Dandelion Salad Is Going On Hiatus by Lo (Updated)

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Last Updated: March 16, 2015

by Lo
editor, Dandelion Salad
April 28, 2014

Decided to take a hiatus for at least one week starting Sat. May 3. It may last longer, maybe a month or maybe the entire Summer or maybe forever.

Truthfully, I’d rather be doing other things in my life. And why spend so much time not doing what you love to do? Blogging over the years has only gotten more difficult when it should be getting easier. Less and less people read the posts although they continue to “share” via social media.

WordPress.com made some drastic changes to the blog editor just over a month ago and with those “new” changes came the “bug” that when pasting text that my writers send to me which have links and other HTML coding, all the coding is striped. If the new article has been previous posted elsewhere, no problem, I can copy it from another website, but if it hasn’t been published then I have to put in all the hyperlinks individually and any other HTML coding.

About six months ago, maybe longer, Facebook changed how they post a picture from a link. They made it so the picture must be larger than 200 pixels on both sides. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. I have to post a picture with over 500 pixels on at least one side, then publish the blog post, go to the Debugger page on Facebook after logging in, of course, then post the link on Facebook, then return to the picture on Flickr and get the coding for a smaller size (but larger than 200 X 200 pixels), then back to the blog post to change the coding. It’s ridiculous and I have posted less pictures because of this fact.

Meanwhile, Flickr has changed their entire website. Getting the coding from Flickr is not as easy as it used to be. They also added coding that needs to be changed after I publish the blog post.

So, blogging is a hassle and each post takes longer than it should to put together.

Oh, almost forgot about Youtube/Google and Lockerz. I had to completely stop using Lockerz about 2 or 3 weeks ago because their grab button doesn’t work any longer for videos. When it was working, I had to log in to find the videos on my subscriptions page, and then log out of Youtube and take the “s” out of the “http” url for each video so it would work. The reason I was using Lockerz was because WordPress.com changed how our blog posts are seen by others on their “new” and not improved Reader. Once WordPress.com went to this Reader function, they changed how our tags are seen by other WordPress readers. The Reader posts only blog posts for the past 2 months for each tag. Not exactly a way to archive posts.

The blog will still be here and I will have to continue working to maintain it behind the scenes but over time it should be less work to do.

Thanks for your readership and support.

P.S.

Happy First Birthday to Josiah!

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

P.P.S.:

July 22, 2014 WordPress.com changed their editor (again) and this is NOT an improvement. They removed the scroll bar on the text box.*

*Good news, the internal scroll bar can be reinstated if one chooses to do so (which I did). Go to the “old” blog editor, click “Screen Options”, then unclick “Expand the editor to match the window height.”

July 26, 2014: WordPress.com problems continue. Now in order to paste into the visual editor, one must use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + V.

Updated: July 29, 2014

Well, I knew that this day would come to pass and Lockerz (vodpod) video coding would not be available. So, I will have to look up Youtube urls for the videos that are using the Lockerz (vodpod) coding and edit the posts.

Please let me know if you’d like to work as a volunteer looking up Youtube videos.

Updated: Aug. 13, 2014

Just when things couldn’t get worse, it did. WordPress.com changed their editor AGAIN. I will not be using this “new” editor but the older one located via Dashboard, Add a New Post. However, since making this change, the “edit” button on the published blog posts no longer go to the old editor but to the new one. This means I have to copy the title of the post, go to All Posts internally, paste and search for editing any of the older posts. Here is the Forum post discussion: http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/beep-beep-boop-screen-is-a-joke-is-this-a-glitch?replies=242

Updated: Aug. 22, 2014

WordPress.com now has a temporary work-around for using the “old” editor. One must open the “new blue” (non-functional) editor then click to use the “classic” editor, then repeat every time one clears their cookies.

Updated: Dec. 11, 2014

WordPress.com changed the entire website to https (secure), so that means all of the pingbacks to my previous blog posts and pingbacks to other WordPress.com blogs do not show up! Supposedly, the tech people are working on fixing it.

Also all video embeds from Blip.TV and Daily Motion do not work because of the https. I will have to edit all those blog posts with a direct link to the video until the tech people fix this.

WordPress.com has made a lot of “new” changes this Fall, including moving the old Stats page to the WP pages that are “too-blue-to-use”. Another change is that the text size in the visual editor of the classic editor (the one I use) is now too large. Plus many other changes have been made that make using WP a complete hassle.

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Updated: Dec. 18, 2014

Pingbacks are now working again. All previous posts must be updated for the pingbacks to work. If you have more than 10 posts to update, use the Bulk Edit function on the Published list of posts on the classic dashboard.

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Updated: Jan. 3, 2015

WP recently posted a blog touting their “new” changes. So I wrote a comment on it. It is still under moderation, and very likely will not be posted. Even if it is approved, no one will be going there to read the comments as it’s now not a new post. So WP has shut down any dissent on their “new” changes which are downgrades for the bloggers who still use desktop computers. WP obviously doesn’t care about its bloggers, particularly those of us who have been here for years. It’s very sad. And not good business sense either.

Here is my comment:

I question the use of the word “smoothly” when the major changes to the dashboard/Stats page have been anything but smooth, not to mention the “too-blue-to-use” BBB editor, all of which I never use.

These changes may be helpful to those using mobiles/tablets, but for us bloggers using a desktop computer with a wide screen all the scrolling makes for an unpleasant blogging experience.

Many of the features we have been used to having have been eliminated, including the time on the “new” Stats page; no bulk edit on the “new” blog posts page; and all WP pages are too blue to use. I prefer the old administrative pages where we can choose the colors and it doesn’t remind me of Facebook.

Happy New Year. I will continue using the old classic administrative pages and hopefully they will not be eliminated.

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Updated: Jan. 28, 2015

Daily Motion videos are fixed starting tomorrow, Jan. 29, 2015.

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Updated: March 16, 2015

A few days ago WordPress eliminated the “use the classic editor” link on new posts and on editing older posts. Thankfully, tpenguinltg has made a user script (must have GreaseMonkey or another program like it) to install to redirect to the classic editor when editing older posts or making a new post. This is not cookie dependent, so it’s better than what WP was giving us as an option to use prior to them eliminating it.

See also:

Recent Changes to WordPress User Interface

From the archives:

How To Use the Classic Editor on wordpress.com Blogs and Never See the Beep, Beep, Boop Editor Again! by Lo