I thought I had all my sites set to Canadian English. But, I had missed a couple.

It doesn't come up a lot. There aren't huge differences in Canadian English versus British, Australian or US. But, when something does pop up wrong it bugs me. Especially when spellchecker is trying to correct Canadian spelling.

So, I fixed them all.

To do so yourself...

Start at Settings. Change your Site Language (find English, then the English version you use). Save that.

Then go to your Dashboard, Updates. At the bottom will be the option to update translations. If you have changed your language in Settings, there will be an update in translations. Go ahead and update it.

That's it. A simple process and a simple fix to have your site in your preferred English.

WordPress is the Cadillac of CMS for web developers making cookie cutter sites for clients paying thousands of dollars (sometimes). For end users, it is deliberately chopped up and dumbed down. Web developers don’t want clients tinkering, maintaining, changing, or even updating their sites. There are cases where the web developer actually owns the site, the client just has rights to the contents. Clients pay for the site, choose the content, but otherwise get in the way. But, they do pay.

So why is WordPress still free? Why not claim their share of the money being made? Or, will they? It happened with Movable Type.

For those dwindling few who can’t afford/ don’t want a web developer… why are you still using WordPress?

When Gutenberg replaces the current post editor it will take away more functions than it adds, for the end user, the people writing their own sites. WordPress will say it streamlines the editing functions. But, have you taken a look at it? I did. The editor is gone.

Posting to WordPress will become cut and paste with content blocks. This makes it much easier for web developers to configure plugins, themes and other services they can sell to clients who don’t really want to deal with any part of putting up a site themselves. Clients just supply the content, remember. Any editing of the content has already been done before it gets pasted into WordPress.

The new WordPress will be a lot like the old GeoCities. A lot of people won’t know much about GeoCities. It was an online web host, but your sites were on their domain. Sort of like Blogger which gives you the site.blogspot.com domain. I don’t remember if GeoCities let people add their own domain, Blogger does. Anyway, GeoCities made it easy to put up a site. The structure was there, all you really had to do was add your own content. GeoCities was free to use, but they did run a few ads on your site. If GeoCities had not shut down, would they be competing with WordPress now?

Online site building software: Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace, and others, are just competition for WordPress.com because WordPress.org people still make their own sites, right? Yes, if people were making their own sites, but too often sites are made by web developers and people just cut and paste their content into cookie cutter sites built by web developers using WordPress software and assorted plugins the client doesn’t need to know about. How is this really different from an online web site builder? The online website builder is a lot cheaper but does require some hands on work beyond just dumping content into it.

Why not just write for sites like HubPages and at least get paid for your content instead of paying to put it online?

Maybe the only reason WordPress is still free is WordPress.com. If you haven’t taken a look at WordPress.com for awhile, go login and take a look at the features there. Long ago the .com and the self hosted WordPress were not so different. But, that was long ago. WordPress.com is free to sign up for but then it becomes a Facebook game. Features are offered like pretty treats, shiny extras, and premium goodies virtually yours when you pay with real credit cards.

At the end of the day you are paying to use WordPress.

I have moved out of WordPress. I'm using the multi-domain feature of b2evolution. After importing my WordPress content I have found problems with paragraph formatting and missing image files on posts. I will deal with that over time. Today I am just working on today and the post I write next. There is only so much time I want to put into old content when I suspect most of my readers don't have human eyes anyway.

Some of my sites rely on WordPress plugins which will only work with WordPress. I am deciding whether or not to keep the sites fully on WordPress or to move keep them partially on WordPress, in order to use the content I have on the plugin, Link Library.

Meanwhile, I have a lot to do in the admin on b2evolution.

I've tried so many different CMS this year. For now I would like to get back to writing, creating art and all the other things I like about having a site. I'm putting software on hold for awhile.

Meanwhile, I've lost the few posts I did have here so I am back to the start with this site. Not a bad thing since I mainly wanted it for the domain itself. If I were less of a domain shopper I would have everything here, on this domain. But, I don't. Once I get those domains I feel I should be doing something with them.

I get a lot of ideas and I tend to be impulsive.

I am trying. I have made progress. But, the Joomla post editing and image uploading are not very user friendly. I feel like I'm working with a sluggish elephant.

I don't know yet about template changes. I'm leaving that until the end as I go through the guide I'm using to get around Joomla. It is quite different from WordPress, especially in the beginning. My big break through seems to have been understanding that everything has a category, not just your blog posts, or links. It does add more function to your site, what you can do with what you have. But, it also makes it complicated. When you have a glitch it becomes a real job to find the source because there are so many places to look. As a beginner I'm finding it very time consuming.

Last week I was at the point of giving up and trying yet another CMS. But, I stuck it out. I did find the problem that time but, the same solution did not fix (what seems to be) the same problem on two other sites. 

So far the post editor and image uploader are bugging me every time I post. Maybe some of that will be fixed with a different theme/ template. But, with all the function in Joomla why is it so hard to do the simple things? I'm at the point of disliking using images with my posts. 

Also, I am discouraged about the link thing. I left WordPress because it was becoming focused on commercial sites and web developers with clients rather than individuals building their own site. As I get to know Joomla I see the same trend here. The link manager was taken out of the core CMS. Why remove a feature people might actually like to use? Because web developers don't want anything Google SEO says it doesn't like. Most of Joomla's extensions (plugins, if you prefer WordPress speak) are premium. Sure there are some outdated free extensions, but they tend not to work, or even upload into Joomla 3. Other free versions are so limited the point of them is just to make people realize there isn't any point to doing without the premium/ professional extension. 

I miss having spellcheck when I write a post. I can't even use keyboard shortcuts in the post editor. So I need to open the code editor to cut and paste or add text to any post with HTML. I did look at post editors and related extensions. That was a land of confusion in itself. Most of them combine a template maker into the whole process, as if that will fix everything. But, I did not find any of them which were just post editors which would work with my existing posts in Joomla articles. Two which I might have used wanted to import everything and make second copies for the extension. Then you (I) have to remember to use the extension to make every post I write from then on. Well, what if something goes wrong? What if the extension is abandoned, dies with some fatal error, etc? Where would that leave me and all my posts, not quite in Joomla but sort of in Joomla? 

I have yet to find a way to schedule posts. Everything has to be made a featured post in order to show up on my site. Then every new post is either published or not published. There is no way to schedule a date for it to post. Yes, I can leave posts sitting outside of featured but I would really rather not have to remember to post them, or need to be online in order to post them. (I do like to get away the odd time and leave the electronics behind).

I think that's everything bugging me. Possibly more will come to mind between now and now when I post this. 

If I hadn't bought two books (print) to help me figure Joomla out... If I hadn't spent money on 3 premium Joomla extensions (and not found any of them to be what I had hoped)... If I hadn't spent months migrating and renovating my sites since leaving WordPress (late last year!)... I think I would stop using Joomla at this point. But, there should be a point where you don't go back and stick with your guns, right? 

Anyway, what else would I try? I've been through almost a dozen CMS since last year. I do know, I am not going back to WordPress. The problems with WordPress are still there. The time of the independent web publisher is getting tougher, but not drying up yet. However, I am watching for that big chunk of meteor rock falling from the sky.