Blog publishing platform TypePad closing 30 September 2025

Showing all posts about self publishing

Blog publishing platform TypePad closing 30 September 2025

29 August 2025

TypePad is/was up there with the likes of WordPress.com and Blogger.com. The publishing platform stopped accepting new members about five years ago, so some warning, I guess, of what’s just happened was there. Still the four to five weeks notice they’ve given doesn’t seem like much, especially for long term, or prolific writers, who will have large databases they need to download.

And then find somewhere new to migrate to. If you’re a displaced TypePad writer though, do consider obtaining your own domain name, and a self-hosted solution to publish future work to.

TypePad was originally created by California based software development company Six Apart. In 2011 the company was sold to Infocom, a Tokyo, Japan, based IT operation.

Six Apart also created the once popular LiveJournal (since sold to SUP Media, a Russian company), and Movable Type, a weblog publishing system developed in 2001, and still going strong.

Another remnant of the early web going, along with dial-up internet access, which AOL, one of the last major providers of the service, said they would be shutting down, also at the end of September.

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blogs, self publishing

Reasons to leave Substack, how to leave Substack

5 August 2025

The question is — before giving any thought to some of the objectionable content they host — what are you doing there in the first place? Why would you allow your brand to be assimilated by another?

American economist Paul Krugman’s decision to set up shop on Substack, after he stopped writing for The New York Times, plain baffles me. With a profile as impressive as his, Krugman could just as easily started publishing from his own website, with a ready made audience.

He didn’t need to go to a third party publishing platform. Certainly Substack publishes writer’s posts as email newsletters, but if someone wants to syndicate their work by newsletter, there are other options. Writers can earn money through Substack, some do very well apparently, but high profile writers have a number of ways of generating revenue through their own, self-hosted, websites.

You Should Probably Leave Substack goes through some of the options available to writers who want to leave Substack (and preferably publish from their own website).

The near demise, and comeback, of Medium, an online publishing platform

17 July 2025

Tony Stubblebine, CEO of online publishing platform Medium, writing at Medium:

I’m gonna write the wonky post of Medium’s turnaround. I’m not sure if a company is allowed to be this blunt about how bad things were. But it’s very much of the Medium ethos that if something interesting happened to you, then you should write it up and share it. So hopefully this will give some inside info about what happens to a startup in distress, and one way to approach a financial, brand, product, and community turnaround.

Like many online writers I signed up for Medium — which is similar to Substack — a couple of years after its 2012 founding. A few people I knew were publishing there, and I was curious to see what it was about. I’m yet to post anything though.

But Stubblebine’s account of Medium’s ups and downs is, at times, astonishing. Particularly the amounts of money, both as investments, and in debt, that are involved. Of course, there will be plenty of people who’ll call those sums a pittance, but speaking as a boot-strapping independent online publisher, they are incredible.

The lure of publishing your work on a platform such as Medium, lies in the opportunity to be paid for it. And no doubt, some writers posting on Medium do well.

For my part, the prospect of publishing there (or on similar platforms) is tempting, but doing so just isn’t in my DNA. I’ve never liked the idea of assimilating my brand into someone else’s, something I’ve said before. Anything you do on a third-party publishing platform is doable on your own website/blog, if you are prepared to persevere.

That’s not to say I wouldn’t ever post there, and for someone like me, a platform such as Medium might be comparable to a social media channel.

Indie Web, Small Web, and now Sovereign Web?

11 June 2025

Aevisia writing at the Sovereign Web:

The truth is, I’ve had some difficult experiences with parts of those communities. At times, I’ve felt excluded or harshly judged simply for choosing a different path or expressing my creativity in ways that some consider unconventional or even controversial.

I linked to Aevisia’s Small Web Movement project in March. If Indie Web and Small Web are spaces that belong to everyone, I don’t see how one person can tell another they’re not welcome. Someone told me a while back I wasn’t doing Indie Web right. In their opinion. I gave their email due consideration, then flicked it away.

But I’ve had comments like that all the way through the time I’ve had disassociated. I’ve not been doing something or other right, according to someone or other. But the answer there, I find, is to keep on doing what you’re doing.

Unless say plagiarism, something deeply inappropriate, or the illegal, is involved, no one can tell you, the creator, that you’re doing something wrong and don’t belong. All criticism of that nature means is someone doesn’t like what you do, not that it’s wrong.

No doubt I’ve been excluded in some corners too, but that’s the way things go. And no doubt I’ve excluded others in some fashion, at some time, but I’ve seldom been directly critical of what anyone has been doing.

If starting another movement, Sovereign Web, is the solution, then I don’t have a problem with that. But everyone’s paths, and their expressions of creativity, are different. I think the response is not to worry about the opinions of other people, and stay on your course.

Claude fails to explain the abrupt disappearance of their blog

10 June 2025

AI assistant Claude must have had one of the shortest blogging stints ever seen in the blogosphere. Just days after announcing Claude’s debut as a blogger — albeit with “human oversight” — Anthropic, Claude’s creator, almost immediately shuttered the publication. The URL for the blog presently redirects to Anthropic’s main website.

