I realize that this has nothing to do with writing, but I need to rant. I have learned WordPress out of necessity, but Gutenberg, which is the new way to add content to the site, befuddles me. Before if I had a layout issue, I would sort though CSS files, figure out what to change and carry on.
Now I change things and Gutenberg chews it up and spits it out as something completely different.
Me: I want a list in a quote block.
Gutenberg: Banana!
ME: Fine, I will do it through HTML.
Gutenberg, converting everything back to original after HTML is written: BANANA!
I now have so many plugins, they must’ve started breeding. For the first time in a long time, I am considering hiring a pro to do an overhaul of the website. Unfortunately, the pro I was considering popped up in a WordPress support group asking people how to do the exact thing I was having trouble with and then was very dense about absorbing the explanation, so that’s out the window.
Argh. I am frustrated.
If you want people to sympathize with your pain, making them laugh is a strange way to go about it?
Robert Heinlein, in Stranger in a Strange Land, said that we laugh so we don’t cry.
Ilona sounds very much like she’s not crying.
I agree and it’s a great quote from a really great author. Laughing instead of crying has been an important part of my life and it pulled me through many crisis.
The more awful the joke or pun is or socially unacceptable, the better it works to keep you from crying. Example “Two maggots were fighting in dead Ernest.” from Cheaper By the Dozen. If it makes someone go “arghhhhhh!!”, it will probably work.
I’ve always liked that quote. 😀
Ilona is telling jokes, rather than destroying things IMHO?
Although I generally advise against destroying things with a faceplant. A headbutt is a much better idea. But whatever you do, don’t headbutt with an inch above your eyebrows like Kleypas says in Devil in Winter, use the strongly curved bit further up DAMNIT!
I agree. As a plus, laughing at the idiotic computer program makes me feel better as my feel good hormones rise. Not to the level of my frustrated ones but still has to be better than getting the sledge hammer or calling useless tech support. Well useless because i have already done everything on their dang script and i need original thinking. Yeah i know, company is afraid of being sued. Or maybe the original code writer before marketing got a hold of program dangling in Titans vice grip. Well. Loose and Trash drop it are a matter of male, err oops should have said puppy, selective hearing. .
Face plant just damages me, upsets the maniac puppy and solves nothing. But i am sorry Ilona ran into computer code challenges. She can always say Bless thier heart when referring to computer program Marketing people. Grin.
Perfect response, I laugh in the face of your frustration. Mwahaha
Sorry your having website troubles.
Keep calm and Klingon…
“And a happy new year, you filthy animals”
But maybe the answer *is* BANANA, and it’s you who is wrong ?
I am having the same issue with my site, too. I’ve moved to something super basic and just… do my best. The theme I picked kinda handles the new editor okay, but… it’s so simplistic now. 🙁
I consider myself lucky when I get a list to work right, it formats… acceptably… and aaahhhhh. Yeah.
I feel you.
You’re welcome to come huddle in my corner. I have ALL the tea, and I’m willing to share.
OMG! I think my worlds have collided! Are you the author of “Whatever for Hire”? You are one of my top authors right now. The pain you guys are going through makes me want to learn the WordPress applications. As a computer scientist, it bugs me when designers make wholesale changes without considering their userbase. Sounds like that happened.
Her books are wonderful.
If you can figure out the answer to that, please share. It’s been driving me crazy too!
I think you can add a “classic” block which behaves the old way. Or you can use the old editor with a plugin. WordPress has said the old editor plugin will be supported through 2020 (and hopefully give the new editor plenty of time to mature). I’m using Gutenberg and half the time it’s awesome and half the time it’s super frustrating. :/ Good luck!
Ditto on that classic editor plugin. I spent 2 hours trying to figure out how to style things in Gutenberg and then just threw up my hands and installed the plugin.
+1 for the Classic Editor plug-in.
I use the LayersWP theme on my site and they had said long ago that they won’t be ready for Gutenberg so I had installed the Classic Editor plug-in as soon as it became available. So far, so good. *knock on wood* It works with the latest version of WordPress without any obvious issues.
Hope you quickly find a configuration that works for you.
We added the classic editor plug-in too.
Do you NEED all the plugins? Have some of them been incorporated into others and now are obsolete and stuck on Banana?
