Seven & Four

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Today I have around thirty (30) blog-posts piled up in my Drafts tab. Many of them are about one-third finished, many are two-thirds finished. Two of them are unfinished by guest-authors, never fulfilling their promise from 2014. Seven posts are in final stages, but awaiting my editorial and grammatical scrutiny/review, four of them are very close to finished and a few clicks away from final publication. However, I’ve had two of those last four ready, excited and eager to publish them immediately after some final touch-ups!

Then about 2-weeks ago, maybe more, WordPress pulled the rug out from under me… again! My latest nemesis against creative, free-flowing, easy-to-use blog-drafting is called the Block Editor, or Gutenberg Editor.

I not only feel like Charlie Brown above, happy and willing to run up to Lucy van Pelt with gusto, kick winning field-goals with my blog-posts (at least in my mind), but do it with limited, sometimes with little free-time, and publish posts 2-4 times a month with relative ease. Like many of us busy, busy bloggers juggling work, family, parenting, personal health, schooling, and a host of other required daily, weekly tasks—of which some/many get postponed due to only 24-hour days—we do not have time remaining for yearly, or bi-annual, time-intensive learning curves!

Hey, WordPress! News Flash: I NOR MOST OF US DO NOT and CANNOT WORK FOR WORDPRESS 40-HOURS A WEEK, 365 DAYS A YEAR LEARNING NEW SOFTWARE AND MAINTAIN OUR REGULAR LIVES!!!

Naturally, I have received all types of rah-rah cheerleading support and encouraging platitudes from Happiness Technicians at WordPress and some fellow bloggers as well. A few of the responses have been diversionary. From WordPress for example:

“Change can be hard, but we have you covered!“

“We understand how frustrating being moved to a new editing experience can be and we apologize for any inconvenience.“

“Technology is always updating. The Block Editor takes advantage of the latest technology to help you build media-rich, mobile responsive, and unique websites.“

By the way, I spent almost two hours just trying to find/learn how to simply bullet-point these above three quotes AND keep my left-margin. Obviously I failed and gave up. Otherwise, I would have spent an exorbitant amount of additional time wasted for simply three little dots in front of those WordPress quotes!

Also, more rah-rah encouragement from WordPress worth sharing:

A Note on Support for the WordPress Classic Editor

While you do not currently have to learn how to use the new WordPress Gutenberg Blocks, you will eventually need to. The WordPress team will keep supporting the Classic Editor plugin until the end of 2021. But, starting in 2022, the new Block Editor will be the only editor officially supported by WordPress.

Early last week I had my latest and next blog-post ready to publish. The week before that the post was close to finished with just a few more visual touch-ups needed, but the last paragraph needed cleaning up and I also wanted to add a relevant image/picture. I spent the following 5-6 days trying to figure out how to do that while screaming at my computer screen, raising my blood-pressure higher, taking 2-3 shots of tequila or vodka to calm back down, and in the end simply giving up in sheer frustration.

It seems this delay will continue indefinitely until I have spent approximately 60 semester hours at WordPress University and I’ve earned my post-graduate degree in Gutenberg Editing & Software Engineering… fingers crossed, Magna Cum Laude. 🤬 I will, however, try to endure, carry on with shaky, weakening patience, and finalize my “ready to publish” next post: Christian Apologetics: Land of Oz.

P.S. I began this very simple post early yesterday afternoon, picked it back up today at 12:30pm CST, and have just now finished it and published it at 4:28pm CST. HOLY JEBUS H. CHRISTMAS, I cannot spend that amount of time on what has been up to early September 2020… a pleasurable hobby since early 2011. This learning curve is unfeasible and frankly unfair of WordPress to demand that kind of time without paying me an excellent wage, especially changing the Editor so frequently!

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45 thoughts on “Seven & Four”

  1. Oh … oh … oh! Of ALL the things you wrote, the part that REALLY disturbed me was this: But, starting in 2022, the new Block Editor will be the only editor officially supported by WordPress.

    To HELL with the users! The developers like their version and so F*** everyone else.

    Do you think if enough of us rose up and bombarded them with complaints they might change their minds? (I know, I know … dream on.)

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    • Sidenote: I don’t know about anyone else, but lately when I click the “Like” button on some blogs, I get a white box that “flashes” on the left side of the screen, then returns me to the blog … but doesn’t show my “like.” Grrrr!

