Blog Note: Part 5 - Blog migration underway (cont.)
Last year, I mentioned in a post that I was working to migrate my blog from its longtime host, Typepad, to its new host, Ghost, and as such, my blog was under construction. Unfortunately, I came to find that the migration process is more challenging than expected, reprioritizing my time as a result.
That said, I received a Typepad email notice earlier this week on August 27, 2025 that the company made a decision to discontinue Typepad, something that I had been suspecting for quite some time that would eventually happen:
Dear Erik,
We want to inform you that we have made the difficult decision to discontinue Typepad, effective September 30, 2025.
What Does This Mean for You?
After September 30, 2025, access to Typepad – including account management, blogs, and all associated content – will no longer be available. Your account and all related services will be permanently deactivated.
Please note that after this date, you will no longer be able to access or export any blog content.
What Do You Need to Do?
If you need to retain your content, please export your content before September 30, 2025. After this date, your content will no longer be accessible to you and will not be available for export.
You can find more information on exporting here.
Refunds & Final Billing
Effective August 31, 2025, we will no longer charge you for services.
If you have made a recent payment, we will attempt to issue a prorated refund to the payment method on file.
Please verify that your payment method on file is up to date to ensure successful refund processing.
Have Questions or Need Assistance?
If you have any questions, please refer to our Frequently Asked Questions page here.
If you have any additional questions or need help, please open a ticket at Help > New Ticket from your Typepad account.
We truly appreciate your business and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you for being a valued customer.
Sincerely,
Typepad
Apart from some blog post formatting issues following migration last year, the other key migration issue has been images, because Typepad export functionality results in a text file rather than a folder of files.
Since my blog content will no longer be available after September 30, 2025, I submitted a Typepad ticket according to the above instructions:
Hi there,
The main reason I still have a Typepad account is because I never
figured out how to export all of my images.
I've used the export functionality to migrate my blog to Ghost, but
images weren't migrated, and I've needed to point from my new blog to
old Typepad image locations as a workaround.
How can I export all of my images? If there isn't functionality for me
to do this, can someone at Typepad do this for me?
Please let me know so that I can have some peace of mind before
everything is lost.
Erik Gfesser
Their response:
Hi Erik,
Thanks for. your message. We have generated an export of your uploaded
images and files. The export is available at
[redacted]
Please be sure to download it as soon as possible.
Thanks,
Laura
The link they provided pointed to a zip file with a TGZ extension.
After downloading to my Chromebook and making the file accessible to Linux, I used the following command to unzip the file, substituting for the TGZ filename:
tar -xzf [name of file]
I immediately realized after counting the number of images that I would have a lot of work in front of me:
ls -l | grep "^-" | wc -l
The count is 674 files, 2 of which aren't images, so 672 images. Unfortunately, the filenames assigned by Typepad are random, not the filenames I had originally used nor the labels I had assigned via the Typepad user interface. Here's a sampling of the first 10 filenames:
ls | head -n 10
6a01156e33a2dd970c01156fad16d8970c.gif
6a01156e33a2dd970c0120a56980c5970b.jpg
6a01156e33a2dd970c0120a569815b970b.jpg
6a01156e33a2dd970c0120a569f694970b.jpg
6a01156e33a2dd970c0120a569f6fc970b.jpg
6a01156e33a2dd970c0120a569f989970b.jpg
6a01156e33a2dd970c0120a569fa11970b.jpg
6a01156e33a2dd970c0120a569fa6e970b.jpg
6a01156e33a2dd970c0120a569fe7a970b.jpg
6a01156e33a2dd970c0120a56a0099970b.jpg
A cross reference is provided in one of the aforementioned 2 files, named "MANIFEST". Here's an example of looking up the cross reference of the last aforementioned file, which displays the line of text within the MANIFEST file that contains the filename assigned to that image:
grep -i 6a01156e33a2dd970c0120a56a0099970b.jpg MANIFEST
6a01156e33a2dd970c0120a56a0099970b.jpg
https://erikgfesser.typepad.com/.a/6a01156e33a2dd970c0120a56a0099970b-pi
Rethink
In this case, I see immediately that this is the book cover image used in my review of "Rethink: A Business Manifesto for Cutting Costs and Boosting Innovation".
Obviously, working through 672 images in this way would be very tedious, so I'll likely use another method. Unfortunately, the MANIFEST doesn't indicate to which blog post each image corresponds, and I've come to realize while exploring the Typepad provided archive that original timestamps of files weren't kept and filenames weren't assigned in chronological order according to when each image was posted to my blog, bringing additional hurdles to the migration process.