reader

If You Were Following My Old Blog…

Fandango16 Comments

Then this probably showed up in your email or your Reader today:

So what’s up with that, you ask? Well let me explain. I set my old blog to private on August 30th. However, I’m still getting multiple daily emails from WordPress with the names of people who have requested access to my private site.

So I decided to make that blog public again, but to make it clear that I don’t post there anymore because that blog is dead.

What I didn’t take into consideration when I did that, is that many of you, who are now subscribed to this blog, are also still subscribed to my old blog, which had more than 6,400 subscribers. And as one of them, you either received an email of a new post on that site or a notification in your Reader. This is a perfect example of unintended consequences.

Let me mention that today’s This Blog is Dead post will absolutely be the last post I will post on that site. And after today, comments on that blog will be shut down. So you should receive no further emails or notifications in your Reader about a new post on that site.

Also, I have learned that there is no way to mass remove 6,400 subscribers, but I am going to go to my old blog and, over the next few days, I will manually remove all followers on that blog.

I don’t know if my doing that will send you a notification that you have been removed as a subscriber to my old blog. But if you do receive such a notice when I work my way to your name, please just ignore it. You will continue to be a subscriber to this blog, as I think (I hope) subscribing to my old blog and to this, my new blog, are independent of one another.

I’m sorry if my actions have caused any confusion or inconvenience.

Blogging Insights — Whatever Works For You

Fandango7 Comments

It’s Monday and Dr. Tanya is back with her weekly Blogging Insights prompt. She provides us with a quote about blogging or writing and asks us to express our opinion about said quote.

“The only truly universal writing advice is ‘If it works, it works.’”

Author and blogger Audrey Driscoll

You can’t argue with the statement, “If it works, it works.” Duh. And if it doesn’t work, unplug it, wait 30 seconds, plug it back in, and see if it works, then. If not, call your local Maytag repairman.

But what about in the context of writing or blogging? Well, let’s start by asking “works for who?” The writer? The reader? Have you ever written a post and thought to yourself that you’ve just created something really special and once you publish it, people are going to read it, like it, and comment on it like nothing else you’ve ever written? Wow, you think, this really worked. This post is going to go viral, for sure.

Then nada. It bombed. Few views, fewer likes, and even fewer comments. It may have worked for you, but it obviously didn’t work for your readers. And isn’t writing something that works for your readers what blogging is all about?

Except for those of you who claim that you write only for yourself and you don’t really care about whether or not it works for your readers. In that case, all I can say to you, if that works for you, it works…but only for you.

Sunday Poser — Commenting

Fandango10 Comments

For today’s Sunday Poser, Sadje poses two questions:

1. What makes you want to comment on a post?

If I particularly enjoy a post and want to let the blogger know it, I will leave a comment. That said, I follow a lot of blogs and if I could, I’d comment on every post I read as well as every post linked to one of my posts, most often related to one of my prompts. I know that, due to time constraints, I can’t comment on every single post, and often, by the time I get around to reading the posts, others have already commented on them. I won’t typically leave a comment if it is merely a close duplicate of what someone else has already commented. I want my comments to be be meaningful and to add value, not to just pile on.

2. How do you handle the reading and commenting on the blogs you follow?

I try to read every post that shows up in my Reader, but it’s a challenge because that’s a boatload of posts to read. And, of course, I need time to compose and publish my own posts. When the activities of daily living get in the way of spending many hours during the day on WordPress, I end up reading most posts in my Reader between the hours of 10 pm and midnight while in bed. I will, at the very least, like those posts in order to let the blogger know that I visited.

I hope these responses address Sadje’s questions.

TMP — Being Seen

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Every Monday, Paula Light, with her The Monday Peeve prompt, gives us an opportunity to vent or rant about something that pisses us off.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has perused my blog over the past four months that my rant today is about WordPress. On November 3rd last year, I wrote a post, “Another WordPress Bug,” in which I pissed and moaned about how WordPress had released an update to its iOS app for the iPhone. That release, version 16.0, had a bug in it.

When I went to my reader and then click to visit posts, I could no longer “like” certain posts. And if I tried to comment on those posts, it didn’t recognize that I was logged onto the app and it asked me to enter my name, email address, and blog URL. And sometimes, even when I did that, I still was unable to leave a comment. I’d never had to do any of that before from within the WordPress app on my iPhone.

Of course I’ve exchanged dozens of emails with the WordPress Happiness Engineers, who have assured me that they’re working on a fix. Almost four months have elapsed since that release and every time WordPress issues a new release, I get my hopes up that the bug will have been fixed.WordPress just released version 16.7 and, once again, my hopes have been dashed. The annoying, frustrating bug persists. But one of the “enhancements” introduced in version 16.7 is described as this…

We continue to improve the experience in your Reader, and you can now mark posts as “seen” as well as view your total of “unseen” posts.

