I just noticed that Random Culture and Micropersuasion are both missing current content, back to Dec. 10th. So I searched Google for “Typepad problems.” This is what came back from Netcraft:
Problems persist at the popular blog hosting service TypePad, with numerous users reporting that they are unable to access their blog management system. In addition, a number of TypePad users report that posts from the past three days have disappeared from their blogs. While TypePad-hosted sites are visible, service operator Six Apart says the TypePad blogging application is currently unavailable and describes the status of TypePad sites as “degraded.” At one point blogs had to be restored from backup, which is why the most recent posts are missing from many blogs.
TypePad, a hosted version of Six Apart’s Movable Type blogging software, has been a major beneficiary of the blogging boom. But that growth has brought challenges, and TypePad has experienced significant performance problems in recent months as its has outgrown its existing space and begun a transition to a new data center. Six Apart has issued a series of apologies for the poor performance, which has drawn complaints from business bloggers using TypePad.
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I’m not going to say anything, as this entire incident can be looked upon as either “glass half empty” or “glass half full”. Half-full would mean that, hey, at least they have the sites running (instead of completely down). Half-empty would mean, great, now the readers think this blog hasn’t been updated in over 6 days. I don’t know which way I lean.
http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/news/2005/12/current_issues.html
The above URL indicates that data is being restored from 2 days ago. This is incorrect. It’s actually around 6 days (I think Michael’s estimate is just sugar coating for the “dumb” masses). Let’s see if the man in charge catches his bad boo-boo and changes it.
Oh well, this is getting to be the norm, unfortunately. Now, where’s that WordPress site…
This latest outtage is the last straw. I was in the process of importing my entire blog over to Movable Type so I can avoid this sort of thing. But MT is a SixApart product like Typepad and that concerns me. Even though MT is hosted on a private server, will these problems persist?
We use MT for AdPulp and we’re happy with it.
Word Press is also great.
Ironic that the day you link to the business blog, Typepad goes down! 🙂
Steven, Six Apart has a long history of good customer service as far as the Typepad outages are concerned; I’m confident that they’ll do their best to make it right for all the customers affected.
That said, you can’t go wrong with hosting it yourself (except for the headaches of doing it all yourself). As David mentioned, MT and WordPress are great. Personally, I’m a big fan of Textpattern. Any of those are great options.
Just to be clear, the data that was restored to the blogs after the incident is an old snapshot but was the most easily publishable snapshot (i.e. already in HTML format, as opposed to a database backup). Being able to use an easily accessible file-system backup allowed our full operations team to focus on verifying all of the file and database data and get all systems back online in the shortest amount of time.
Thankfully, we just finished verifying all of the data and TypePad has been brough back online. There was no data loss in the incident.
It is of course very frustrating to us that this happened. We’ve invested so much in both time and money (especially) in the last month or two since our initial performance incidents.
This last one was caused by failure in the brand new (and very expensive) data storage controller that we were installing (hence the maintenance window) that was *supposed* to put us into smooth sailing territory for at least the next year. We’re very, very unhappy with the manufacturer of said equipment.
Anyhow, we certainly do apologize for the inconvenience and any worry that this has caused. We take our customers’s data and access to our service very seriously, as I think our past actions have indicated quite clearly.
Jay,
I’m impressed. Thanks for stopping by and giving us the scoop.