Testing WordPress

Just testing to see if WordPress will let me post.

If this appears, it will let me post text, but it doesn’t seem to want to let me post links or pictures.

Here is a picture:

 

 

This is a link — click on it.

You can’t even enter a link manually <a href=”https://ondermynende.wordpress.com”>this is a link – click on it</a>

Hey, WordPress — have you ever heard of the saying — if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?

I don’t want an “improved posting experience”, I just want an editor that works.

I hate it when softweare developers promise an improved “experience”.

Every time I see that, I know what it will be — reduced functionality, and the main experience is frustration.

When they offer an “improved experience” it always means more bells and whistles, fewer pistons and cylinders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whew! Back to normal

By reading the Beep Beep Boop screen with a magnifying glass, I could just make out a place to click to restore the old editor that works properly.

Are Google out to destroy blogging?

Google seem to be determined to drive their users away to other platforms. I moved this blog from Blogger to WordPress when they forced their new dysfunctional editor on me.

Now Goggle have been inviting Blogger users to switch their Blogger profile to a Google+ one. But the Google+ one is inferior, from a blogging point of view. On the old Blogger profile you can click on your own, or someone else’s “Interests” and find other bloggers who are interested in those things, and thus find interesting blogs to read. The Google+ profile lacks this feature, so I resisted Google’s blandishments and didn’t switch.

But they punished me for it, because when I wanted to comment on blogs that have switched, I found that I could not do so — you could type anything you liked in the comment box, but nothing would appear on the screen.

One of the blogs on which this happened has now moved to WordPress, and another has gone back to using Disqus for commenting.

And now Google have decided to call their online chat thingy “Hangouts”. Well, I don’t care what they call it, I never do online “chatting” anyway. Watching someone remotely typing on my screen and correcting spelling as they go (or not) is as bad, if not worse, than watching paint dry. But for those who do like such chatting, beware. Now there is this: nourishing obscurity — Hangouts is an analogy for Big Brother.

Actually, all this is probably part of the war between Facebook and Google for market share. They are trying to lock users into believing and acting as if their site is the Internet. They want to force everyone to communicate with other people only on their site. That’s why Facebook changed everyone’s e-mail address to a Facebook one, without telling them, and without telling them how to use it either.

Never forget that you are not the customer. You are the product that they are selling to advertisers.

 

 

 

 

Old Blogger interface – a huge improvement

Recently my Blogger dashboard switched from the old interface to the new one, which I’ve been struggling with for the last few weeks.

Now someone has explained to me how you can get the old one back.

If you have had the new and degraded Blogger dashboard foisted on you, you can (at least for the time being) get the old one back.

There’s a little cogwheel thingy up in the top righthand corner of the new and degraded Blogger dashboard.

Click on it and among the options that are revealed is the option to revert to the old and improved Blogger interface.

Hat-tip to a commenter on nourishing obscurity | Google/Blogger/WordPress’s kindergarten coders

Ah, bliss!

If the new interface is foisted on us, I predict another huge move to WordPress.

Firefox crashing on clicking Image Uploader in WordPress

Firefox crashing on clicking Image Uploader: WordPress.com Forums:

Is anyone reporting problems with Firefox crashing when trying to upload images? I have not installed anything new on my desktop, just clicking on the square box to upload images would crash Firefox.

I’ve been having that problem too, so I thought I would try it in Blogger.

The last couple of days I’ve been at the Amahoro Conference, and wanted to blog about it on my Khanya blog, and every time I tried to upload a picture, Firefox crashed. But it seemed to work OK in Internet Exsplorer.

But it seems to work OK here, so it must be a WordPress problem rather than a Firefox one, though the latest information is that Google Gears is the culprit, so it looks like it’s time to uninstal that.

Oh yes, the Amahoro conference has been pretty good, and I’ve blogged about it here and here, among other places.

How lekker is local?

There’s been some discussion in the South African blogosphere about the merits of local versus overseas hosting.

For example this blog is hosted at the blogspot server, which I believe is in the USA, and so the argument goes that South African readers have to get it from overseas, and ultimately we have to pay for international bandwidth in foreign currency. So the argument runs that local is lekker, and one should use local hosts for blogs.

