Typepad vs. Radio Userland

(UPDATE 4/17/2005: The comments bring good news. Details at bottom.)

It's weird, maybe because there are more bloggers now, I have very few people linking directly to this blog. I abandoned my Radio Userland blog over a year ago, but it still gets more direct link hits (vs. bad google search "bait+tackle" hits,) than this Typepad blog. I remember tweaking with the Radio templates to make sure the blog post titles were permalinks to that post. That may be the problem. <--Fixed. See "Update" below.

While Typepad has some really nice drag-and-drop template design widgets, it is very confusing to create and use template sets. You have to duplicate one of their standard template sets, that's easy enough. Then you have to go a separate step to make sure your blog uses your special set. That works fine. But then - when you go through the control panel to change the font, it seems to start from scratch with a standard typepad template set that uses the font you just selected.

With Radio, the template you used for your public weblog was also automatically used for your private weblog posting page, which was good feedback. I swear I read someone created a python equivalent of Radio Userland. It was either Rogers Cadenhead or Second p0st. For such an early blogging tool, there was a lot that Radio did right. Unfortunately it seems the company abandoned it and its future is uncertain. <--Wrong! See "Update" below.

UPDATE (4/17/2005): The comments below bring good news: Steve Kirks is actively developing Radio for UserLand. As for Python implementations, PyCS (Radio Community Server equivalent) is pretty stable, a few updates here and there, and PyDS (Radio Client equivalent) is under active development.

Also, I edited the Typepad templates to wrap each blog post title in an a href to the blog post's permalink. If you'd like a howto, please leave a comment and I'll write one up.

Comments

[Rogers Cadenhead]

Georg Bauer developed the Python Desktop Server to work with Philip Pearson's Python Community Server, an open source implementation of the server that drives Radio UserLand.

Looks like both are still in active development. I haven't poked around PYCS in a while, but it's a nice weblog hosting platform.

[Rogers Cadenhead]

Also, I should point out that Steve Kirks is actively developing Radio for UserLand.

It's tougher to get UserLand's programs noticed these days with so much competition, but the company's still working on them.

[Phillip Pearson]

Yeah, PyDS (Radio equivalent) is still under active development.

PyCS (Radio Community Server equivalent) development has slowed down a lot, as it does pretty much everything we need now. I'm putting some anti-spam bits into it at the moment, but that's about it.

[Steve Kirks]

Coming here from a Technorati watchlist for "userland"...

Rogers is right (thanks!) and UserLand is still actively developing Radio although it may not look like it on the surface. Manila development has taken a front seat, but much of the infrastructure is shared.