Tag: Wordpress woes

Now I Have No Facebook at All

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of facebook

What are they trying to do to me?

This morning I have no Facebook connection at all. When I try to reconnect, WordPress tells me it’s “not allowed.” What?

Is this all to force me to use their shiny new “block editing”? Well, I can’t use it! And I don’t want to use it! I’m here to write, not sod around with computers.

WordPress acts more like an adversary than the provider of a service. But of course if I leave I’ll lost an archive numbering thousands of posts.

No wonder I’m down 120 views a day.

P.S.–Jill has found other Facebook buttons I can use, so at least I can go back to sharing my blog posts on my wife’s Facebook page. The only drawback is that the new buttons don’t tell me how many readers have shared the post. Maybe it’s a WordPress glitch that’ll go away. I don’t know.

To My Fellow Christian Bloggers

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Mourning Dove Identification, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

I have for years enjoyed sharing, with my readers, posts by other Christian bloggers. It pleased me to think I was widening their audience, and you all seemed very happy about it.

But now I can’t share your posts, and it’s not my fault.

First WordPress took away my Reblog function. Something about “you’re on a business plan, you’re not allowed reblog.” Then I discovered the “Share” button, that little symbol that looks like this >, and as long as I was sharing Christian posts that appeared on my Reader, it was just as good as a reblog.

But yesterday I was told I don’t have “Share” anymore–because the hoozit isn’t shebangled with the booscus and a hay-na-nonny and a ha-cha-cha. Oh, they’d let me have “Share” if I used their brand-new totally-impossible-to-understand “Block Editor.” I’ve seen it. I couldn’t use that if my life depended on it.

I have tried to explain to the WP Happiness Engineers. “This is your technology, not mine. I am just a passenger–and you don’t ask the passenger to come out of the plane and do maintenance on the jet engine. You need to be more user-friendly!” They say they’ll see what they can do, to allow me to Share even if I’m using the standard editing format that I’ve used for years. Betcha if their boss told them to find a way or else, they’d find one. But I’ll be very much surprised if they actually solve my problem for me.

So, guys, that’s why I’m not sharing your posts anymore: I want to, but I can’t. They won’t let me.

All I can do is keep pestering WordPress about it.

Is Our Facebook Back to Work?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

See the source image

It looks like that nagging “301 Moved Permanently” message has been removed and no longer blocks you from sharing our Facebook posts. (If you hadn’t noticed, the posts go up in Patty’s Facebook page.)

The only way I can be sure is if some of you try to share today’s FB posts, or yesterday’s, and then let me know whether you were able to do it.

Meanwhile, I heard from WordPress yesterday that the loss of my “Share” function is a bug at their end and they’re trying to fix it. It’s their technology, they ought to be able to fix it without too much trouble. Unless their technology has been added to, taken from, and played with to the point where they themselves don’t understand it anymore.

So try sharing a post or two, please, and let me know how you make out.

Grrrrrrr!

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Frustrated man isolated on white — Stock Photo © Daxiao_Productions #28456277

I’ve just squandered 45 minutes of my time on earth chatting with the WordPress happiness engineer, trying to get my Share button to work, which it suddenly stopped doing this past Sunday. For no reason.

I’ve got a real feel for this now. You get a problem, you can’t fix it, you go to the happiness engineer, and an hour or two later, they tell you there’s nothing they can do–you’ll just have to work it out yourself with plugins, settings, and code, etc.–and jars and jars of green and gooshy gopher guts.

In vain do I protest that I don’t speak computer lingo, I don’t know what they’re talking about. I do history, I do literature, I do politics, I do fantasy: I do not do settings and plugins. I mean, it’s their flamin’ technology! Why can’t they fix it when it goes wrong? I mean, come on, I’m just a passenger! I shouldn’t have to get out and repair the jet engine. What kind of service is that? What are we paying for?

You’d think they could make their own Share button work. “It’s a browser issue, nothin’ to do with us!” Yeah, that’s what they always say.

Fap.

But I Don’t Love This

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

disgusted cat - Google Search | Funny cats and dogs, Grumpy cat, Cats

They took away my Reblog function, but I still try, honest. I tried again today. As far as my colleague at the Unashamed of Jesus blog knows, I successfully reblogged his post and he thanked me for it. But no sign of his post has appeared on my page. Sheesh, I don’t want people thinking that I’m only pretending to reblog them!

And now my Share button doesn’t work, either. It stopped working on Sunday. My tech support, Jill, can’t figure out what’s gone wrong. If it stumps her, it’s really wrong. I could go back to the WordPress Happiness Engineers, but they’ll just string me along for an hour and a half and the problem won’t get fixed. But I will get an earful of unintelligible computer-speak. This I don’t need.

