WordPress Has Gone Bonkers
What have WordPress done with their new version?
Two days ago, everything was working fine. In the last couple of years since the death of my wife and son, I have put nearly 4,000 posts into this blog. I have uploaded 3,500 images and a few videos and I have had virtually no issues at all.
Nearly, all of these posts have been on the same Compaq 6720s running Vista and Internet Explorer 8, that I have used since I bought it about four years ago. The few that weren’t posted in that way, have been posted in various Internet cafes on my travels.
As to the computer, it is a totally normal machine, with little added software, except mainly stuff that I’ve written myself.
So what has gone wrong?
Creating a Post
To create a post, I can get the Add New Post fine enough, but unless I switch from Visual mode to HTML mode and back again, I can’t type in anything meaningful.
Jumbled Tool Bars
The tool bars at the top of the window where I’m typing this, have got totally jumbled. The order at the moment is bold, ordered list, centre, italic, blockquote, spell check and so on. I said at the moment, as if you move the cursor over them, they all change. I did a video of it here. I would put a link on the word here, but I have no working link icon!
Editing Posts
I always edit in Visual mode, as I like to see what I’m getting. But to get that, I need to switch from Visual mode to HTML mode and back again.
Uploading Images
I can upload images to the media library, but that is all. I can’t put them into posts though, as after clicking insert Post, I just get a window showing Add Image with a X close button. If I close it to continue, the image disappears, although it is still in the Media Library.
If I use my Windows Iconia tablet computer running IE8, I can move the picture from the Media Library to the post, but that computer is only a toy with a small screen. I’ve also had a stroke and my hands aren’t good and find operating it difficult.
Inserting Links
I can’t do this in Visual mode, but I can in HTML mode. but as I said I prefer to work in Visual mode.
So what have I done to try to clear the problems.
I have put a few posts in the forums, and I have done some of what has been suggested like clear the cache and cookies. Others have been arrogant enough to suggest that I change browser. But then I can’t do that as I’ve written software that uses IE and I won’t be able to demonstrate that anymore.
I should say that no other software or web site is causing me any grief, but it does strike me that I might have caught some weird virus, athough scans run clear.
It’s all very puzzling.
I’ve just added this on another machine.
WordPress Going Bonkers
Look at this video of trying to edit a post on WordPress.
Every time, I move the cursor from icon to icon, the icon changes.
Is that a feature or a benefit?
If It Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It!
I have used WordPress for many years and their latest upgrade is so full of bugs, you could show it in the insect house at the London Zoo.
It has meant that I can’t upload any pictures to the blog and creating a new post is a real study of perseverance.
If you edit a post, the post or the toolbars don’t appear unless you switch to HTML mode and then back to Visual. These toolbars can’t seem to get their icons right and if you move the cursor over them, the function changes.
Links can’t be setup in Visual mode, but you can do them in HTML mode.
When they coined the name software, it could have been made for this version of WordPress. It’s not just soft, but very very soft!
It’s all total crap to what it was.
Ipswich Town Supporters in London
I’ve just set up a web site for Ipswich Town supporters, who live and/or work in London.
I have used WordPress to set it up and it can be viewed at ipswichtownlondon.wordpress.com.
In some ways it is showing how you can use WordPress to create a Blog-Based Small Business. Although this isn’t a business, we’re trying to attract Ipswich Town supporters and create a source of useful information.
How To Organise a Company
I found this article on the WordPress site.
It just shows how blogging is more than just an expression of one person’s vanity, but a complete philosophy for the management of a company and its web presense. I won’t say site, as that is so out-of-date and constricting.
The Blog Based Small Business
This blog is absolutely standard WordPress. all I pay for is a small amount of extra storage and the use of VideoPress to put my videos in the blog. I think I pay about thirty dollars a year.
This blog is in effect a complete web site, with a contact form, searching and all the things you’d expect from a professional website. It also doesn’t have adverts or other things that will annoy my readers.
It differs in one way to a professional website, in that updating it just needs a small amount of form filling in a web browser. The difficulty is about the same as sending an e-mail.
So could you run a small business on a blog such as this?
I’ll use the example of a lady who does small repairs and alterations to clothes and household furnishings. There used to be and probably still is, someone like that in Cambridge market a couple of days a week and C got her to shorten and alter clothes for her. I was taught to do all this by my mother, but don’t think I could manage it now, with my hands.
Such a business could work well off the back of a blog. Say she repaired an expensive evening dress for someone in Dulwich, she might post a picture of the repair, with a brief description in the blog.
As Google knows everything immediately from WordPress, someone searching for evening dress mending, Dulwich, may well find the blog.
Gradually, as the blog expands you’ll get more hits and from the statistics, you can find out how your visitors got there.
So the blog does your market research in addition to getting your customers.
WordPress’s New Method of Entering Links.
This how WordPress describes it.
With our sexy new internal linking feature, you can now enter any URL to create a link just like you used to, OR you can search your existing posts and pages right there in the link popup. A combination of pre-loading, autocomplete, and some ajaxy goodness make the new link creation tool a joy to use (and man, that popup is so much faster!). We hope this addition spurs you to make more connections between pieces of content on your site, which will make it easier for your visitors to find more related content from you. One more time, all together now: Yay! (Right?)
But I don’t like it, as to make it work, I seem to have to swap to HTML rather than Visual mode.
Crash Course Widow
I’ve just added this blog to the Blogs on Widowhood.
I tried to post a comment on the blog and WordPress and Blogger did their usual non-cooperation.
Geoffrey Boycott
I like Geoffrey Boycott and his pithy comment.
And now he has a web site, where we can read him even more.
What is technically interesting about his web site, is that it is almost-pure WordPress, with just a little tweaking and customisation. In other words it uses the same techniques as this blog does.
Who in their right mind would pay a fortune for a proper web site, when you can have an easy-to-update one based on something like WordPress or Blogger?
The Anonymous Widower 