Okay, what does that mean? Why would I want to mark posts as “seen”? Does that send a notification that to the blogger who wrote the post that I’ve seen it? Here’s an example of what it looks like:I can also mark a post I’ve seen as “unseen.”So much for the old saying that once you’ve seen something you can’t un-see it.

I’m hoping that someone out there can explain to me what the purpose of marking a post as “seen” or “unseen” could possibly be.

And I’m going to contact the Happiness Engineers and link to this post and ask them if they can explain how this new “feature” improves the Reader experience, and, more important, why they’re focusing their efforts on seemingly unnecessary features and not on fixing that goddam bug!

Hurry Up and Wait

Fandango15 Comments

I was excited the other day when I saw that WordPress had pushed out an update to its iOS app for the iPhone. I was sure that version 16.1.1 had a fix to the Reader issue that by now you are no doubt tired of hearing me whine about.

After it installed on my iPhone, I opened the app, went to my Reader, and clicked “Visit” on a post that I had been unable to like or comment on after the previous update. Unfortunately, even with this new update, I was still unable to like or comment. Bummer.

So I sent a message to the happiness engineers.

I was disappointed yesterday, after installing version 16.1.1 of the WordPress app for iOS, that the issue with the WordPress Reader that surfaced when version 16.0 was installed, and for which I’ve been exchanging messages with various happiness engineers since November 3rd, is still unresolved. I hope your team will be releasing a fix for this issue in short order.

The response I got essentially reminded me that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Here’s the answer I received:

We understand this is frustrating. But even with high priority issues, it does not mean the fix will be released in the next update. Some things take longer to fix than others. We don’t have an ETA on this one yet, but our developers are working on it. We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience.

So I guess I’m in a hurry up and wait mode and the happiness engineers at WordPress will be taking their sweet time getting around to fixing the issue. As the old song says, they’ll be coming ’round the mountain when they come.

Blogging from an iPhone

Fandango17 Comments

Some people might characterize it as a bit of an aberration. But the truth is that, before I retired, I used to blog using my laptop because I worked from home and sat at my desk in my home office most of the day and I needed my laptop for work. But upon my retirement, my life experienced a total paradigm shift. Suddenly I no longer was tied down to a desk or had the need to use the laptop. Most of what I needed a laptop for could be done using my iPhone, and I found the mobility of being able to blog from anywhere at any time was liberating.

The first sign of trouble after I made the switch from a laptop to my iPhone for my blog happened this past August when WordPress abandoned its classic editor, which was a cinch to use on the relatively small screen of an iPhone, in favor of its block editor, which is close to impossible to use on a smartphone screen. What the hell? Was this some kind of evil plot to drive us smartphone users and casual bloggers away from WordPress so that it could cater to commercial sites and business users? Were they trying to provoke us hobby bloggers to leave WordPress?

What began to emerge was a fear, or perhaps a recognition, that my blogging days were potentially numbered. I contacted WordPress about how nice it would be for those of us who blog using our smartphones if they were to give us the option of keeping the classic editor as the default editor. But each reply that I received from WordPress left little doubt that they were 100% committed to the block editor and, for those of us using smartphones for our blogs, it was “too bad, so sad.” I started to lose all credence with WordPress’ claim to be the biggest and best blog hosting site on the internet. Maybe the biggest, but the best?

And then, on top of the block editor, the latest update to the iOS app for the iPhone created a major issue with the Reader that caused difficulties when it came to liking and commenting on other bloggers’ posts. Being just one of the many unhappy fans of the block editor that WordPress had forced on us, now, with the issues of the most recent update to the iOS app, I was really pissed.

Throughout most of the month of November, I exchanged myriad emails with the Happiness Engineers about the iOS app issue. And finally, on Saturday, the Happiness and I were in concert that there was, indeed, a bug in the most recent iOS app update and they were going to try to get it fixed as soon as possible and to release a new update to the app to fix the problem in the Reader on the iPhone.

I’m still waiting on that fix to be delivered, but in the meantime, I ordered a new iPhone 12 Pro Max, which has a display screen that is 6.7 inches, compared with the 5.5 inch display on my current iPhone 8 Plus. The new iPhone won’t be delivered until the first or second week of December. But maybe with a display that is almost 22% larger on the new iPhone, I might even be able to use the block editor!

Written for these daily prompts from yesterday and today: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aberration/paradigm), Ragtag Daily Prompt (mobility/emerge), Your Daily Word Prompt (switch/credence), Word of the Day Challenge (plot/provoke), The Daily Spur (reply/concert), and MMA Storytime (fans/November).

Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Fandango38 Comments

Yesterday I posted about a way to add a drop cap to the opening paragraph of a post to give it a more professional look. And if you go to my blog and read the actual post from there, it does look kind of cool.But I learned today that if you read my post with a drop cap in the WordPress Reader, it’s a whole different story.My question to you, those who read my posts, is this. Do you typically read them in the WordPress Reader or do you go visit my blog and read them on the internet as they were formatted to look?

