One Way or Another

One way or another I’ve done what I wanted for the site layout. Not exactly as I envisioned it but its done. Sometimes I can get lost in the details and use that to procrastinate from the bigger work at hand. Not 100% wanting to start on the big picture.

I tried using the FSE (full style editor) with WordPress. I even liked the idea of it. But, at this stage its more work to deal with it than to go back to GeneratePress, which I’ve gotten to know and find pretty reliable. So, that’s what I did. Chalk it up to a learning experience as far as the FSE editor.

I also added a contact form. Something new for me. Will see how much spam it gets and then decide if I want to keep it. I’m not even sure how it works yet. Does it need an email address? I didn’t give it one. If it stays in WordPress that will work out well enough. I’m not expecting to hear from many real people versus spam, other than my Mother.

Next I will start going through all my posts from the last 20 years to update them, decide whether or not to keep some of them, and fix the broken image files on all of them. Thank you WordPress for not exporting them this time. (I’m sure it did before because I don’t remember having to fix this many other times I’ve moved the site). Anyway, it will be like re-visiting myself, reading an old diary. Along the way I will tidy up categories and maybe even tags.

Then, what can I do about content scrapers? Nothing I’ve found or tried seems to work.

WordPress Plugins That Might Work for Selling Your Photographs On Your Site

This is not a review, just a list. I haven’t decided which of these to even load up and try first. But, here for your amusement or practical use, are the plugins I have found for the idea of selling my photographs online, on my own site instead of Etsy, CafePress, and any other similar sites. In the past I tried Zazzle for selling my art on things. I was the only one who bought anything over several months. So, I’m not too keen on using one of those third party sort of sites again. I don’t know how this idea, selling them myself, will go. But, I don’t think it can be any worse. In theory.

So here are the links, not in any order of interest or usefulness. (I’m not 100% sure all of them are still active enough to use, so consider these “use at your own risk”). Some are free, open source, and some are not. I’ve added a couple which don’t work with WordPress, they are stand alone for your website domain.

Symbiostock

Sell Media – Graph Paper Press

NextGEN Gallery – Imagely

CP Image Store with Slideshow

ClassicCommerce – for ClassicPress

WooCommerce

Photo Video Store Script

WordPress Photo Seller Plugin

WP iSell Photo

Easy Digital Downloads

thirty bees

Sunshine Photo Cart

Blockhead with WordPress

I’m typing this just after updating to the new 5.0 WordPress, the blockhead version. I don’t like the idea of working with blocks. It seems to add complication where there were less complications before. But, this is my first time trying it. Working with just text has gone ok. I feel I’m typing in space with so much empty, blank, white space around my text.

Adding an image is going to be different. I don’t see the image uploader anywhere… Turns out it is in the plus sign at the top left. But, having gotten the image to show up I guess I need to start another block to post again. (It was nice to have the caption right there with the options but I’m not sure how it will look, or how it will last if there are future updates to the code).

ASCII art snowflakes I posted to ASCII Artist yesterday.

Overall, the biggest problem I have with the block thing is that I don’t like working in chunks. I would rather have one cohesive post without extra coding added for the sake of adding extra coding. This just seems one more way for WordPress to make it even harder and more impossible to leave WordPress as your CMS. How will any of these blockhead posts look if you export them and import them into something else? How much work will it be to fix? (A lot I expect!) Also, what happens to all these block posts when the block trend falls off the planet and something else new comes along?

Changed my Language to Canadian WordPress

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.

The CMS Mission

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.

Updates and Take Backs

Today I am trying to fix my WordGrrls.com links for writers. Focused on Ontario and Canadian writers. I had such a good collection of links and then I went through my year of trying to get out of WordPress and all my links were somehow lost from one change to another. Files are not as strong or reliable as you would like them to be. But, I can rebuild. Starting with the links from old dmoz/ new Curlie. I don’t feel that is cheating when I’ve been the editor for about 20 years in that category especially.

Scoop.it has taken yet more away from the early adopter accounts. Years ago they were promised to be kept as they were. But, time went on and this and that were chipped away. Until there isn’t much left and no point to continuing to post and put time and energy into that network. The end for me was having the embedded feed widget removed. If I can’t post the widget to my sites… what am I doing working for Scoop.it for free? It stopped being a partnership, or not anything equal or useful. I have left all my topics, empty of posts, with just a link to my sites. I would like to keep followers. But, most of them are spammers and just hope for follow-backs. I don’t think there have been any real content curators at Scoop.it since the earliest years. Annoying to see marketing claim another site, but that’s too often how it goes.