We’re barely a third of the way through 2021. Yet, my blog has already attracted double its average annual number of followers. There may be some reasons for this. For example, I’m blogging regularly this year. I am also sticking to a theme (writing) rather than random content of things I think certain groups of people might find useful. However, all that random past stuff are what gets my blog the most traffic, not my writing posts. The writing posts barely read by the followers, which is fine. I’m mentioning them to make my point that the vast majority of my blog’s most recent followers aren’t human! Rather, they’re like bots, or templated blogs using the same profile pictures, some cultural variations on a name like all French, and a handful of posts each in a layout! What is up with this, WordPress? This isn’t Instagram!
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How to Enable (Get Back) the Classic Editor in WordPress.com
I got my first taste of the new WordPress.com editor today, and I spat it out faster than the worst food I had ever tasted! Blah!
For those who don’t like it, either, here are a few “hacks” to still get access to your WordPress Classic Editor, for new posts, old posts, and old pages.
Creating new posts in Classic Editor
I had devised a solution below that is still good for editing old posts, but a reader who goes by Suso SM shared with me an even better solution for new posts. Thanks, Suso SM! Here was his solution.
- Copy the entire coloured URL below and paste into a new browser window, but do NOT hit Enter
https://your-site-name.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?action=edit&classic-editor - Change the text in red bold italics to whatever your site name is your WordPress account. You should be able to see that once you log in (and choose your site if you had more than one to your account).
- Now hit ENTER, and you’ll be prompted for a new post in the Classic WP Editor! If not, please check your site name you substituted in red. Everything should be the same until, or unless, WP takes away the Classic Editor or changes how to access it.
- I would also recommend bookmarking the URL if it works so you don’t have to do this every time, even if you didn’t post a lot.
Thanks so much Suso SM!
Editing old posts in the Classic Editor
This Site is Now Mobile Friendly! :)
I’ve been out of the loop for quite a long while on this one, and I apologize. The old format was a custom format which I had rather liked, but it was good only on screen. I haven’t been a big phone or mobile user so I never really looked at it on a mobile device all these years that people had started to view web sites on phones and small tablets! It looked fine on an iPad so I generally thought it was fine.
My Blog’s 2013 in Review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 1,400,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 60 days for that many people to see it.
When Did WordPress Become So Bad at Blocking Spam Comments?
It’s probably been close to a year now, but the spamming comments just has been getting worse and worse on WordPress! Tonight I got over 20! That’s a lot of wasted time to clean out things if I were to be consistently good at it. Not vetting comments before they get posted is just a way for these people to get free click throughs and make it hard for anyone who cares to look through the comments.
WordPress’ spam filters hasn’t seemed to have kept up with the times. Surely they can do better! Block stuff with multiple links. Block website userIDs unless it is a popular social media ID. People can still use bogus emails if they really want to comment but don’t want to give their real emails. But bogus email spam is of little value because there are no click throughs to sites… considering the suggestion I also had about blocking multiple links in a comment. They might get one link there, but someone would have to actually read the comment to see the link, not just see it in a widget on the sidebar.
Also, there are many repeated phrases. Catch some of them. Not all of them. Just some. That’s enough for a few blocks.
I remember the days when hardly any spam came through with Askimet protecting against spam. Something has not kept up with the times. Whatever it is, I hope it is soon because it is really annoying. Banning comments defeats the purpose of the blog as a social media tool of sorts.
WordPress folks, are you listening? Good luck!
Digital Citizen 