Tomorrow I am going to work on new meta tags for the headers of each of my sites. I started today with this site but meta information has changed since the early days when a title and description were enough. Not even a mention of adding keywords now. I guess the older tags are mostly abandoned for the new Open Graph, Twitter and Facebook tags. Everyone thinks they need to be famous. But that leaves no one left to just applaud.

I am using a post from the Moz site to update my meta tags.

I am also changing all my WordPress formatted content to sit back in a subdomain. I have done that much today, and put in temporary redirects. Then I am going to make a one page HTML page to lead into each part of the domain. Not everything is on WordPress. This has the bonus of making it MUCH easier to move out of WordPress while leaving my content unbroken.

Too much time spent today on looking at HTML editors, trying to find a simple template to adapt. When I ended up using one from One Page Love which I adapted in plain old Notepad. I notice my age when it comes to things like this. Before I would not have been intimidated by just going the mad scientist route and changing the template in Notepad. Now, I second guess and try to find a short cut or something that feels safer, with a guarantee of success. That is the sad part about being older, becoming just a little leery of stepping off into adventures.

It would be easier if I could see better. Each time I get the store to fix these glasses they seem ok. But, a few days later everything is blurry again. Not so bad for TV and such but harder to read anything on the computer screen. Most of the time I am reading with my head tipped far back so I can use the bifocal part of the lens to read what's in front of me.

Old is as old does. Has anyone ever said that?

I have a book to start learning Scribus, an open source desktop publishing program. That seems the best way evolve (still having content but not being dependent on WordPress).

Two things about WordPress are bothering me lately.

I've read about a partnership between Google and WordPress.

WordPress continues to support Gutenberg and plans to pull out the current, simple, unblocked editor.

Google collects and sells the information about you. Do you really want WordPress being in a partnership with that? I have written personal thoughts, ideas, and information into my WordPress sites. I never thought of it being picked up by machine algorithms and used against me. (Read more, search for "marketing dystopia").

Gutenberg, I tried the demo and the test plugin, just leave me feeling aggravated. I know how to type into the current editor, save it, check it and publish it. Then I can go on to do other things. (There are a lot of things to do when you run a few sites by yourself). Gutenberg is something else I am going to have to learn and those content blocks are one more complication I can do without. No thanks!

Add to that the other things which keep going missing from WordPress, the tools I use day to day. I am especially thinking of those bookmarklets, again. PressThis and LinkThis have made my life (the time I spend writing online) so much easier and smoother. It was so nice to collect a link as I find it in the web browser, add a note and then come back to the saved post later to finish and publish it. The reasons WordPress and WP enthusiasts have given for removing the bookmarklets sound hollow and phony to me. Since when did WordPress care so much about protecting content on other sites.

So, I am going to change how I do everything. Why not? I can think of a few good reasons mostly involving time and patience (mine). But, I have loved the zine scene, small self-publishing, with very few rules (other than those you choose yourself) for a long time. It could work.

I thought about going to Toronto WordCamp, the WordPress thing. But, I think it will be all about people making sites for clients and not just people making sites. I really dislike the marketing focus with so much online, not just WordPress. But, with WP it has become an obsession, almost a cult. If you aren't part of the marketing cult you are not allowed to have an opinion.

The WordCamp is focused on Gutenberg. A bad sign. Gutenberg seems to be a faster way for web developers to make cookie cutter sites for clients. It is all about that current fad of using content blocks. I'm already done with that. I don't like seeing blocks of content on sites and scrolling down through their coloured content bars. Move on to something else, please.

The rest of the WordCamp is about the future of WP. That would be interesting but... I expect the future the Gutenberg cookie cutter site people see is not the future I would like. I really wish I had found a better way to work with my content, a different CMS from WordPress. But, I tried that and ended up back at the start. For now. Don't think I have given up. I'm just suspending the mission for awhile.

I wrote to ask about the WordCamp in Toronto, Ontario. But, I never (yet) heard back from them. I think I didn't say all the right keywords.

Three of my sites are mostly up and I have learned a lot about Joomla. I'm far less fearless than I was 20 years or so ago when I tinkered with my PC hardware and threw code up to see what would work on my sites. Now I tenderly, hopefully, touch a little code here and there and check if things turned out ok on the front page, or not.

Joomla is a bit messy. A maze of options repeated in the menu and the articles and the odd other place. That part is aggravating. I think I have everything set but it doesn't change even though the settings are set right. I tinker around and find... another place to set the same setting!!! Not fair, Joomla. Maybe there is some reason for it. Method to the madness. I'm going to pretend I believe that. There must be a way to save all the settings (once you finally get them all nailed down) and import them to another site. That would make things quite a bit easier. If I can do that I will have a hugely easier time loading up the rest of the sites.

I have content which needs to switch between sites too. I've been putting off dealing with that. Plus formatting. But... I did discover that fixing my user/ author name on all the content also fixed the weird bold font weight thing which was appearing on (what seemed to be) random posts. Now that all my posts are publishing with the right user ID the bold font has disappeared. Magic! Nice to solve something in a mysterious and functional way.

I think the next site I will load up with a fresh and happy Joomla install and the old WordPress content will be my other sort of profile site, thatgrrl.ca Should I make the text/ HTML based front page for it or let it start on Joomla? I will probably stick with the routine I've begun here. Its more work but I can control and understand what I've done with the landing page of the sites, more than leaving it to Joomla (or any other CMS).

It is so much easier to fix things on Blogger and import posts from Blogger to WordPress, than to deal with WordPress. I think that’s kind of sad. But, I am pulling this site back together, from assorted parts which are here and there on my hard drive and stashed away online in places like Blogger (blogspot). So far the posts from Blogger are up and loaded with images, intact. I was not expecting it to be so easy.

I still have all the old WordPess back up files which I will have to play around with. WordPress will not like them as they are, they are big. I can export them as big files, but I can not import them back again as big files. Even though, they are the same files.

I am wishing myself luck, and patience.