We can only speculate as to why the plug was pulled on the venture, but I was looking forward to reading some of Claude’s output. This preferably with a minimum of human oversight, as I was curious to see how well an AI assistant could write by themselves. Anthropic’s move could possibly be seen to suggest they weren’t too confident in Claude’s blogging abilities though.

It’s good news for human self-publishers: we live to blog for another day. Or two.

On not using AI assistants or LLM tools to draft or write your blog posts

7 June 2025

Dave Phillips, an Australian blogging contemporary, writing at Cafe Dave:

Is there still value in writing blog posts from scratch, rather than using a LLM tool to help with a first draft? I hope so. Even if it’s slower, there is some change being wrought in the mind of the person doing the writing that remains undone when using a LLM.

There is some change being wrought in the mind of the person doing the writing.

I’m trying to make use of AI assistants to help me in my day-to-day work — I have three jobs if I include writing at disassociated — but struggle a bit. I speak only for myself, but as someone who writes, using AI to any degree, no matter how insignificant, feels wrong.

It’d be really good if AI could, say, run the house, freeing up time to write here and elsewhere. Because Dave is on point here: having something else do your writing, from first draft through to completion, takes something away from the writer. This is the reason we’re writing in the first place.

Good Internet, an online magazine for personal website publishers

30 May 2025

Good Internet launched this week.

Good Internet is a volunteer-run, not-for-profit print and digital quarterly magazine for personal website owners and those interested in using the internet as a means of self-expression, art, and recreation. The name Good Internet comes from Katie Baker’s The Day the Good Internet Died, hopefully proving that headline wrong.

Good Internet looks like it will be a great resource for indie web/small web publishers.

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IndieWeb, self publishing

Happy twentieth birthday to swissmiss, the blog of Tina Roth Eisenberg

29 May 2025

swissmiss went live on 27 May 2005. Twenty years is a long time. Congratulations.

That was Tina v1.0; No kids, single, hadn’t started any businesses yet. This blog opened doors. Forever grateful.

Blogs open doors, still, even today. disassociated was opening doors for me way back in 2010:

If you’re onto a good thing you’ll be doing far more than merely writing and posting articles.

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blogs, self publishing

Social media and the rest, a personal website is best

11 April 2025

Mike Sass, writing at Shellsharks:

A website, your own personal website, is just like this—a digital home, on the web. With all the same comforts, familiarities and problems that need a-fixin’.

Does your personal website, your blog, feel like home? Mine does, and always has.

Although I’ve long been a social media participant, albeit not a particularly active one, the prospect of abandoning this website to go all in on a social media platform, maybe even several, never once crossed my mind. This even as I watched contemporaries do exactly that, and go on to sometimes garner large followings.

I always viewed the social media platforms I was a member of as outposts for my website. Like garden sheds (dare I say outhouses) you might build in the garden outside your home. Fragile structures that may not withstand a storm, in the same way a house can. Or the erratic whims of a billionaire owner. To say nothing of inconsistent moderation policies and erratic algorithms.

Owning and maintaining a house, home, is extra work and cost, but a far better investment than all those garden sheds.

An old school blogger returns, the Oceania Web Atlas launches

10 April 2025

American designer Jason Santa Maria, and co-founder of A Book Apart, a seller of numerous influential design publications, has returned to blogging after an eight year hiatus. You see, we all come back eventually. Once a blogger, always a blogger…

Philipp Lunch is based in Cologne, Germany, and recently launched a blog/personal website, despite it being not finished, and preferring to let it evolve. Yes, that is the trajectory of many a personal website. Australian physicist Cameron Jones’ website comes with the eye-catching name Caffeine and Lasers. He also has a shot at answering the question of the ages: where are all the aliens? Hmm, what do you think? Are they giving us the silent treatment, or are we very, very, lucky to be here?

Caleb Herbert resides in Missouri, in the Unites States. Instead of a smartphone, he keeps a notepad and pen in his pocket. Bet you weren’t expecting to hear that. Portland based American software developer Sage has been online since 2013, and is constantly redesigning their website. Remember those long ago days when we used to redesign our websites like every week?

Why we are still using 88 × 31 buttons? Website buttons (that’s what I’ll call them), particularly those with the dimension of 88 by 31 pixels, used to adorn personal websites during the late 1990’s. They pretty much disappeared during the blogging era, but thanks to Indie Web/Small Web, and the personal website revival, are enjoying a resurgence. 88 by 31 pixels may not seem like much of a canvas to work with, but as the works posted on Button Wall go to show, an economy of size is no inhibitor to creativity.

A week or two ago, Melbourne, Australia, based author and content creator Zachary Kai launched the Oceania Web Atlas, a web directory for bloggers and personal website publishers, based in the Oceania region. If you’re a local, submit your website. Thanks for including mine Zach.

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