A quick reminder: the voting window for the stories titled The Great Metaphysician closes at Noon on Tuesday, April 5th. If interested in reading and voting, the links to the stories and the poll can both be found HERE.
OK, on to some blog maintenance . . .
Note: anyone wishing to share the content of DisperserTracks.com is welcome to do so provided all they share is […]
Note: anyone wishing to share the content of DisperserTracks.com is welcome to do so provided all they share is the link to the relevant post. That link is below this notice. Thank you.
WordPress has been blowing its trumpet regarding the new Full Site Editor. Who knew they were Trumpers!? What? Oh . . . trumpeters. Right.
Readers might remember I gave up my beloved 2010 Theme because of the Block Editor’s (Ptui!) requirements. Actually, I was lied to tricked into switching, but, OK.
I don’t mind the current theme too much, but it has a few things I don’t like. I’m told I could wrestle it into Disperser Compliance by CSSing to death, but whenever I try something, I run up against the limitations of the theme (I had chosen this theme from of the themes that WP said were block-compliant — but that was more Fake News).
The point is, I was curious about this much-vaulted FSE thing, and, as it so happens, I have blogs I had created at a time when I thought I might split the main blog into three separate blogs; a Photography blog, a Writing blog, and a Whatever-else blog.
In case anyone is wondering what happened, I did migrate all the obvious posts into the appropriate blogs, BUT . . . I tend to mix photos with opinions, fiction with reviews, and, to make a short story long, it was a mess. So, I stuck with the one blog . . . this blog.
Anyway, back to FSE . . . I took some hours I didn’t have and invested them in playing with FSE. Once I thought I got the gist of it, I picked the photography blog, changed the layout to the Twenty-Twentytwo Theme, and set about editing it. It’s worth saying that it’s a Beta editor, so don’t expect too much from it, regardless of what WP says.
So, how did I do? Well, read on if you’re interested (99% of the people won’t be, so, once again, this is for my future me to enjoy). To be clear, this won’t be of interest to anyone other than someone who has a blog and is thinking about trying FSE.
I meant to post something yesterday … instead, I spent hours repairing the blog.
So, I figure I would let others know what I experienced. No, I don’t need help. Yes, it’s (mostly) fixed. Yes, I would like WP to stop mucking about with stuff for just a few minutes. No, I don’t think they will.
I’m also sharing the rest of the White-lined Sphinx Moth (a. k. a. the Hummingbird Moth) I was lucky to photograph last September. There’s even a video of one feeding on inpatients. I say “the rest” because some were shared in THIS post.
Anyway, WordPress . . . wait! Here’s the first photo of the moth . . .
As I’d mentioned in the other post, the shooting conditions were not ideal; setting sun combined with shadow areas made for a difficult exposure situation, but I’m not displeased with how these turned out, especially considering how difficult they are to capture in flight (they move like a hummingbird, and hummers are not slow) . . .
The other day, I tested embedding/linking photos from SmugMug.
I hit on a limitation that’s inconvenient: I cannot create a tiled gallery by linking photos in SmugMug. More specifically, I can only create a tiled gallery by either uploading photos (and using up my allotted storage) or by choosing to link from Google and from a stock photo site I assume is associated with WP (Pexels Free Photos).
Note: this isn’t the first time I’ve linked photos in WordPress. In fact, for the first few years of this blog, I would upload small files and then link them to the larger versions in SmugMug Galleries. All that stopped when — because of constant “upgrades” — WP would wipe those links. That’s why there’s a note on the sidebar (sidebar on the PC, bottom of post on phones and tablets) letting users know that if I mention SmugMug, the links may have been wiped by inconsiderate and user-unfriendly WP developers. Well, it’s likely management, not the developers who are to blame, but the developers should have argued more vociferously against changes that would ‘break’ how the site worked in the past.
Anyway, here’s my first link from Google (single file test).
WAIT! I first have to connect my Google Account to WordPress. Meaning, I have to give WordPress access to my Google Photos . . . but, even after doing that, it seems to hang up.
Uh-oh . . . that’s not ‘linked’ or ’embedded’ the same way as when I link or embed from SmugMug . . . it’s actually downloaded and added the file to my media library.
Furthermore, unlike when I share a SmugMug photo, it downloads the full size, costing me multiple MBs of storage.
Note: that’s not the photo I loaded from Google Photos. The copy above was already in my Media Library. I replaced the one I linked/downloaded from Google and deleted it from the Library since it took up 4MB of storage.
Also, the interface to find and choose photos or albums is (to say the least) crappy. What do I mean by that?
This will be a quick post (I hope).
Here’s the deal . . . I’m nearing my storage limit for my WordPress plan. Mind you, I still have enough for probably more than a year of posts (depending on how nuts I go with photos), but at some point, I’d be forced to either delete some stuff or upgrade to the more expensive plan (for which I currently have no use).