I would check them one by one. I know the absolute last thing you need is a time suck like that, but maybe you can get someone to help?
My brother owns a quite good IT consulting company, which does do some web design, and he and his partner are SUPER picky about their hires (his partner refused to hire me, even, although that wasn’t the qualified part but the nepotism part. If you want to try and get at least an hour on the phone with a WordPress expert, we can make that happen for you.
Check out the website here (I’m jumping you right to the website design with super-easy content management system): https://www.kstreetllc.com/it-services/media-internet-services/website-design
If you are interested, let me know and I’ll make sure my brother knows you get a sorta-friend-definitely-small-business rate.
*sigh* and I forgot the close parentheses after the words “nepotism part.” Please visualize it in your head:
)
Thank you for the kind offer.
Any time. Keep it in mind for the future, as well.
I’ve installed the Classic Editor plugin for now, while I learn Gutenberg and while the kinks are worked out of it.
If all the kinks disappear after the next update, it was them not you.
Those sentiments are how I’ve been feeling about Sharepoint.
Use Sharepoint for work. Ugh
Me too and I agree.
I could make SP 2010 dance. I am not looking forward to having to upgrade.
I have (well I offered) to help my friend/teacher to re-do the website for our Academy. (and no I’m not an expert at all, I just have more spare time)
Thanks for let me know to NOT use Gutenberg.
That will be my new answer to everything BANANA!!
So banana is the new 42?
:’)
????
Exactly what I was thinking. For me it will be Mango. Never been able to enjoy bananas. One baby food I was guaranteed to spit out. If they persisted it became spitting with extreme prejudice. Mom said no way was I old enough to aim. I sure could :))) Mashed green bananas baby food did not stay in the baby.
So I must be part quillonian.
+1
You are not alone. I’m delaying updating my library’s website because I’m afraid of the result. Can you revert to a previous saved version?
Nope. Once you update to WP 5+ you are locked in. You should have a backup of your site before upgrading anything.
Is gutenberg what they’re calling the new create a post page mess? Cause I did my first post with that today and OMG DOES IT EVER SUCK DONKEY @SS!! I will be looking for the plugin to change it back. Cause thats horrid. The ONLY part of it I liked was the post pictures in a gallery function!
Try this: use a classic block, start a quote, then add the list. Once you have the whole list in the quote, click on the 3 vertical dots at the top of the classic block and select Convert to Blocks. It creates a custom html block, but I think it does what you want. If you click on Preview at the top of the block it doesn’t look as if it is in the quote (at least on my Theme) but if you Preview the post it shows up with the list in the quote.
I think that it is important to start the quote first and then add the list, because when I tried it the other way it split the list so that each one was a separate quote.
Hope this helps. I’ve got one site that I made them wait to launch until we could start with Guttenberg and another site that I am about to upgrade to 5.0 when I have the house to myself and can swear a lot!
I hate when an upgrade isn’t. Sorry WordPress is messing with you.
Something to maybe cheer you up? Russian language…
https://youtu.be/5P6ADakiwcg
Its classic russian mentality, it at least cheered me up.
I need a translation, it looks fun.
I agree about needing a translation or explanation. I will let you know if I find a link in English, but from what I have been able to find the title is something about a Seven-Year run of luck (as in bad luck). But I am not 100% sure.
It was a hard year
Much harder than the last
Unexpected for all of us
It brought many problems
But here come New Year
It will bring us happiness
And I believe that a year from now
All together our folks will say
And then it just repeats and repeats these two verses and the guy keep progressively cursing more and more.
Thanks, I needed that. lol
In addition, he adds some amazing typical russian curses and wishes for new year.Also the guy in the bunny ears cracks me up
I laughed hysterically for whole 3 minutes.
He’s pretty funny, here’s another favorite of mine:
https://youtu.be/2axxYw7Wy48
I also laughed histerically, and will now show this to my parents
Optimistically I understand about every fourth word of this discussion. So….I’m going to tiptoe back out of it and sit nicely with my hands in my lap.
Me too. Let the experts sound off. ?
+1
Yes, WONT, you’re right. I am sitting here, quietly, sending Zen help to the Author Lords. This problem and any solution are way beyond my comprehension, experience and abilities.