But for the last couple of days Amatomu, the best-known South African blog aggregator, which I assume is locally hosted, has epitomised the World Wide Wait, and waiting for pages to appear is more boring than watching the proverbial drying paint.

Another disadvantage with local hosting, for blogs, at any rate, is that individual blogs are swallowed up by the host. If you check Amatomu, blogs hosted by overseas servers are listed individually, and not as coming from Blogspot, or WordPress or whatever. But the local ones are not listed individually; all posts are shown as coming from “Blat – to utter without thinking” or “Thought leader” or whatever the host is. So local isn’t really so lekker.

Moving back to Blogger?

A couple of years ago half the Blogger blogs I knew were announcing that they were moving to WordPress. Here’s one going the other way.

On blogger now � Rock_Angel_Grass:

To all readers who want to read more of my blogs, please visit me at http://blogophobicgracia.blogspot.com for more updated posts.. Thank you.. 🙂

Back then, of course, Blogger was being “upgraded”, and many features stopped working and the “full-featured” Beta version was missing many of the features that had made people like Blogger in the first place.

Now the Blogger software has stabilised, and some people, it seems, are beginning to move the other way.

For myself, I continue to keep a foot in both camps. One platform is good for some things, and the other for others.

WordPress versus Blogger

I have three general blogs on three different blogging platforms, and occasionally I compare them to see which is most popular.

The blogs are Notes from Underground on Blogger (this one), Khanya on WordPress, and my LiveJournal. The graph from Amatomu below shows that the oldest, the LiveJournal one, has the fewest readers, while the newest one, the WordPress one, seems to have the most readers. Is this because readers prefer WordPress to blogger?

Actually the comparison is not quite fair to LiveJournal. Most liveJournal posts are read by friends on feeds, and very few people read the actual blogs themselves. Nevertheless, it does seem to indicate a preference for WordPress on the part of blog readers, though as a blog writer I find it has several limitations, notably that it does not support Javascript, so all sorts of widgets and things just don’t work.

But knowing which one readers prefer also affects the way I write. I now tend to be more careful about what I wrote on the Khanya blog, knowing that more people will probably read it. Notes from underground tends to get used for quick ‘n dirty posts, and the LiveJournal even more so, or even just for pointers to posts on one of the others, if I think some of my LiveJournal friends might be interested, and I hope that some of them may comment.

End of the road for Blogger?

For more than a year now I’ve had a blog on Blogger and one on WordPress, and have posted about equally on both. I found it hard to decide which platform I preferred, but this just about clinches it.

Tried to log in to my Blogger blog a few minutes ago, and got this charming message:

We’re sorry…

… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.

We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

If you’re continually receiving this error, you may be able to resolve the problem by deleting your Google cookie and revisiting Google. For browser-specific instructions, please consult your browser’s online support center.

If your entire network is affected, more information is available in the Google Web Search Help Center.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.

It seems that I can post, but the moment I try to read my posts, I get that message.

If that’s lasts any longer, you certainly won’t be seeing me much longer on Blogger.

And obviously, if I can’t read my blog, I can’t read or respond to comments, so if you would like to comment on this, please do so on my WordPress blog.

End of the road for Blogger?

For more than a year now I’ve had a blog on Blogger and one on WordPress, and have posted about equally on both. I found it hard to decide which platform I preferred, but this just about clinches it.

Tried to log in to my Blogger blog a few minutes ago, and got this charming message:

We’re sorry…

… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.

We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

If you’re continually receiving this error, you may be able to resolve the problem by deleting your Google cookie and revisiting Google. For browser-specific instructions, please consult your browser’s online support center.

If your entire network is affected, more information is available in the Google Web Search Help Center.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.

It seems that I can post, but the moment I try to read my posts, I get that message.

If that’s lasts any longer, you certainly won’t be seeing me much longer on Blogger.

And obviously, if I can’t read my blog, I can’t read or respond to comments, so if you would like to comment on this, please do so on my WordPress blog.