But, I found an advantage with blocks. I’m still playing with them, but here’s the thing . . . my workflow goes something like this: after inserting resized photos here, I upload the full-size photos in SmugMug. I then link the SmugMug gallery back here, and maybe two people visit it. The same two people are also the only ones who might click on the photos in the blog post to see the larger size.
Now, I can kill . . . er . . . show two birds with one photo. Well, it’s the same bird, but work with me here.
The above photo is embedded from a gallery on SmugMug, and it’s not using up any of my WordPress storage. Furthermore . . .
So, yesterday I posted a quick observation about the state of comments on this blog (and maybe blogs in general, based on some of the feedback).
I might have come across as rueful of the situation, hence let me clarify a few things because I fear unintended consequences from that post . . .
Namely, I fear an increase in comments due to people (consciously or unconsciously) thinking I was pressuring them (consciously or unconsciously) to comment more often.
Well, let me set the record straight . . .
In yesterday’s post, I linked THIS<<link post and my sister AnnMarie mentioned how nice it was to see multiple comments. I went back and counted . . . there were 16 unique individuals leaving comments.
It’s something I’ve also noted as I occasionally go back and read old posts. Namely, there used to be more people leaving comments as late as four years ago than this year. To be clear, the slowdown started sometime in the last three years and it has now reached a point where I can expect comments from a maximum of two, maybe three people leaving a comment, and it’s the same two or three people.
Most of the readers who at one time I considered “regulars” are no more. I don’t mean they’ve died (although — sadly — a few have, and they are deeply missed). I mean they no longer seem active in the blogging community. Some have blogs that have gone dormant without explanation, and some indicated their focus and interests have shifted.
Yup, still busy . . . these days are just flying by and before I know it, it’s late at night. So, more samples of photos that will appear in future posts (with others, of course). Yesterday morning, a few Northern Mocking birds frolicked in my backyard . . .
They gave me lots of opportunities to get decent photos both with the D7500 (above) and the P900 (below).
Yup, still busy . . . but, I want to give a glimpse of a few things coming up. Meaning, these are photos that will appear in future posts (with others, of course). For instance, bugs . . .
I have a ton of hummingbird videos and photos . . . I’ll need to decide what and how much I want to share, but whatever it will be, it will look something like this . . .
So, apparently, there are still issues with the top menu. The normal view for the menu under the […]
I was doing a wee bit of blog maintenance when a few things screwed up. This being Easter, […]
The “Z” stories voting block is live and running . . . and still not getting much love (votes). At this point, I don’t know why . . . perhaps our readers don’t want it to see it end and are avoiding reading the stories, hoping that will forestall the end.
If you’ve been a loyal reader of our offerings and someone who votes, you have the writer’s unending gratitude.
Links to the stories and the poll for voting for “Alphabet Challenge Z-Stories” are HERE(link). Votes will be accepted until Noon (Central Time) on Thursday, April 8th, 2021.
So, stuff . . . let me begin with WordPress making another change, this time to the Admin menu(s). You can read about it here (LINK). If it’s confusing, basically, they are making it difficult to find and use the Classic Editor again . . . still. Save your version of the link below to create new posts using the classic editor and to still be able to edit posts using the Classic Editor as described in THIS POST<<link. The menu mentioned in Step 5 of that post is now difficult (if not impossible) to get to via the menu options, but the direct link still works:
So, for instance, I would replace “{blogname}” with “disperser”. In that menu, you’ll still be able to create posts using the Classic Editor, and edit posts created with the Classic Editor without having to convert them to the Block Editor.
Note that WP will tell you the Classic Editor has been deprecated (they actually mean defecated on). They don’t tell you you can still use it, but you can.
OK, so what else?
These summaries always stall when we get to the fourth quarter . . . I mean, that was just a few weeks ago, right?
Well, here’s the thing . . . it’s a few weeks ago for regular readers, but digital media archeologists hundreds, if not thousands, of years from now, probably won’t have the time to sift through three months’ worth of posts and likely will appreciate this summary.
I mean, do you know how much content they’ll have to sort through? Well, let me tell you, but first, a photo . . . a photo from one of the first non-reminder posts of the quarter<<link . . .
Anyway, the number of 2020 tweets future digital archeologists will be confronted with? … roughly 200 billion tweets (an average of 6,000 tweets per second) . . . think your tweet will go viral? The odds are not good.
What about Facebook? … well, as of October, 2020, there are 3.21 active Facebook users. Sure, a billion of those are probably Russian and Chinese bots making sure we stay mad at each other, but that still leaves 2.21 billion users sharing all manner of dubious information and pet photos . . . daily.
What about blog posts? … here are the (depressing to bloggers) statistics (LINK). . .
Disperser Tracks 