+ 1 ?☺
Hmm – don’t know if it’s my browser (Chrome) or part of your update but now all of your posts are truncated after about 10 lines and have a (Read More) link. When I first started reading this morning (Turkmenistan time) the comments all had hard margins delineated half way through them the page blinked and the hard margins disappeared.
I wish you luck on your updates. The USG agency I work for just updated to the newest (security approved) version of Sharepoint and broke nearly the entire department.
Its doing that in Firefox too.
Over my head, but Bob and I are going to the store go buy BANANAS!
You might want to consider changing providers. I use Squarespace for our website and it is (while limited in some ways) very easy to use.
https://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/website-builders/comparisons/squarespace-vs-wordpress/
Is an option for people starting out, but changing over all of the existing posts, comments, site structure etc would be possibly more of a nightmare than Gutenberg. I say this having had to migrate a big site from a a Drupal environment to WordPress, and years later still finding broken links etc.
Go for the Classic Editor plugin and keep fingers crossed for that being supported long term.
It wouldn’t work. 🙂 BDH generates a lot of traffic. Right now it’s late and holiday season, which is usually slow, and today roughly 16,000 people viewed the blog. on our highest traffic days we can crack 70K in users. We would crash Squareplace. We have to have dedicated hosting.
I’m thinking of how many times I checked the blog just in case there was an unexpected Innkeeper update and magnifying that by the entire BDH.
Haha, I used to reload the blog at least hourly on Fridays and Saturdays until the new Innkeeper came out (because even though I’ve selected “see first” on fb, it sometimes took an hour to get a notification about a new post)…
This is a very serious suggestion… have you tried asking a smart 14-16 year old for help? My office tech support guy started with us at about that age. I’m good with tech and not an idiot but like you some things just baffle me.
Wait! You have an adoring group of fans (stalkers?) and among the BDH surely there is someone who could help and who would agree to be paid with nice snippets.
I’ve been building websites for ages and run a web development company. I’m switching my own website back to Joomla and away from WP (made the switch the other way about 5 years ago) because of things like this (banana!). Not that I can’t/won’t figure out Gutenberg, since half my clients are on WP, but not worth it for my own site which has less in the way of content. I’ve got no real solution for you, just commiseration. It has 2 stars in the plugin directory for a reason. Good luck!
If you research some of the other websites using Gutenberg that have gotten over the hump, you may be able to track down some tech support folk who can fix everything, reasonably and efficiently. Network, guys!
All I can say is , this is way over my head, so Happy and healthy New Year to everyone . Looking forward to Diamond Flames, and Iron Magic 2, and Sweep of the Blade.
Caesar is ??? We need it confirmed in writing.
I am also looking forward to Nick Petrie’s new book Tear it down. Really good mystery writer . Would love his character Peter Ash to meet up with Rogan and talk about PTSD, and building new families and friendships. After war.
Sorry, but in my mind when the writing is so good you can imagine different characters in different series meeting up and having conversations.
I hope you don’t mind.
Faith Hunter and C.E. Murphy did that in their Jane Yellowrock/Joanne Walker short story, Easy Pickings. Lots of fun! Faith Hunter also crossover stories with D.B. Jackson, not with Jane Yellowrock but an Everhart ancestor, also lots of fun.
I’m sorry to hear of your challenges Appreciate your Banana humor – put a huge smile on my face, as well as a bit of dred in my heart. I need to overhaul my site and appreciate some advice and networking shared here.
Sending you as much positive vibes as I can.
Things I Learned in Texas
Armadillos sleep in the middle of the road with all four feet in the air.
There are 5,000 types of snakes and 4,998 live in Texas.
There are 10,000 types of spiders. All 10,000 live in Texas , plus a few no one has ever seen before.
Raccoons will test your melon crop, and let you know when they are ripe.
If it grows, it will stick you. If it crawls, it will bite you!
Nothing will kill a mesquite tree.
There are valid reasons some people put razor wire around their house.
A tractor is NOT an all terrain vehicle. They do get stuck.
The wind blows at 90 mph from Oct 2 till June 25; then it stops totally until October 2.
Onced and twiced are words.
Coldbeer is one word
People actually grow and eat okra.
Green grass DOES burn.
When you live in the country you don’t have to buy a dog. City people
drop them off at your front gate in the middle of the night.
