‘Waiting for TypePad…’ is a phrase I have now memorized when it comes to publishing posts to any of my blogs.
This last week has been exceptionally frustrating.
I write posts offline using ecto for Windows, currently version 1.7.5, and publish them to TypePad. It should work, but it doesn’t.
What’s been happening is that, on average, about two posts out of five don’t publish correctly usually due to a server time-out or data-receive error. That’s generally been the case for many months. It means I then have to log in to TypePad and re-publish from there. A real pain.
This past week, though, such errors from TypePad have been the case with every single attempt at publishing a post.
Today it’s worse – when I start ecto and it checks in to the TypePad server to refresh the published blog entries within ecto, it gets a server time-out or data-receive error. So well before writing and posting, there are server time-outs.
The ecto error log shows one of these phrases in every entry:
System.Net.WebException: The operation has timed-out.
System.Net.WebException: The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a receive.
While I’ve asked TypePad Support about server time-outs before, I’ve sort of lived with these errors as they haven’t totally prevented me from posting. Until now. It’s got beyond purely a pain – this is massive frustration.
I posted a TypePad support help ticket yesterday. No reply so far, although it’s only 24 hours.
What is going on here?
In discussion a few weeks ago with Alex Hung, one of ecto’s developers, in the ecto Windows support forum, he wondered whether there may be issues with TypePad’s servers (overloaded) or that my blog databases are too big. I have no idea!
All I know is that whenever I use this software tool (ecto) to publish content to my blogs, it either doesn’t do it properly or doesn’t work at all. Is this an ecto issue or a TypePad problem? I have no idea, although I’m pretty sure it’s more likely a TypePad issue – other ecto users are reporting similar issues with TypePad.
I wish someone could simply say “yes, this is a problem and here’s how it is being fixed” with the fix either being something TypePad has to do, or ecto has to do, or I have to do. Or some mixture of the three of us. I really don’t care who has to do it – let’s just fix this damn thing.
I’m not writing this post in ecto, by the way – pointless at the moment. I’m not writing it in TypePad, either – when I click on the ‘save’ button in the edit window, all I stare at for ages is “Waiting for www.typepad.com…” in my browser status bar.
So I’m writing it in NoteTab Light, a really good plain-text editor that also has very good HTML capabilities, which I’ve used for years for plain-text editing. I can add any HTML code and then paste the content into TypePad’s editor in HTML mode.
Hmm, maybe this is what I should stick with.
Does this post read like a rant? Well, I guess it is one.
Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.
Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.
