A Small Technical Note
Posted on December 2, 2020 Posted by John Scalzi 11 Comments
Last night WordPress, which hosts Whatever, switched me over to a new plan, which has additional and/or different functionality from my previous plan. Most of this functionality relates to the back end of the site, which no one except me and Athena see, but there are a couple of minor things on your end that you might notice being different, and some functionality that’s changed or at the moment is not working — for example, at the moment the sidebar search function isn’t working, and the comments have lost their preview button (apparently I was using a preview function that was deprecated, like, nine years ago).
In the short-term (i.e., the next few days), if you notice changed/different/broken functionality, don’t worry and don’t panic. I know about it and will be addressing it in reasonably short order. Because I’m running the Holiday Gift Guide at the moment, I don’t want to futz with things too dramatically until it’s done, but I may tweak a few things here and there. This is simply to let you know I’m aware a couple of things might be wonky.
The good news is, in the long run, this backend switchover is going to allow me to have more and better functionality for the site, and should make it easier to integrate new features here. So we have that going for us, which is nice.
And now, back to our regularly-scheduled Whatever —
— JS
Also, I’m aware that at the moment my green comment background is not there. I’ll see what I can do about that.
Update: Whoops! Never mind. There it is.
Yeah, I’m not too impressed by the new bloc editor. For a blog, it’s mostly a needless complication plus a few things are now a bit more difficult. On the other hand, if I were maintaining a business web site, I might be rather more receptive. Shrug. Thanks for the heads up.
I certainly noticed a change: The Whatever newsletters have been going straight to my junk folder for over a year and nothing seemed to fix it, but they’re now suddenly showing up in my in-box. Couldn’t be happier, and just in time for the holidays. What a nice gift. Thanks, Scalzi and WordPress!
I thought I noticed the email and Name fields for commenting reversed and in a default font for a day or so, but it’s now back to the way it was. Mozilla form-autofill didn’t have any problem with that.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who repeats that Caddyshack quote whenever I get a chance! :)
Oh this is much better. When I was checking out the gift guides I kept seeing big blank spaces and most of the links were missing, so I was despairing as I always enjoy the gift guides. But now it’s fixed! Back to trying to work out which of the new exciting books and stuff I can’t live without…
Apparently their update also broke something about embedding graphics with Safari/Apple browsers. I have had the same problem on 2 other wordpress blogs. Photos you post to your blog entries aren’t visible to me. Just a black outline where the photo should be.
Oddly though the pix embedded in tweets & in the sidebar show up fine. I’m unsure whether this is a “settings” problem on my end or if it is something about how wordpress handles pictures.
You should look at your mobile version. It looks nothing like what you want your site to look like, and I know that because you clearly don’t like sans serif fonts and the mobile version is full of them.
Also, the mobile version doesn’t give access to the”Post Comment” button, I had to copy my comment, switch to non mobile, and paste it.
Otherwise, good luck with the new software.
Your site icon has gone wonky too, the little one that sits in the browser tab is now just a WordPress logo!
“Whatever” is my #3 saved bookmark news source, after Twitter & The Grauniad, but before Google News, BBC, el Reg, SlashDot etc. So thank you, John and WordPress, for continuing to maintain it to my required standards!
Is anyone else getting email everytime someone comments on ANY post you have viewed? I made a comment on Day 3’s post, and now I get emailed any comment someone makes on ANY post I’ve viewed since this post.
I’ve received email about comments on this page, Day 1, Day 3 (commented on this post), and Tale of Billboards, all of which I’ve viewed. But no email about Day 2, which I haven’t viewed.
In addition, I can’t use the WordPress icon to log in. If I do, when I try to Post Comment, it tell me my WordPress login has expired, even if I try to post immediately after I’ve logged on via WordPress icon, and I’m directly logged in to my WordPress blog.
I don’t know what’s going on, but I hope they fix it soon.