Mad Blog Media: Blocks, BlogSpot, and bushwa

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Blocks, BlogSpot, and bushwa

The new WordPress comments window.

Fuck me running.

The WordPress engineers have taken my comments right off the rails again.

Back in the Day®, when Things Made Sense©, a reader could comment on a blog post in seconds only. Find the little box headlined "Reply;" enter text in the box; punch the "Reply" button (rather than the author of the post); and hey presto! Comment appended to post.

Easy breezy like a Cover Girl, que no?

Alas, in these Dark Days of Modern Times™, The Block Editor is All. It is not enough that the blogger bow before it; so, too must his readers.

Complaints to the WP "Happiness Engineers" yield replies, eventually, but no real solutions. The subtext seems to be, "Fuck this guy, his outdated machinery and equally ancient software, his Classic Editor, and his retired theme."

Well, shit. I don't like the Block Editor and I don't want to use it. And it seems my readers don't like using it when commenting. What to do, what to do. ...

Here, at BlogSpout, I also must deal with a block editor. It feels slightly less annoying than the WP version, but then again I only fiddle with it when WP annoys me, which they are doing at the moment. Would familiarity breed contempt? Possibly. Probably.

In the meantime, I think I'll publish this post and try commenting on it from another browser, see how that process goes. I'm about one more email from dropping WordPress after more than 20 years, and none of the other hot properties — Substack, Medium, etc. — really suit my needs.

I just want to be able to do my little back-and-forth with my small, deeply disturbed audience. Doesn't seem like too much to ask, but then these are Strange Times, full of Fear and Loathing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Now this is what I call a simple way to leave a comment.

There is a box, titled "Leave your comment." I can use some HTML tags (bold, italic) if I want. I don't want.

I have to "choose an identity," either my Goggle account (I will be asked to sign in after submitting my comment); my name and URL; or as Anonymous.

There is a CAPTCHA "I'm not a robot" dingus too. But where is there not?; November 28, 2023 at 7:38 AM

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What's all this then?

After spending decades with my scabby snout pressed to various grindstones of journalism, I sport plenty of mental scar tissue, a good deal less hair to cover it, and an undiminished appreciation for three subsets of the craft: drawing cartoons, monging rumors, and writing headlines.

And thanks to the Internet, the best thing to happen to journalism since the invention of movable type, I get to do all three of them without having to return to work at a newspaper, where management has slowly devolved into a button-down mutant hybrid of the worst aspects of the Spanish Inquisition, the dental bits in “Marathon Man” and the highway department of your choice.

Feel free to peruse my pointless harangues at your leisure, but be advised that they contain toxic quantities of disrespectful parody and rude satire certain to cause grievous harm to the humorless clots of tight-sphinctered ninnies whose breaking of wind only dogs can hear. Mad Dog Media neither sells nor installs senses of humor . . . we simply service them.