Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. J.P. Loo's avatar
  2. Sebastian Sunday Grève's avatar
  3. Giovanni Molteni Tagliabue's avatar
  4. Fabien Muller's avatar
  7. Saul Smilansky's avatar

Blog service providers–advice sought

Brian Leiter

So Typepad, the blog service provider I have used for many yeras, is shutting down on September 30 of this year.   The domain name, which I own, namely http://www.leiterreports.com, will remain unchanged, but I'll need to move the blog content to a new service provider.  I'm curious whether readers have any informed opinoins about (1) good blog service providers; and (2) blog services that are easy to import Typepad content into.

Advice gratefully received!  Feel free to email me or post comments here.  Thank you.

UPDATE: My sincere thanks for the excellent advice both here and via email.  I'm going to set up a WordPress account soonl, if readres have views about "Premium" vs "Business" plans feel free to post about that here, or email me.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

17 responses to “Blog service providers–advice sought”

  1. Patrick S. O'Donnell

    I have been on several platforms over the years, including Typepad. I switched to WordPress which I like (especially the 'aesthetics,' if you will), although our daughter set it up for me and I am not sure how much we pay yearly for it (I don't advertise on my page). It seems easy enough to navigate and while I'm a slow learner when it comes to technological stuff, I've been able to figure most things out (although it took me almost two years!).

    Reply
  2. Patrick S. O'Donnell

    I have been on several platforms over the years, including Typepad. I switched to WordPress which I like (especially the 'aesthetics,' if you will), although our daughter set it up for me and I am not sure how much we pay yearly for it (I don't advertise on my page). It seems easy enough to navigate and while I'm a slow learner when it comes to technological stuff, I've been able to figure most things out (although it took me almost two years!).

    Reply
  3. Patrick S. O'Donnell

    I have been on several platforms over the years, including Typepad. I switched to WordPress which I like (especially the 'aesthetics,' if you will), although our daughter set it up for me and I am not sure how much we pay yearly for it (I don't advertise on my page). It seems easy enough to navigate and while I'm a slow learner when it comes to technological stuff, I've been able to figure most things out (although it took me almost two years!).

    Reply
  4. Eric Jonas

    Former philosopher turned professional web developer here:

    For blogging, I would say go with WordPress. My reasons, briefly:

    – Most of what you will use it for is dead simple even for non-technical users
    – The enormous, widespread use and maturity of the platform mean that there is a vast plugin ecosystem out there covering nearly every use case you're likely to need
    – It also means that if you ever get stuck on a "how to" question when using it, the likelihood that there is a video, blog article, or tutorial addressing your problem is very high, and higher than it would be for less-widely-used platforms.
    – There seems to be a TypePad content importer plugin for WordPress developed by WordPress itself (I can't vouch for it because I haven't used it, but if WP itself made it, it's probably robust): https://wordpress.org/plugins/movabletype-importer/

    Reply
  5. F.E. Guerra-Pujol

    Ditto the above two comments. Full disclosure: I have been using WordPress since 2013: https://priorprobability.com/

    Reply
  6. Ravi

    I am a long-time “blogger” (since 1992!), coder, and one-time WordPress contributor.

    Substack is all the rage right now, but it does not seem to have an importer for Typepad/MovableType.

    WordPress does have one and is of course the 800lb gorilla in the blogging zoo. It’s an excellent platform with a vast ecosystem (most likely to offer plugins that support your advertising needs as well as other features).

    Other options: Ghost (can import Typepad) and Medium (cannot import Typepad).

    Reply
  7. David Thorstad

    I think most of the world uses Substack these days. I don't (I use WordPress) because I don't like the idea of being locked in to Substack. The support on WordPress is also fairly good if you're willing to pay for a premium plan. But honestly, most of the world is going to Substack.

    Reply
  8. Harry Chalmers

    One possibility that might be worth considering is Substack, as it's picked up quite a bit of popularity as a philosophy blogging platform in recent times. There seems to be an increasingly robust ecosystem there of philosophers reading and responding to one another's work. (Here, for instance, is a post by Amos Wollen listing various philosophers who have recently started their own Substacks: https://wollenblog.substack.com/p/new-philosophy-substacks.)

    That said, I doubt that migrating Typepad content to Substack would be as feasible as migrating it to WordPress, which might be a decisive disadvantage in this case. Anyway, here's a post from the Substack team with some information about migrating content to their platform, in case it's of any interest: https://on.substack.com/p/switch-blog.

    Reply
  9. TN

    Just to say that the webpage that I have bookmarked is https://leiterreports.typepad.com/ so it might be good to pre-emptively redirect people to the domain that isn't typepad once you get the new host up and running

    Reply
  10. Jc Beall

    For ease and reliability, WordPress (as many have said). You might consider BlueHost for a general website (even if you don't open it up to the public), as BlueHost and WordPress have a pretty seamless relationship. One last thought: you could jump on the substack bandwagon and have a go, but folks used to your blog will probably enjoy the WordPress experience slightly more. (Or not. Tough to know.)

    Reply
  11. Dean C. Rowan

    ArsTechnica on the departure of Typepad, including historical background and other details: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/one-time-wordpress-competitor-typepad-ends-its-slide-into-obscurity-by-shutting-down/. Given the technical prowess of ArsTechnica's readership, it's unsurprising to read comments that advise hosting one's own blog and content.

    Reply
  12. Roberta L. Millstein

    For all of the people recommending WordPress — I'd be interested to know how they set up the comment feature that TypePad has, together with a list of "Recent Comments" the way that TypePad has. It was not obvious to me how to do that on WordPress.

    Reply
  13. LFC

    I blogged for a number of years on Blogger. I now blog on WordPress (I don't pay anything which means the site carries ads that I have no control over, but since my blog is not read by large numbers of people — and that's an understatement — the ads are not a big issue). I had mixed feelings about Blogger, but I also have somewhat mixed feelings about WordPress. It's ok but does one or two things I find a bit annoying.

    To Roberta Millstein: I don't recall that being a problem when I set up my WordPress blog, and I'm pretty much the opposite of tech savvy. But unfortunately I also don't remember the details of what I had to do. However if you search you can probably find online tutorials on setting up a WordPress blog.

    Reply
  14. Ioana

    Hi Lisa!

    Spotted your message, so I had to jump in to say hi (Ioana from WordPress.com support here).

    WordPress has an importer (see more here: https://developer.wordpress.org/advanced-administration/wordpress/import/#movable-type-and-typepad) which should facilitate things for you.

    You can use it to have your blog with any host – you've got a wide choice to pick from.

    Of course, I'd love to have you with us, on WordPress.com – a managed host where we take care of all techy things so you can focus on blogging.
    – On the Free plan, you can point your domain to the site, it'll load it but it won't be set as primary (so the URL will read http://www.leiterreports.wordpress.com even though visitors will be able to find you typing http://www.leiterreports.com)
    – To use your custom domain you'll want to grab one of our paid plans – they start at 4 USD/month for the Personal which should be a good fit. Happy to walk you through the options though.

    I'd love to offer any answers you might need in this transition and to share resources to get you up and running with WordPress in no time. I'll save the link and hop back to check in on you or you can use the email I'm sharing below.

    A smile,
    Ioana

    Reply
  15. Roberta L. Millstein

    Hunh, ok, so it is possible. Thanks.

    Reply
  16. LFC

    Sure.

    Reply
  17. Brian Watt

    Except WordPress's TypePad importer doesn't import the images and files. Only the content and comments.

    Reply

Designed with WordPress