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      • The Russians have hacked your computer, your IP address, and your internet provider Nan! 🥺

        But don’t worry. We’ll never ever forever have any need to investigate Russian interference, cyber-attacks, or black-mailing leverage on any Americans or their leaders. We are close friends with the Russians and the North Koreans, remember!? 😉

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        • Interestingly, I have tried to respond to your comment with the Russian word for “correct” and it just keeps returning me to the blog page — without the comment.

          So now WP is filtering other languages as well … ???

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      • happens to me too, Nan. Sometimes completely logging out of your WP account and then logging back in seems to help. I think it depends on what revision of software the host site is running on the backend. A lot of places run WP software and aren’t always prompt when they need to update.

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    • As history has repeatedly shown ad infinitum… the truest power and control eventually and in the end, always lies among the masses, the Commoners, especially the well organized masses. This will never change.

      The masses/Commoners who live in and by fear of the few, the oligarchs, etc, will only possess levels of slavery and illusions of self-determination. Keep a society, the masses fragmented, individualized and polarized… and those tiny minorities move mountains and oceans under silence and apathy. Meanwhile, WordPress has become the world’s #1 CMS, Content Management System for websites:

      WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system powering 34% of all websites on the internet. On top of that: WordPress has a 60.8% market share in the CMS market. WordPress powers 14.7% of the world’s top websites. —Aug 18, 2020

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  2. I have been struggling to adapt to the new block editor but, like you, I am not happy about it. Now I cannot include special characters (such as accents over letters) and I cannot figure out how to use bullet points. Maybe that is impossible, too. If there is another, better, blogging site, please tell me where to find it.

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  3. Those god-awful blocks make it nearly impossible to maneuver anywhere without damaging text along the way. The auto-save function is unreliable, it is difficult to safely copy text to an external file without deleting everything. I have to constantly switch between browsers, exponentially complicating what used to be straightforward — then to discover that each browser handles functionality differently. There are so damned many block varieties that you have to scroll forever to find their “magic wands.” They are forcing us to become sorcerer’s apprentices methinks.
    Aargh aargh aargh!

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    • Bill,

      I really do feel and empathize with your very real pain, frustration, annoyance, and simmering anger… at what is essentially over-tinkering with unbroken functionality, simplicity, and perfection! I do Bill, I really do. Why do we think there is a profound and true idiom: “If it ain’t broke, DON’T FIX IT—and fuck-up the quintessence of timeless DONE!”

      I mean, how often has the wheel been reinvented? Or better yet, the pure strength and timelessness of a sphere or arch USING (as an ally) gravity for the strongest ever weight-loads!??? Seriously! Tinkering and tinkering actually moves perfection to more IMPERFECTION!!! Leave it tha FUCK ALONE WordPress! Or…

      If we WordPress bloggers/users do not have tons of free-time to learn over several weeks/months a new software tool and attain Ph.D.’s in Software Engineering, then damn sure don’t make us pay—on top of what we already pay them!—to use the old Classic Editor! Bill, I can’t tell you how pissed off that made me when I followed directions to “keep using the old Classic Editor.” WordPress will charge me $214(?) with the Business Plan, to keep using an Editor they will phase out completely in 2022! 😡

      Don’t you just LOVE hyper-commercialization and capitalism? 🤦‍♂️

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      • Superb metaphors, Professor. Unix was launched in the mid-1960s and it is still working splendidly in the most modern systems. It possesses a simple elegance that I still marvel at. WordPress is a house-of-cards that stands upon a series of implementations (kludges) that turn the whole dynamic into a Rube Goldberg device. You also have to save each block separately or risk turning the whole shebang into “paragraphs.”
        Don’t you just love how a pop-up menu bar hides your text every few moments under a banner that won’t disappear unless you down-arrow until that banner disappears, only to see it reappear a moment later? And, yes, I LOVE it as much as hyper-commercialization and capitalism!
        Perhaps it’s time for me to dust off my old Unix text editor, Vi.

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  4. I bragged about having a link to the old editor, then I got slammed with the “new” Block Editor. There is a plug-in that will revert you back to the Old Editor, but you have to have a business account and for that … drumroll please … there is a monthly charge.

    It seems to me that WordPress is using the tried and true method to get us to sign up for monthly charges, not by offering so much more if we do, but by making our tools so unworkable that we will pay to get the old ones back.

    I am looking at other blogging sites.

