State of the Blog, Change

Words
Blogging About Blogging

Awareness of the outside world. Land Rover Kentucky Three Day Event XC today. Watch live on USEF Network with free fan membership. KTDE: Live Streaming
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The blog has a new theme. That is the WordPress term for the overall appearance of a blog.

This unlooked for change came about because WordPress changed to a new editor. Since I am using the free .COM version, all I can say is ‘Thank you, Sir. May I have another.’

It got me thinking about about types of change.

Some are better. Linking to a previous post is now drag-and-drop rather than a multi-stage process. Useful if I’m including a long list of past posts, as I did on Thursday. [Pre-show]

Some changes are lateral. The fancy new Block Editor all but forces me to use WYSIWYG. This has been an option for a while, but one I have been avoiding. Now the HTML version is so annoying that I use their preferred version. Seeing the formatting on the fly is admittedly easier, as long as one is in line with the programming assumptions, see drag-and-drop above. OTOH, there are times when it just won’t do what I want. Then, I have to open the code editor to properly explain myself. A mix of good and bad.

Some changes are worse. If I hurry the save/preview process, the new program gets stuck. Something in my work flow causes it to get stuck often. I have to type a letter, erase it, and save again. So I am learning to wait for it to digest. Minimal, but annoying.

Some changes seem bad because it’s not the way I am used to. The new editor no longer put photos on the landing page of the blog. All I had was a boring list of titles. Hence the new theme. All of the options were a long scroll of posts. No theme that provided a list of summaries. Not good or bad, but not what I had.

And now I shall bitch. Because venting is fun. My nitpicking list of other changes, a mix of bad and lateral. Time will tell if I get used to these, if they continue to bother me, or if I find that they work in my favor.

It jumps to the end of the file. Annoying in a really long file. Yes, I have discovered that I can use the home key to get back to the top. Still annoying. [LEJOG]

The *&*@ block menu gets in the way of reading the text above what I am working on.

Can’t always see where the cursor is.

It wants to insert blank lines all over the place. I have to remember to shift-enter if I don’t want to move into a whole new zip code.

Occasionally the link text shows up in the url box, meaning I have to erase text before I paste the address. Why? What purpose does this serve? It’s not consistent, so I can’t tell which keystroke pattern to avoid to prevent this from happening. I can’t rely on auto-pilot. Some times it’s there; sometimes not. Small but annoying. I use a lot of links.

WYSIWYG links are hard to punctuate around. The period or the bracket gets sucked into the link. I have to type the required glyph and then backspace it to where I want.

WYSIWYG links don’t show the url. Can’t sort a list of links by date.

Speaking of dates, drafts no longer show their dates on the main editing page. The date only shows up when the post is scheduled. For drafts, I have to look at each one individually. Not useful when one is planning a week’s worth of posts.

It no longer accepts 00:01 as a time. I have moved the posting time to 01:01. That’s why it’s been coming out an hour later recently. Probably not a problem in the US, since most of us are asleep. In other places, I may now miss someone’s coffee hour.

The Table of Contents widget is gone. This maybe a function of the theme. Gaa. It took so much clicking to pick this one. Nevermind, found it. Had to customize. New skill.

There is no Quick Edit function. Tweaking a title means opening the post in a new window.

The media library no longer lists where the photos have been used. I find this hugely annoying. When I reuse a photo I include a link to the previous post. Now I have to click over to get the name of the image, use the search box, and hope the name shows up in the search.

Alternatively …

All these things may still exist. I may need to figure out how to do it under the new format. Word count is still there, but has moved from constant display under the text box to a request button up top.

Bottom Line
I am not an early adopter. Of anything. I prefer to think of myself as Old School. I am comfortable with the term Curmudgeon.

State of the Blog [archives]

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine