Six Apart, My Heroes!

You’ve probably noticed we’ve got a brand new family of websites for
Six Apart, Movable Type, TypePad, and TypeKey. And we’ve added a
LiveJournal section to the Six Apart site.

I like the new site design, it is clean, funky and cuts out a few steps when you login to the Typepad site.  For one thing, when you login now, you can post straight off the Typepad page.  You don’t have to enter the site first and then click on the link to post.  Little things that make a difference.

I have been thinking about whether to run my blog off something like WordPress using my own domain and a local hosting service or even go back to Blogger and post my blog to local servers.  The main reason for this is the cost of running a blog on Typepad (my current option costs $8.95 per month) and the attraction of having my blog at my own local domain (because of the way the registrar for the ‘co.za’ namespace works, the CNAME facility is not available and Typepad uses that for its domain mapping service).  Ultimately though, I have decided that when my free trial on Typepad is up in about 49 days or so, I will stick with Typepad.

My reasons include the fact that the Typepad interface is rock solid and it works really well.  I also have a very soft spot for a company built by people such as Ben and Mena who started out working out of their apartment.  To add to this, when I read posts like this one on eclecticism, my enthusiasm for the people at Six Apart surges.  I love it when the owner of the company gives you a buzz when you are having a rough time and when the company arranges refunds of subscriptions paid in error (and where the company is not obliged to repay anything but does it because "it would be a nice thing to do").  This really appeals to me and to my sense of how I run my own business.

To quote Michael Hanscom:

So, to Ben, Mena, Brad, Brenna, Anil, and all the rest of the crew at Six Apart — thanks, folks. Keep on rockin’. 🙂