WordPress Reader

WDP — Take It Easy

Fandango5 Comments
Daily writing prompt
How do you relax?
View all responses

I bet you thought I was going to say that I relax by ingesting cannabis-infused marshmallows or gummies. You’re wrong! Well, not entirely wrong. I do, upon occasion, eat an edible to get my buzz on, but not very often. Maybe on once every two to three months.

So what do I do to relax? I will sit down in my leather recliner in our family room, turn on the TV to SiriusXM channel 26 (Classic Vinyl), and pick up my iPhone. I will then either play games, like Solitaire, or I will open up the WordPress reader to see what the bloggers I follow have to say.

But the ultimate relaxation comes when my wife joins me in the family room and decides she wants to watch one of the myriad house hunting, house flipping, or home remodeling shows on HGTV. Usually within minutes of her doing that, I’m napping.

Renegade Reader

Fandango18 Comments

I’m having some strange issues with my WordPress Reader. To put it in context, I use my iPhone and the WordPress iOS app for everything I do related to my blog: writing posts, reading and commenting on other bloggers’ posts, etc. So perhaps the strange issues I’m having are specific to the WordPress iOS app. But I am curious if anyone else might be having the same things happening to them, whether using the Reader on their smartphones or using their web browsers.

Here’s what’s happening. I usually start my day by going to the Reader to see what the bloggers I follow posted while I was sleeping. When I open the Reader on my iPhone, it usually takes me to the last post I read before going to sleep the night before.

Then I start reading the posts in my Reader, sometimes linking to the actual post. So far, so good. But then, without warning, my Reader will jump forward or backward. Sometimes it will jump to the very latest post, zooming past posts I haven’t yet looked at. Other times it will jump way back to posts I’ve already read.

I know that having my WordPress Reader unexpectedly zoom forward past posts I haven’t yet read or suddenly jump back to posts I already have read is not, in the big scheme of things, a major issue. But it’s just one more annoyance among a list of other annoyances. Like having bloggers I have been following for a long time inexplicably disappear from the bloggers I follow. Or not being able to comment on and/or like certain bloggers’ posts. Or having draft posts suddenly vaporize into the ether never to be seen again. Or having the WordPress app freeze in the middle of a post I’m composing, requiring me to shut down my iPhone and turn it back on to unfreeze the app.

But, since there’s no real, viable alternative to WordPress, I guess I’ll just have to learn to cope with these annoyances, including my renegade Reader.

Do You Read Me?

Fandango65 Comments

I’m going to assume that if you’re reading these words that you read my blog, at least occasionally. I’m curious, though, how you’re reading my blog.

(I was going to include a poll in this post to ask you how you read my blog, which is something I could do using the old classic editor. But inserting a poll into a post does not seem to be an available block in the block editor. At least not on the iPhone version of the block editor. So I guess I’ll have to ask my questions the old fashioned way.

Do you read my posts…

  • from the WordPress reader?
  • from a laptop or desktop computer?
  • from a tablet?
  • from a smartphone?

The reason I’m asking this question is that I blog from an iPhone using the WordPress iOS app. I always preview my posts before I publish them. And when I preview them, the app gives me the option of previewing the post from a mobile device view, from a tablet view, or from a desktop view.

Because I use my iPhone to read posts, I preview my posts in Mobile view to make sure it looks the way I want it to. But I’ve noticed that if I go to Desktop view, it sometimes looks weird. Sometimes the images aren’t centered in desktop view as they appear to be in mobile view. Or the text, which looks fine when aligned left in the mobile view, seems lost in the desktop view.

And then there’s the reader view, which is pretty much non-formatted — at least via the iPhone app — and looks nothing like what the post looks like when you actually visit the site. I hate the reader view.

So, back to my question. When you read my posts, do you mostly read them from a desktop/laptop, from a tablet, or from a mobile device? Or do you read them via the WordPress reader?

And, for what it’s worth, I read all of your posts from my iPhone in mobile view.