Maybe they have a problem that they’re not admitting, and they’ll fix it someday, and the Share button will start working again. That would be nice.

But for the time being… oh, fap!

Now They Won’t Let Me ‘Share’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

1,291 Deflated Balloon Photos - Free & Royalty-Free Stock Photos from Dreamstime

Is there any air left in this balloon? Is there any blog left in this blog?

First they, meaning WordPress, took away my Reblog function and wouldn’t give it back. Then I discovered I could accomplish almost the same thing as a reblog by clicking the “Share” button–the one that looks like this > only bigger. So for a week or two I was happily doing that.

Well, now I can’t. Suddenly, for no reason–there’s never any reason–Share doesn’t work anymore. There’s a tutorial on how to make it work, but I got lost before I was a full sentence into it. These are written by computer nerds who only know other computer nerds and are unable to communicate in plain English.

If I leave WordPress, I’ll lose my whole archive and all my contacts, I’d have to start all over again from absolute zero and probably won’t live long enough to build back up. Meanwhile, here they’re subjecting me to the Death of 1,000 Cuts.

So now I can’t reblog and I can’t share. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to. It means they won’t let me.

More WordPress Woes

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

If I didn’t have supreme confidence in my own unimportance, I’d swear WordPress was out to get me.

Yesterday it was the ol’ “Make his connection to Facebook go away” trick; and try as I might, I couldn’t get it back. Now you see it, now you don’t. I called up Jill and she couldn’t get it back, either. “Have you posted anything they might want to censor?” she asked. Not to my knowledge. Besides, by then we had a video of babies and puppies, and who would censor that? (Is that one of those questions that you shouldn’t ask?)

Well, we tried this and we tried that. And suddenly the post that didn’t have a Facebook share button had one; but the post that had one a moment ago now didn’t. “It looks like some kind of glitch at their end,” Jill theorized. “It might be gone by tomorrow.”

Voila, it’s gone. Of course, I haven’t tried to post this yet, so who knows what will happen? I’m starting to feel like those hamsters on the wheel up there.

Here we go, let’s see what comes out…

‘Nother Experiment

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Moschops - Wikipedia

It probably doesn’t show at your end, but here at mine, I’m trying to master new techniques that have been imposed on me without my consent. There’s a lot of that going around lately.

If this post is successfully published, you will see a Moschops, from South Africa, and the silhouette of an unidentified woman who is taking it for a walk. You can try to decide which animal was weirder, this or Tanystropheus. The latter enjoys a cameo appearance in Bell Mountain No. 13, The Wind from Heaven. Moschops last appeared, fleetingly, in The Missouri Breaks with Marlon Brando.

If the post is unsuccessful, you’ll probably see nothing at all.

Forcing People to Say They Like You

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Union Goon-Squad "THUGs" Own Pennsylvania (Literally) - Mike Shedlock

As I was finishing my last post (the one before this one), my work mysteriously disappeared from the page. Now what? What “improvement” are they hitting me with now? But then I began to wonder: had I been censored? The post included some teensy-weensy criticism of the otherwise perfect and beloved Black Lives Matter–and I’ve seen reports of some of the social media platforms banning any such comments. But I tracked down my post and posted it, so I guess I’m not banned. Not yet.

Now, how hard is it to visualize a near future in which anyone who doesn’t have a Black Lives Matter lawn sign is going to be in for lively times? Broken windows, slashed tires, scary phone calls… the usual bag of tricks.

In many venues now, we are not permitted to criticize what is, to be truthful about it, an evil revolutionary gang aspiring to destroy our country and make racial hatred the basis of our social life. Question: Is forcing us into silence going to endear them to us? If we can be made to say we like them and support them, will that eventually become our reality? Or will it just make us as mad as hell?

And now I have to stop because some more “improvements” have suddenly appeared on my screen and I have no idea what’s going to be published here. Let me know if you have problems reading it.

 

They’re Driving Me Crazy

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Head Banging Stock Photos And Images - 123RF

Well, ten or 15 minutes’ work just took over an hour, thanks to WordPress changing everything on me. They just love to do that. And then they “explain” everything in a torrent of computer-speak. I do not speak that language.

Like I wasn’t having enough problems with this blog already.

Well, by and by I’ll try to post a cat video. I wonder now whether some of these little changes have played a part in crashing my viewer numbers. Several readers have told me they don’t get their notifications anymore.

Don’t be too surprised if they simply make me disappear.