Let me know, please.

Double Whammy

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Stomach painYesterday I had to go for a CAT scan of my head because of a hearing issue. But the night before my scan, I came down with a pretty severe stomach ailment. I don’t know if it was something I ate (i.e., food poisoning) or if it was due to a 24-hour virus I picked up somewhere. But either way, it both literally and physically knocked the shit out of me.

I did manage to show up for my CAT scan yesterday, which turned out to be a bit of an ordeal due to my chronic positional vertigo ailment, but that’s a story for another day. By the time I got back from the scan, though, I was doubled over with severe stomach cramps.

I spent most of the rest of the day alternating between sitting on the toilet and sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket watching the first day of the televised impeachment hearings. Oh the drama! Ultimately, having been pretty much exhausted from the continual stomach cramping during the previous 24 hours, I went to bed at around 8:30 last night.

The good news is that the worst of my stomach issues are over and, for the first time in 36 hours, I was able to eat (lightly) and drink something other than water. I even missed my daily fixes of Ben & Jerry’s Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream ice cream for the past two nights, so you know I was really feeling miserable. Fortunately, I’m doing much better now than I was yesterday at this time.

But my reason for writing this post is not to make you feel sorry for me or to get your sympathy, even though it might appear that way. Actually, my reason for this post is to let you know that from Tuesday evening through most of yesterday, and even until midday today, I wasn’t using my iPhone at all, which means I wasn’t on WordPress, either. I didn’t write any new posts on my blog, although my daily FOWC with Fandango prompt, my provocative question prompt, and even my One-Liner Wednesday post were all scheduled in advanced.

But more important, I didn’t get a chance to read any of your comments or links back to my post. Nor did I have a chance, since Tuesday night, to read any of your new posts that showed up in my Reader. And while I will try tonight, now that I’m almost fully recovered, to catch up on all of your comments and pingbacks, I probably won’t be able to go back and read 48 hours worth of your posts that I missed. And I’m very sorry about that.

I hope you’ll accept my apology.

A Tricky Problem

Fandango17 Comments

49872735-bf2a-41f9-bae5-dac16d379442.jpegWhen we last discussed this issue a few days ago, I was pretty stoked. As I told you here, the WordPress happiness engineers finally acknowledged that my iOS app issue — the one with huge time gaps (3-6+ hours) in posts that show up in my Reader overnight — was not unique to me. They said, “This issue (or something similar) does appear to be affecting other people than just yourself.”

That was a relief. After all, WordPress boasts 75 million blogs on its platform, about half of which are on WordPress.com. I found it comforting to know that I wasn’t the only WordPress blogger out of 75 million (or even out of 37.5 million) who was having this issue.

I was also encouraged to hear that, “Fixing this has been escalated to high priority for our developers….” Great! Help is on the way.

But as John Wayne was wont to say, “Not so fast, Pilgrim.” Today I received another message from WordPress.

“I wanted to update you on the progress of this fix. I have checked in with our developers who have confirmed there is currently no ETA for this fix yet, but it’s something we are aware of and is high priority to get resolved.

However, this is a tricky problem to solve because it’s hard to pin down the exact steps to replicate the problem. We are continuing to do our best to work on this, and hope to have a solution for this as soon as possible.”

No ETA for a fix? A tricky problem? You want the exact steps to replicate this problem? Simple:

  1. Pick up an iPhone 8 Plus that has the latest version of Apple’s iOS installed.
  2. Go to the App Store and install the WordPress app for iOS.
  3. Follow about 175 bloggers, most of whom post multiple times a day.
  4. Go to bed.
  5. Wake up in the morning, reach for your iPhone, open the WordPress app, and go to the Reader.
  6. Marvel at how you see a post from one of the bloggers you follow that was published 8 hours ago and the very next post you see in the Reader was published 3 hours ago.
  7. Go to your web browser on your iPhone, log into WordPress from said browser, and then go to your Reader.
  8. Marvel at all of those missing posts in that 5 hour gap that aren’t showing up in the Reader on the WordPress iOS app, but which are miraculously showing up in the Reader in the browser.
  9. Get really pissed that this has been going on for at least six months and the happiness engineers at WordPress have no clue how to resolve this “tricky problem.”

I Don’t Know What I’m Missing

Fandango14 Comments

I’ve complained multiple times to the Happinesses Engineers at WordPress about problems with the Reader in the WordPress iOS app. But to no avail. The issue persists.

Once again, this morning I woke up to yet another big gap — this one a seven hour gap — between posts that showed up in my Reader this morning:0A087E00-BFD4-45FF-9733-0FBE488329FD

I’ve tried everything WordPress has suggested to resolve this issue: I refreshed the Reader, I logged out of, and then logged back into, the app. But nothing seems to address the problem.

So, my fellow bloggers, if it appears that I’m ingnoring your posts, not liking them and/or commenting on them, that’s just not the case. I’m just not seeing them in my Reader.