I am this close to giving up on wordpress (I’m holding my finger and thumb up and I would post a picture but I haven’t managed to upload one for ages.) It’s a struggle every day to make a post because of this new blocks format and it’s quite clear to me that they are trying to push us all in the direction of paid formats. It’s a real shame because I get a lot out of doing this blog, but all the time more obstacles are put in the way. It’s months since I managed to upload a picture and every time I write something I have to wrestle with the Blocks features. I don’t have the technical language to describe what my problems are but other wordpress sufferers will know what I mean. I realise that there are ‘workarounds’ to get back to the classic editor but whenever I’ve tried these they haven’t worked – either because the link doesn’t take me where it’s supposed to or because I haven’t understood the instructions. In any case, the whole point is to make life simpler. All I want to do is sit down at the computer, write something, edit it and then hit publish. I don’t want a lot of technical fidgy-widginess (little Black Books reference there for fans.)
It reminds me of supermarket checkouts. Not so long ago there were lots of staffed checkouts with a few self-checkouts at the end. On principle I avoided these as they take away people’s jobs – god knows, scanning bar codes and moving products from one conveyor belt to another isn’t much of a job, but it’s something. But now they’ve increased the number of self-checkouts and cut back on the staffed ones so that in order to use the latter you have to wait in line while half a dozen people empty their trolleys and fill their bags and find their purses and scan their cards and gather up their receipts and leave. Yesterday I bounded up to one such till which was nearly empty but the customer in front glared at me as I’d forgotten to keep sufficient distance, so I gave up on it (in any case she spent ages arranging and rearranging her stuff and was likely to be the sort of sociopath who doesn’t put the till divider* down for the next customer.) Anyway the point I’m making is that if businesses don’t want you to use a certain facility they will make it harder and harder until you give up.
*the word for this is tildonk – at least according to The Meaning of Liff.
So what to do? Give up on this blog altogether? I’m reluctant to do that as I’ve built up a following over the years; besides, it gives a shape to my working day and connects me with readers. I could switch to Blogger but supposedly WordPress is more geared to text writing than other platforms, so I don’t know. So here’s my question to those of you who use paid platforms: are they worth the money? Have you got extra readers that way? Do you sell stuff? If I had stuff to sell it’d be worth it but at the moment I haven’t. So let me know.
In the meantime I’ll just sit here and grump.
Grump grump grump grump grump
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 