After months spent wondering about the comparative feel and quality of WordPress vs. TypePad in the abstract, I finally made the time today to spend some hours playing around with both environments. I must say that contrary to the opinions expressed in most other recent reviews--and even the counsel of Nicco--I am leaning at this points towards TypePad. Now I can already tell that were I to put in the time learning CSS and mastering the design of templates in granular detail, WordPress would be the far superior tool. But I don't have that kind of time on my hands. Also, the default templates in TypePad just plain look better. Although six apart websites tend to be more readily identifiable as such due to these rather vanilla templates, they're better templates--with more default customization readily to hand--than those found in basic WordPress. But of course you pay for that in a way that you don't with WP. One of my tests was to see how quickly I could accomplish two basic tasks in each environment: (1) setting up a list of external links in the sidebar; and (2) establishing a basic Flickr feed. TP was more intuitive for the first task, while WP won easily in the second. That said, I much prefer the control I had over the appearance of my Flickr feed in TP once I had the badge set up. I've just been reminded, while trying to figure out how to indent a couple elements in this posting, that WP's editing interface offers a much wider range of WYSIWG options these days. As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out. I'll need to spend considerably more time exploring both to figure out which works best for me. Since it's really Alicia I worry about feeling comfortable in one platform versus the other, her road tests on Sunday will be more definitive in terms of the final decision.
