Annoying things about TypePad: image URLs with multiple domains/blogs in one account

One of the things I don’t like about TypePad is the way TypePad handles image URLs if you’re having multiple domains or blogs in one account. TypePad is unable to separate one domain from the other when it comes to inserting images. All images are linked to the main domain or the default blog associated with the account, not with the domain mapped to the blog you are inserting the images into. However, there is a workaround.

When you operate more than one blogs in TypePad, one of them is always the default blog. You chose which one. So far so good. But when you insert images into posts in the other non-default blogs, the image source (img src) points back to the default blog, not the blog you are inserting the image in. You have to manually edit your HTML to work around this.

Example:

blog 1 = http://www.mydomain1.com
blog 2 = http://www.mydomain2.com

img src in blog 1:
http://www.mydomain1.com/…directory structure

img src in blog2 (by default):
http://www.mydomain1.com/…directory structure

img src in blog2 (after replacing “mydomain1″ with “mydomain2″):
http://www.mydomain2.com/…directory structure

To me this is a very cumbersome solution. If I operate any blog I want the image URL to point at the correct domain or blog name, not somewhere else. That looks very unprofessional, because the domains or blogs may have nothing to do with each other. I may even not want people to know that I am behind the other domain or blog. OK, so I can edit the HTML and make it work as intended, but that is very annoying and sometimes I tend to forget.

In WordPress you can have as many blogs as you want in one account, each with their separate domain/subdomain, if you so wish, and the image URL is preserved…well, at least it points to myblog.wordpress.com, not mydomain.com, but that is a minor issue compared to what TypePad does.

Thumbs down to TypePad on this one!

P.S. WordPress, unlike TypePad, also keeps all uploaded images or files in a “media library” for easy overview, with accessible URLs, so you only have to upload your files once for insertion into more than one post. TypePad can not, but that’s a topic for a later post; not all is good about the media library and image insertion in WordPress compared to TypePad.

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