Lloyd: Interested in Freeing Yourself from the TypePad Trap?

My co-worker Noel Jackson, tired of hearing me whine about the Six Apart TypePad Trap, has created a WordPress importer mashing together the MT formatted export file (missing permalinks) and the broken TypePad AtomPub (missing comments and trackbacks). We are currently testing this on WordPress.com before polishing the code up and sharing it. We are looking for some TypePad customers to help us test it — it’s completely harmless, read-only.

If you are interested, let me know and we can set up a private blog on WordPress.com for you to import into. Bonus is that you will have a backup of your blog ready to go live if anything ever befalls TypePad.

This importer wouldn’t be possible without the heroic effort Ronald Heft Jr put into creating a TypePad AtomPub importer for WordPress — it’s not his fault TypePad still doesn’t have a way to export your full blog.

What’s an AtomPub? While working on this importer Noel contacted TypePad support only to have them tell him they don’t know what AtomPub is, and that they don’t support it.

Anyway, as I said, if you are a TypePad customer, and want to participate in open source development by testing this exporter, or would just like a backup of your blog ready to launch on WordPress.com, leave a comment or send me an email.