gem!

    I do try to not overuse help tickets (as I did, when a beginner) — and it is this kind of system problem that I mean to suggest could be better managed with status announcements and — hopefully — forums.

    There used to be a very active, independent, TypePad Users Forum, but that — for mysterious reasons — has been mostly locked down for months. I know I would not be alone in welcoming TypePad stepping into that void by providing its own help forums.

    I really think you find that it would ease the burden on your staff, as experienced users could step in to help newbies. Or maybe it *is* really staff-intensive — Flickr could tell you.

    Again, I do love the service — and part of my frustration these past few days is that I finally, after much work, managed to convince a local nonprofit to try TypePad for its web site — and suddenly everything is slow and difficult. Yikes.

  14. Neville Hobson on August 3rd, 2005 4:54 pm

    ‘Frustration’ is putting it all rather mildly. I’ve been in communication with TypePad support since Sunday. Like you, SB, I find the support folk truly stellar in their responsiveness. Helpful and friendly too (Laura’s my favourite).

    Yet here we are, Wednesday night where I am, and still no resolution to this continuing server timeouts/glacial speed pairing. It’s been going on for at least a week.

    Worse, I’m now getting this error too frequently (it happened again just now):

    Gateway Timeout
    The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

    That’s when publishing a post, offline editing server -> live server. WTF!

    For the past few weeks, I’ve been planning a switch to a hosted server solution running either Movable Type or Wordpress (haven’t definitely decided which yet). This TypePad thing will accelerate my plans, no question. I just would like to have a service I can rely on.

    That’s not TypePad right now. This is serious and increasing frustration talking here, ok?

  15. Anil on August 3rd, 2005 6:03 pm

    We’re definitely aware that TypePad isn’t performing up to espectations, and we’ve got 100% of our attention focused on fixing that. I’ll try to make sure the status.sixapart.com blog gets updated as there’s new news to report.

  16. Neville Hobson on August 3rd, 2005 6:21 pm

    Thanks Anil. Yes, I know you’re aware ;)

    I do think some more specific communication would help a lot. While I have a lot of respect and time for the support team, soothing messages like “we’re working on it” don’t help much any more when this very alarming (from my user perspective) issue is still alive four days after posting a help ticket.

    In the absence of any specific information, that indicates to me that you have a very serious problem you’re trying to solve. What else can I conclude when I see the problem right on my screen every time I try and post?

    If this is something that’s affecting only some users, you won’t want to alarm everyone else with big public announcements. Yet blog talk is more than simmering now.

  17. Anil on August 4th, 2005 12:57 pm

    We’ve just added a lot more information to our status page, and we’ll be continuing to update it as we keep improving things.

  18. Alan on October 25th, 2005 3:02 pm

    I’m reporting on TypePad as well… So far, so slow. Horribly slow. I’ve really noticed in the past three days - posting, editing & worse — going to my site’s blog. Since I’m still in the trial stage, I’m leary of switching my DNS over for all of my site’s traffic to drip through Typepad.

    Do you have any info on this? Will my existing site also crawl, or is it just the typepad stuff?

    Thanks!

  19. Tom Jones on December 16th, 2005 3:13 am

    How about today? 403 errors for everything *.typepad.com or *.blogs.com.

    Ridiculous…. absolutely horrid and really, is there any acceptable excuse for that? How long wil they continue to support their operations team.. to the grave?

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