The Fix is Not In

Fandango33 Comments

Warning. This is yet another whiney post from me about the as yet unresolved bug in the WordPress app for iOS. Feel free to skip this post if you either are tired of my rants on this topic or have no interest whatsoever in bugs related to the WordPress app for the iPhone and the pain and suffering they’re causing me.

I’m generally a reasonably patient man, but I admit that my patience is wearing thin.

At the beginning of November, WordPress released version 16.0 of its iOS app that runs on iPhones and iPads. Unfortunately, that new release broke something in the WordPress Reader so that when you visit a blog that doesn’t have “wordpress.com” in the address, you can’t “like” or comment on any posts from within the app. Since my own blog’s address — “fivedotoh.com” — doesn’t have “wordpress.com” in it, I can’t even like or comment on my own post if I visit it from the reader.

I pointed out this issue to the WordPress Happiness Engineers on November 3rd, and on November 14th, after continual prodding from me, the Happiness Engineers finally admitted that they screwed up. I was told that they were able to replicate the issue, which is somehow related to the way that iPhone/iPad apps open links and how information is passed between the app and the web page. They said that their app development team was “working on an update that will fix this recently introduced issue.”

I was quite happy that the Happiness Engineers identified the cause of the issue and had committed to addressing it. But since November 14th, WordPress released version 16.1.1 on November 20th and version 16.2 yesterday, November 30th, neither of which has addressed the issue with the WordPress Reader.

It’s been almost a month since this WordPress Reader bug was rolled out and even though WordPress has released two iOS app updates since then, nothing has changed. There has been no fix to this annoying and frustrating bug and Fandango is not a happy camper.

User Error

Fandango33 Comments

I still cannot “like” or comment on many of your posts when I access them from my reader on my iPhone. I’m sorry, because I do read your posts and I can “like” them if I read them in the reader view, which is not ideal because in reader view, much of your formatting is not displayed as it is when I view them on your site.But now, after the latest update to the iOS app was installed on my iPhone earlier this week, when I actually click on “Visit” to go to your site from within the reader, not only can’t I “like” them, I can only comment on your posts if I enter — each time — my name, my email address, and my blog’s URL.And that’s a real pain, since the app should know who I am without my having to reenter my credentials.

Well, the Happiness Engineers at WordPress have gotten back to me on what appears to be a bug in the latest version of the app for iOS. I have been exchanging messages with various “Happiness Engineers,” and it has come down to being told that “the issue you’re experiencing seems like it’s not an app issue.” Oh, I get it. It must be a user error. I must have broken something when the update to the app was automatically installed onto my iPhone one night when I was asleep. Yep, it’s not them, it’s me.

Bullshit!

I wrote back and said…

This was NEVER an issue within the WordPress iOS app on my iPhone until Version 16.0 was installed. I could “visit” posts from the reader of those who commented or linked to my posts and the app knew who I was and that I was actively logged on to WordPress. Thus, I could like their posts and I could post comments without having to enter my name, email address, and my blog’s URL each time.

But with the latest update, that is no longer the case. In your release notes for version 16.0 of the iOS app, you specifically pointed out that the reader was “redesigned” and “refreshed” to include “a number of changes….” Since the issue I’m having in the redesigned and refreshed reader didn’t occur before you redesigned and refreshed it, I cannot accept your conclusion that it’s not an app issue. What else can it possibly be? Up until the update to the app was installed on my iPhone, I wasn’t experiencing this issue on the app at all.

Please escalate this issue to your most tech savvy gurus who are responsible for the iOS app. I’m very unhappy and upset and between forcing the damn block editor down our throats and this latest issue in the “redesigned and refreshed” reader, blogging on WordPress is becoming more of a burden than an enjoyable and rewarding experience.

FIX THIS!

I’ll let you know what happens, but I’m not holding my breath. In the meantime, I once again apologize for being unable to like and comment on many of your posts.