I am an early adopter but I also tend to stick with things. This can be a poorish combination. I started this blog nearly 20 years ago (when blogging was new and exciting and I’m still going (even though it is definitely no longer new or at all exciting). When I started it was on the first blogging platform I came to on a list 20six (numbers tend to come before letters in these kind of lists).
When it folded, sometime in 2006, I think, I went on to WordPress. There are two types of WordPress blog – one that basically does all the work for you and one where you have to get your own domain name and which requires a bit of techy experticse to update. In retrospect, I cannot emphasise enough how much more suitable the former would have been for me but look, as the Irish politicians said after the banking crash, we are where we are. Over the years, I’ve paid for domain hosting (I know) and the odd tech person to do updates when it got beyond me and basically it’s been fine. I have enjoyed the WordPress experience.
The advent of the WordPress app was a boon allowing me to blog and note on the go (hold your uproarious laughter). It’s integrated with Jetpack which seems to be more statistical. I’ve never been super interested in my stats; I mean I would like to be an internet sensation but I’m ok with small numbers, it’s not like it’s a business or I’m trying to sell anything. So basically, Jetpack is not at all important to me. However, it seems to be a big part of the WordPress empire now. Since early November the app has been pretty glitchy – one of my most faithful readers cannot access my site at all. I am told to move to the Jetpack app which is even better (ahem) but if so I must get rid of the WordPress app as they don’t work together. Huh? And now when I publish my posts, I see that Jetpack is counting down the number of times I can share them (only 22 shares left!). I mean, I’m not hung up on stats but I would like to be in a position to let my 5 (or 6 on a good day) faithful readers know that there is deathless prose to be had. I see that if I “upgrade now” I can get more shares. If I click on the link I have to login to find out how much that service would be. Great. €25 a month apparently. I will not be paying that. I am filled with fury but it will pass. Sigh.
That is all.
Oh dear – I have noticed that it’s got glitchy – I look to see if you’ve posted and it gives me a post from November..
On the whole I like technology, and I love how it enables me to communicate with friends and family.
My beloved does not really – he loves Wordle and reads the newspapers but hates anything new. We have spend the weekend setting up his new tablet. It will be useful but made neither of us happy….
Gah, how frustrating. I’m still coming to terms with the wretched block editor on the main wordpress blog site. But then I write all my posts in notepad and then paste them in, which I suspect wasn’t the main use case they considered when they developed it.
I feel your pain. When I started blogging back in the noughties, I used blogger which was great. Although not so great once it got hacked and taken over by bots. So I recently revived it on WordPress. Gobsmacked to discover that you now have to pay for things! And it’s all so…fiddly… Nobody can work out how to follow without setting up a word press account. It shouldn’t be that hard surely?? Like your previous commenter, I write it out first then cut and paste. All on my laptop. As a result my site is bereft of the whizzery content of most blogs (Eg, photos…) But then again what I like most about your blog is it’s just content- no pop ups and distractions. The Harridan (do you know her? She’s brilliant. SIX KIDS and still has a sense of humour.) is the same- just words and the occasional photo. Maybe we should petition WordPress to have a simple setting for middle-aged folk. We could pay in old money?
Thank you one and all for your sympathy. I must say, I am very taken by the idea of WordPress for the middle-aged. I would definitely pay for that.