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    • Yep. Sadly Steve that is the all too common (Ivy League?) Business Model by ALL growing American small companies into bigger expansion and revenue growth via diversification—or over-complication & sophistication until your head spins!—until all the left-hands don’t know what the right-hands are doing anymore… WHILE the top executives and shareholders get obesely wealthy by dominate market shares!

      And then, the next best thing in technology, electronic devices, and attention-consuming gadget/trick—Intel is a prime example of all their already ready for production Processors 5-10 years in advance—comes around. Then repeat, start the merry-go-round again, but with different music. 😉

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    • Heck, I have the business plan and it isn’t any better for me. The new editor is bloody awful. I’m forcing myself to learn it though because the classic isn’t going to be around much longer. It makes it much more difficult to do anything that doesn’t adhere strictly to whatever template you’re using unless you want to resort to HTML programming.

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  5. I must be honest I struggled with Blocks initially… but now, having used it for a couple of months… I really like it.

    I know you old folks don’t like change *grin*

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        • 😆 Arh-tee-arh-arh you funny Millennial or Gen-Z’er kid. 🤨

          For me it was NEVER Mag-PI or A-team silly boy. 😉 It was forever these two for me growing up. Listen and watch closely whipper-snapper while I bounce you some Baby-Boomer wisdom below. Prepare to be awed…

          And a bit later in my young adult years, as a new father with a 1-4 year old baby daughter, I was a fanatic for these treasures, which saved my sanity from lack of sleep with a newborn 😵‍💫…

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          • I was born in ’79. The last great year before the fall of humanity. Also makes a Gen x’er.

            I approve on your choice in cartoons though. Narf!

            Your daughter is lucky to have such a hip dad. 😉

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  6. I do not like the new editor already. If it’s not broke, why change everything up? Also I would get this unhelpful error when trying to publish a post: “Sorry, you are not allowed to assign the provided terms”. Never had it before!

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    • I share your sentiments and frustrations Liberated! If WordPress’s recent success is based upon the use and popularity of its Users/Bloggers, then WHY charge $214 on the Business Plan/Commitment by loyal Users only to steal it away from them in 2022!? That certainly SMACKS of “F.U. We do whatever we want and take your money and loyalty!” doesn’t it?

      Just sayin’. 🙄

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  7. I don’t have a problem with the Block Editor but I didn’t like the Classic Editor either & had to do all kinds of fun stuff to get my work to look the way I wanted it to so … WordPress has always been a challenge to use IMHO. The reason I use WordPress is because, as blogging platforms go, I find it’s the easiest one for me to collect followers to my blog & for me to follow blogs that I like. There are DOZENS of blogs that I follow but they’re not on WordPress & I can’t follow them with the ease I have with WordPress.

    There are dozens of other blogging platforms out there. I have checked out most of them & blogged on a few of them. They all have their pros & cons. Just like Word Press.

    The more you use the Block Editor, the easier it’ll be. Of course …. by the time you get used to it, Word Press will surely change it again (LOL)

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    • SaQ, I echo your last paragraph for sure! 😄

      Yes, all blogging platforms will have their pros and cons. I found WordPress in 2011 purely out of disgust with what was happening and had happened on Facebook. And I have never liked FB—I was thrilled, happy-giddy with MySpace before FB became the colossus it is now and despised Zuckerberg for wiping it off the face of the Earth!!! 🤭

      What matters to me most, whether it is in-person or over the internet, is meaningful, impactful, constructive dialogue and/or artistic creation (literary and visual) enabling engagement between people, between anyone around the world with an internet connection! 😁 In 2002 — 2010 Facebook was NONE of those things. FB was and essentially still is merely a self-promoting bull-horn 🕬 for 1-way transmissions. It doesn’t nurture significant connection; only self-advertising with little to no content. Which shouldn’t be a shock anyway because 98% of FB-users—and most all social-media sites too—have only 5-10 minute attention-spans for one webpage visit anyway! 😆 At least with WordPress (in 2011-to present day?) content on blogs and comments (usually) are noticeably meatier, substantial, and allows its Users by leaps-n-bounds to be more creative than FB ever has been, no debate.

      But as you correctly pointed out SaQ, WordPress is definitely making it hard(er) for us. 😒 And over on your blog-post about this Editor, your Follower “Bruce Gerencser” said it correctly:

      As with anything transformative, Gutenberg has a big learning curve.

