Very sorry for the interruption in service! And, Happy Halloween.
Typepad had planned on a 12-hour outage for maintenance. Obviously something went wrong, and the outage approached 48 hours. Evidently the planned maintenance project had to be abandoned. And then, this afternoon, after the blog went back up, I wasn't able to add new posts right away. TOP still isn't loading some images and some links don't work, but we've been told those will be restored in due course.
I'll resume posting new content tomorrow morning as usual (including a funny image I had been saving for Halloween). Later in the month that starts tomorrow TOP will celebrate 17 years of existence, 15 of those on Typepad; it's been our happy home for a long time. They have great customer service for us bloggers and have always addressed questions and difficulties with dispatch. This outage was a bit nerve-wracking for Yr. Hmbl. Ed., but "this too shall pass," in the famous words of the medieval Sufi poets, and we'll be back to normal. The eternal promise of the weblog, a word that made its first appearance in the language in 1997: "More soon!"
Thanks for your patience.
—Mike
P.S. And I hope the Comments work too, but I don't know if they do! If not, they should be working again soon. Would someone please leave a comment as a test? UPDATE: Comments are working.
Mike, in this world of computerized cameras we all learn that patience is absolutely necessary. I assure you that you are worth waiting for. It is great to see you back.
Posted by: J. Paul Thomas | Monday, 31 October 2022 at 10:39 PM
Nice to see you back and I look forward to more words tomorrow.
Posted by: Dave Raaum | Monday, 31 October 2022 at 10:52 PM
Testing, testing, 1-2-3.
Your logo is still missing from the top of TOP, and a few of the link icons are not showing. Otherwise, welcome back.
Posted by: Peter Croft | Monday, 31 October 2022 at 10:52 PM
Testing 1.. 2... 3... 4...
Is this thing on? :)
Posted by: Jeff in RI | Monday, 31 October 2022 at 11:53 PM
Thanks for the outage explanation, Mike!
Posted by: Justin Ting | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 12:34 AM
Welcome back! Reminds me of all the "seamless" updates when I was at work and starting up on a Monday morning and...nothing worked!
Hope you are taking many fp(m) images and enjoying yourself.
Posted by: Martin Pallett | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 12:58 AM
Test 202211010027
Posted by: Geoffrey Conklin | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 02:29 AM
A friendly, disposable test comment. Take care.
Posted by: Ken Owen | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 02:30 AM
Welcome back!
Posted by: Marten Collins | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 03:10 AM
It's working for me here in Latvia. It was down over the weekend, though. Hang in there....
Posted by: Marriott | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 04:19 AM
Testing, testing, 1,2,3...
Mike,
Comments have just started to appear on my own Typepad blog, so you should get this. I'm still missing images, though.
Roger
Posted by: Roger Bradbury | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 05:35 AM
Testing. Testing
Posted by: Terry Letton | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 05:47 AM
Testing one two.
Testing one two.
Welcome back.
Posted by: James | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 05:54 AM
Mike,
I have never understood why you use Typepad for your blog, when you could have a great Wordpress website that would enable you to post much larger images. Then you could use your own domain name for it and not the typepad.com one. I am assuming that you also own the domain www.theonlinephotographer.com as I tried that while typepad had an outage. I am not sure how easy it would be to migrate all your posts over the a Wordpress website so maybe that is an issue.
Best regards
Michael
Posted by: Michael Wayne Plant | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 06:48 AM
Thanks for the situation updates via Patreon. I was wondering what the heck happened.
Posted by: Rick Popham | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 06:49 AM
It was so strange, almost like being in withdrawal clicking on this site's link 20 times a day to get no response.
I either like this or I need to get a life. Glad you're back, Mike.
Posted by: Albert Smith | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 07:56 AM
Welcome back, Mike!
Been checking the pulse of Ye Olde TOP pretty regular. Glad to see there's still a heartbeat. Seventeen years! Wow, that's a milestone. Congratulations.
Posted by: Dogman | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 08:23 AM
Glad you’re back on the air. Quite an amateurishly-handled platform conversion by Typepad, eh? It looks like the observations of workforce quality decline are accurate.
Posted by: Kenneth Tanaka | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 09:40 AM
All working here except the 3 “portals” at top right which are replaced with “?”.
Posted by: Richard Parkin | Tuesday, 01 November 2022 at 09:42 AM