IMPORTANT NOTE: The way to get to me (The Online Photographer a.k.a. TOP) in the future will be to go directly to...
theonlinephotographer.com
...which is my domain that I own and can control.
theonlinephotographer.org should work as well. All the old TypePad links will go dark after September 30th. Please make note of the new URL and, if you can and wouldn’t mind helping, please spread the word!
Every now and then in life, you get a wild ride that you didn’t see coming. Or rather, it’s like a sign I saw on a city bus in D.C. many years ago. The sign, above the automated side door of the bus, said "WARNING: Door May Close Without Warning," below which some wag had written 'Not any more it won't."
Both were right, in a way. The sign's warning is general, and it means you won’t get any notice that the door is closing at any specific moment. You get it.
So that’s the warning I had about the demise of TypePad, the blogging platform that has been TOP’s home for 17 years. Generally, the handwriting had been on the wall since 2020, when they stopped accepting new customers. Specifically, though, the end hit me like a lightning bolt from blue sky.
On August 27th, TypePad announced it would be shutting down—on September 30th. That gave slackers like me a month and three days to do two important things: 1.) prepare existing content (I have quite a lot of it, as you might know) for migration and make sure backups were all in order, and 2.) get a new site built somewhere else. That would have been hard enough. A mere seven days later, though, on September 4th, TypePad experienced some sort of unexplained but catastrophic crash. Probably, all their clients were bombarding their servers with requests to retrieve content—I know that’s what I was doing. TOP vanished from the Web. It seems to be back up now (thanks, TypePad team...they're working very hard and dealing with a lot of ¢R@p, I'm sure).
With the help and input of lots of people, including Gordon L., Alex B., Martin Q., Chris C., Chris F., Richard T., and Robin H.—and others, not forgetting them—I decided that the imperative was to get a new site up quickly. That's what you'll see if you go to theonlinephotographer.com or .org now. It's a "Coming Soon" page as I write this...or should be; soon it will be a temporary placeholder site, and after that it'll be a customized self-hosted Wordpress-dot-org site built with professional help. As for an archive site with old posts, well, all in good time.
We're not out of the woods yet. This amounts to what magazine people used to call a relaunch, and it was well understood in the magazine world that relaunches were essentially just as perilous as inaugural launches of new titles. Old habits and old expectations get broken, existing customers have trouble finding you, and circulation (called traffic on the Web) takes a dip.
But—as Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining said, “I’m baaa-ack!”
I sure am glad. Wild days indeed. I have to say, though, I'm really going to miss the old site. It's as comfortable as the proverbial old shoe. I'm so used to writing in its compositor that I have trouble with all other word-processing programs. I suppose I'll have to adjust.
Still a lot of work to do yet, but hopefully I'll be around here for the rest of the month. Then on to v.3 (this is the second incarnation of TOP. The new one will be v.3).
Another quote, from a now-ancient TV show: "And awaaay we go!"
Mike
Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)
