Let me begin this post by saying that I have been a professional web-based software architect and designer for the vast majority of my career. To say that I am "familiar" with HTML and CSS is a huge understatement. Just go to my LinkedIn page if you want more details.
The reason I reference my experience is an attempt to avoid any possible impression that I lack the technical knowledge to utilize the advanced template system here on Typepad. On the contrary, there's no part of it that I don't understand or can't utilize properly... I just can't believe how counterintuitive it is. I would think that Six Apart would want as many users to effectively use advanced templates as possible, because it shows off the flexibility of the Typepad service. And I have no complaints about the flexibility itself, on that note. All the capability I want is there, and that's good.
What isn't good is that someone as technically inclined as myself is constantly discouraged by the lack of examples or integrated documentation, the single, feebly-commented sample style sheet, and the terrible textarea-based editor.
Now, everything I've read online talks about the conversion of your basic template to an advanced template as the best starting point for creating advanced templates. Fair enough. I have not been able to successfully convert any templates, nor have I even seen the "Convert Template" button that is mentioned so frequently. I have come to understand that only SOME of the basic templates can be converted? Did I learn that from the Typepad website? No. Do I have any idea which ones can be converted and why? No. Do I, as a software developer, understand why ANY basic template should not be eligible for conversion? Not really. If the basic template architecture had been designed properly, it would easily translate to advanced template form under any circumstances.
And no, I'm not using one of those media templates that cannot be converted, as clearly stated. Good to know, but if there is ANY reason why my basic template might not be eligible for conversion, I need to know that early, not find out about it upon attempting conversion after having used the basic template system for a few months, falsely comforted by everything I'd read about the ability to convert basic to advanced templates.
If you ask me, it seems like the amount of effort put into accommodating people who would like to build professional-quality blogs on this platform isn't quite satisfactory.
At the very least, these suggestions would improve things a bit:
- Provide more examples of advanced templates, and explain the limitations of basic to advanced template conversion.
- Break the advanced templates into more than one stylesheet, by default. I'd like to see one for the main page layout, one for the contents of each column, one for the posts, etc.
- Each of these stylesheets should be HEAVILY COMMENTED. Documentation and tutorials should be readily available. Make the experience a bit more forgiving.
- Build an editor with syntax highlighting into the site. Not hard to do.
Make things EASIER for your customers, rather than hiding behind a warning about the technical acumen required to work with advanced templates. Again, there's nothing here that I don't understand, but the tedious nature of the experience makes me want to seek other options before I commit to this. That's not a good thing, obviously.
Regardless, I am not giving up on Typepad yet, and if I end up finding this expression of my frustration to be somewhat premature, I will make that known with a follow-up post. There is a lot to like about Typepad, and I'd love to prove myself wrong. We shall see.
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