      BINGO!!! And it’s that right there, the amount of time for ANOTHER learning curve, that I simply do not have for a crash-course much less a week or more (a month?) to learn ALL of the features, bells, and whistles of a new Gutenberg Block Editor! Nothing wrong with evolution. Not saying that. But at LEAST let us paying members/subscribers not have to pay anymore to use a prior Editor we’ve become accustomed to and perfected! 😠

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    • Silverapplequeen, if you have experience with blogging platforms other than the “big three”, would you consider doing a post about the pros and cons of some of them? I think a lot of people would be interested. WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr have all recently made changes that infuriated a lot of users and I think many people would consider switching to something else, but they don’t know what the alternatives are or what they have to offer.

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  8. The block editor SUCKS ASS!!!!!! How the fuck do you put pictures and such into your posts? What a fucking mess!!!! I just use the classic editor instead but clearly they don’t want us to. FUCK!!! I….HATE….THE… WP…BLOCK EDITOR!!!! UGH!!!

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    • Jeff, I hear ya and feel ya Brotha. If I want to use the Classic Editor, the one I perfected in its use, then I must pay an additional $219(?) for that Plug-in on their Business Plan… which renews annually much more than what I already pay annually! 😠

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    • It’s drag and drop if you’re uploading (at least with the commercial package). Find the image you want on your computer then drag it onto the editor. A blue line will show where it will appear on the page. You can then click on the image to set the alignment, etc.

      Otherwise hover the mouse pointer *between* two blocks without clicking. A “+” (plus sign) will appear. Click on that to bring up a menu to insert various media.

      Note I have the commercial package so I don’t know if this same technique works with all types of accounts

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  10. It is infuriating when they fix things that aren’t broken. The Blogger platform has eased some of the problems with its new interface, but it’s still glitchier and harder to use than the old one. If WordPress follows the same trajectory, your new editor will improve little by little over time, but never be as easy as the old one.

    One thing I’ve heard is that the new WordPress editor is geared more toward business-oriented blogs, which have different needs. They make more money from those, or expect to. Tumblr started going down the tubes when Verizon bought it and decided to boost revenue from it by shitting it up with as many ads as possible. Advertisers don’t like putting their ads near sexually-oriented content, so Tumblr banned sexually-oriented content, which led to a state of all-out war between the management and the users — I think about a third of the users ended up leaving, and Verizon ultimately sold Tumblr for about three percent of what they originally paid for it. As to why Blogger imposed its new interface, I have no idea.

    I think part of the problem is that the platforms have no economic incentive to treat their users as customers. Blogger is a free service and my blog doesn’t allow ads, so I assume they’re making no money at all off of me. If a typical WordPress blog is the same, what’s their economic incentive to care what the users want? They lose nothing if you quit and go elsewhere. I wouldn’t even mind paying some reasonable amount for an account if it meant the platform treated me like a customer instead of, well, whatever I am now, and paid attention to what I want.

    Anyway, hang in there. It’s especially infuriating that they’re laying this stuff on us in 2020 when everybody’s already stressed out by the pandemic and Trump’s deepening derangement. We’d all like to see those 30 semi-written posts eventually come to completion and emerge, but you’ve got a lot on your plate now, and there’s plenty of time. Sometimes things change for the better.

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    • I agree … “I wouldn’t even mind paying some reasonable amount for an account … ” -IF- I had a choice on the type of editor I wanted to use. I mean, they give you a choice of themes … why not editors?

      But to pay and then have to cater to WP’s arbitrary changes now and again is NOT my cup of tea.

      I’m looking into WIX right now. I’m still “playing” with it. If I decide to publish a blog using this platform, I’ll try to remember to report back here.

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  11. Hello Professor. Like all the others here I have fought with the block editor and complained to support about it. They gave me a work around that works for me. I click the write button to start a new post, click the + symbol and in the search box type c. That brings up a classic button, clicking it puts a grey bar on your page which once you click on the bar, it opens up in to the old classic way to blog. As long as you don’t jump to a new block but just use the enter to start new paragraphs you can do your entire post the old way. At least it works for me. Hugs

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    • Thank you Scottie. 😊 I will checkout your work-around as well as Nan’s… try to compare, contrast, etc, to see what will work best for me. Wish I didn’t have to spend THIS MUCH TIME doing all this when I need to be doing other things for my life. 😠

      Thanks again. ❤️

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  12. Found a workaround! See my blog post titled “Attention WP Bloggers.” It’s a MS program, but someone provided a link for Mac users in the comments.

    My latest post (Brain Fog) was written using the workaround and it works like a charm. Especially if you do everything in the program before you “publish.”

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