The sound of coyotes howling at night only sounds good for the first few weeks.
When a buzzard sits on the fence and stares at you, it’s time to see a doctor.
Fix-in-to is one word.
There ain’t no such thing as “lunch”. There is only breakfast, dinner
and then there’s supper.
“Sweetened ice tea” is appropriate for all meals, and you start
drinking it when you are two. You also give it to babies for colic.
Just a tid-bit.
“Backwards and forwards” means I know everything about you.
“Jeet?” is actually a phrase meaning, “Did you eat?”
You don’t have to wear a watch because it doesn’t matter what time it
is. You work until you’re done, or it’s too dark to see.
You measure distance in minutes or hours.
You can switch from “heat” to “A/C” in the same day.
Stores don’t have bags. They have sacks.
You see cars with the engine running in the Wal-mart parking lot
with no one in them, no matter what time of the year.
All the festivals across the state are named after a fruit or a vegetable.
You install security lights on your house and garage, and leave both unlocked.
You carry jumper cables for your own car.
You know what “cow tipping” and “snipe hunting” are.
You only have four spices in your kitchen: Salt, Pepper, Ketchup, and Tabasco .
You think everyone from north of Dallas has an accent.
The local papers cover national and international news on one page, but
require six pages to cover Friday night high school football.
The first day of deer season is a state holiday.
You find 100 degrees a “tad” warm.
The four seasons are: Almost summer, summer, still summer and Christmas.
You know whether another Texan is from East, West, North, or South
Texas as soon as he opens his mouth.
Going to Wal-mart is a favorite past-time known as “goin Wal- Martin”
or “off to Wally-world”.
You describe the first cool snap (below 70 degrees) as good chili-eatin’ weather.
A carbonated soft drink isn’t a soda, cola, or pop….It’s a Coke regardless of brand or flavor.
Texans understand these jokes. If you do too, forward them to your
friends from Texas . If you don’t just come and stay awhile.
That’s hysterical. And I’m from a place that’s really named Sugar Land, Texas. Thank you.
Good stuff, Debi, but, from someone born and bred in the South (and we’ll include Texas in that category, barely):
“sweetened ice tea” is redundant.
For any state that has water moccasins, other types of snakes are irrelevant. Other snakes will try to run away, but moccasins will chase you and attack you.
—
And if you ever make the big trip, Australia has at least ten kinds of snakes and they’re all more deadly than anything in Texas, and they have at least ten kinds of spiders, and they’re all more deadly than anything in Texas, and they have at least ten kinds of everything and they’re all more deadly… If you ever visit, you will realize what a paradise you’re living in:-)
I’m from the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan… just about as far from Texas as you can get…. I hate to tell you, but many of those things are simply part of rural america.
We only have one kind of spider, it’s a wolf spider (or wood spider) and it’s body fills a teaspoon. (No snakes, thank gods, but cougars… and wolves… and coyote packs that eat cats… and raccoons the size of medium sized dogs)
We don’t get 100 degree days… we get -40F and once in a while the wind chill is -80 (and yet, no one stays inside except the tourists). And sometimes it snows on the 4th of July.
We also get 2-3 feet of snow IN A DAY on a regular basis. (Last year, from Dec. 6 – Dec 31, we got 10 feet of snow. Yes, 120 inches, in less than a month.)
We don’t do sweet tea, but we do hot coffee year round and every restaurant has a bottomless cup and it’s very often really excellent coffee.
The first week of deer season, everything is closed that can possibly be closed (My chiropractor takes both weeks of firearm deer season off, for instance, and so does his wife/receptionist, who also gets her buck regularly).
2 years ago my neighbor asked if she could borrow space in our big freezer until her new freezer came in because her husband got a buck. She said “I don’t know how he got it, it must’ave come in and set down at the table to play cards. Aint nobody got a deer at that camp in 35 years.”
Going to the grocery store (or really, any store) during the 2nd week of deer camp is offensive to the nose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU1b_D4pLu4 is a song we hear a lot on the radio towards the end of November.
We have 2 seasons, Winter and Bad Sledding (or, if you like, we have Winter, Mud, Summer and Colors).
We not only have cow tipping and snipe hunting, but also mook eyes.
The first 5 weeks of the year, all the college students truck more snow in to campus (usually from the airport) and build statues that are bigger than houses and have intricate details (like dolphins riding waves) planned a year in advance.
The 1st weekend in March, the entire population of the Keweenaw peninsula goes out to watch and help with the Copper Dog 150, which is 150 mile dog sled race. (They claim to get 600 – 750 volunteers. I’ve done crossings where you stop traffic to let the dogs run where there are 35 people signed up and 150 show up to watch the dogs and help.)
The Gay Bar is a bar in Gay Michigan (population about 20), and people come hundreds of miles to take their picture with the sign. (And the bartender (my cousin, Jessie)is the waitress, cook, bartender and they have excellent Chili Dogs and Sloppy Joes).
Michigan has 2 kinds of people… Yoopers and Trolls (from below The Bridge, which would be the Mackinaw Bridge).
The people here are friendly and helpful and very very kind. Poor, for the most part, and able to stretch a dollar further than you’d ever think possible, but Jeet? is a question you hear a lot around here… followed by “Come sit down and have some dinner” (Also “Come to a party” is inevitably followed by “What can I bring?” We’ve done pot luck weddings… with more good food than you can find in some restaurants in the cities 🙂
Surprisingly there are a lot of similarities between north and south…
I thought I’d just add some humor to make you laugh at your State. Like a diversion from your hassles? ?
Reading about your trials makes me wonder how Kate would handle that…she’d probably pour honey on the server and let Conlan gnaw at it for a while. Positive thoughts for speedy resolutions to your hassles and thanks for the humorous description!
Having worked with computers since high school in the 70s – I wish I could help. But I so appreciate your books (I went back and found your earlier ones once I realized the gems that you are). Your blog posts may be exciting, fun, sad, or frustrating, but they are NEVER boring.
Thank you for sharing the good and the bad and good luck!
I am a professional web developer… I do web sites for loads of people and small and mid-sized companies. I refuse to work with either Gutenberg or WordPress… I think I’m working myself out of a job (altho not as I can tell), but really, they both really suck… I get why you want to use it, you have a lot of traffic. Mostly I have to say, well, good luck.
Try beating it with a ripper cushion. Or step back: do I really want this? Do my fans really need this?
Advice to all: save everything in an RTF format and a plain text format. Sooner or later, the evil suppliers of software to work on your machine will make it obsolete and you’ll lose everything.
Also, having learned to type on a manual typwriter, no matter how troublesome your software changes are at least you don’t have to do excersies with little finger and ring finger so your “a’s” are not lighter than your “f’s”.
I also am struggling with setting up a new web site under Gutenberg WordPress. I do not yet know how much help they will be, but I have found two online resources. Currently, due to the holidays, Udemy.com has its courses on sale, most for $10.99 each. There are several WordPress courses there, some with Gutenberg. Also, websiteprofitcourse.com has several videos, including one called “Gutenberg WordPress Tips,” to download. Signing up is free, but, of course, the site wants you to buy other products, as well. I cannot yet tell if the “free” videos are worthwhile.
My first thought when I saw the post title was “oh! When did Steve Guttenberg make a new movie?” Obviously, I’m no help, other than to wish you luck and patience!
You need to find some 12 year old kidd to do it for you.
Good luck
The answer, is as usual, 42.
Stupid rogue comma.
I used to laugh at Drupal with its zillion controls and bits and bobs as compared to WordPress.
Sadly, I can laugh no more. I’m banging my head with Gutenberg, and afraid to change my (ugly dated) theme in fear of your Minions screwing up my site too. 🙁
Oh no poor you, thanks to Philip Gledhill (uk) blog I’m holding off upgrading my wp sites til he’s more OK about it – nice guy & very helpful blog posts for folk like us who look after our own sites.
The last time I connected to my computer was in Windows 98. I’m not as smart as my smartphone. My finger is too big for the alphabet on my iPhone so text messaging is a horror. I’m not stupid but I have no idea what you folks are going on about. I started in publishing when we waxed the backs of galleys and cut them into pages. But please, please figure all this out so I can happily read your books?
Ok, originally I thought this was about Steve Guttenberg.
Steve Guttenberg….. Police Academy? Cocoon? Three Men and a Baby?
The difference between Gutenberg and Guttenberg is vast.