I love WordPress. For example, if I see a typo in an existing post, I can click on an “Edit” associated with it–something visible only to me. Wrinkles like this make me rejoice that I dumped Blogger. If the human is a rotten proofer, which I am, maybe WordPress can slightly compensate. Also helpful is the ability to continue posts on other pages, so that when I’m doing a full-length rant, the impatient needn’t scroll down for the latest on e-books in Kuala Lumpur. Just the same, I certainly am paying my dues in breaking in WordPress. At first WordPress posted my new entries almost instantly. Then I imported my old Blogger posts. Result? WordPress is just creeping along, and items sometimes need five or ten minutes to save in the “publish” mode. Could this just be a peculiarity at my end–or my Web hosting service’s? Very possibly! Or is Version 1.5 still in need of more polishing?
If so, TeleRead should be a pretty good test site since this blog most likely contains more than 800,000 words–with a higher-than-average use of linking. I would welcome help from the WordPress community. A friend who’s a seasoned WordPress user gave it a shot, studying the forums and documention carefully, and couldn’t find answer. What’s more, I checked with my Web hosting service and found that the MySQL server and the rest were working fine. I understand a few other people are also reporting slowdowns with WordPress.
A second problem, most likely one specific to me, is that I cannot get Feedburner or MyYahoo to recognize either my RSS 2 feed or my Atom–whether I use the default look or an auxiliary theme. Anyone have ideas as to what’s going on? On Feedburner, I get 404-type errors.
More positively, as noted earlier, I am finding WordPress to be vastly better for serious blogging than Blogger, given all the new options available. I’m glad I made the switch. If nothing else, WordPress’s preview capabilities are better than Blogger’s, meaning that the glitch rate should decline.
“Never Sick When the Doctor’s Looking at Me” Department: Naturally when I was writing this post, WordPress needed less than 30 seconds to save. Let’s see if I remain on a roll. Posting slowdowns, as regular readers of this blog may recall, were a leading reason why I switched from Blogger–and there the problem most definitely was not my Web hosting service’s. Regardless of 1and1.com’s belief that everything is fine at its send, Reality may intrude. Last week 1and1 was telling me I couldn’t get WordPress going, period. Guess they were wrong. It’s Monday morning as I write this, and I’m hoping that someone at 1and1 just reported for work, checked up on the weekend crew’s findings and concluded that the hosting service was at fault.
Related: The headline grabbing program on TeleRead’s home page no longer works. I now suspect that’s related either to the RSS problem or my use of a different flavor of RSS.
David,
Earlier I sent you an e-mail regarding your 404 not found problem. Basically, something is wrong with your server/blog configuration which sends the wrong http response code in the case of the RSS feed.
Colin
I posted a comment yesterday, which took less than a second. It would be curious if posting entries would take minutes, while comments are almost instantanious.
Hi, Colin and Branko. Sorry for the delay, but my spam filter got in the way of the emailed notification of your messages–I’m trying to remove myself from my own black list.
Anyway, yes, I solved the feed problem by stumbling across a Febrary fix to the wp-header file–sorry I don’t have the specifics in front of me. But I can find them in case anyone else needs help. Strange. I downloaded WordPress just this past week. Why wasn’t the fix in there?
I agree with you, Branko, about that discrepancy. What’s also interesting is that this morning WordPress was really behaving. It could well be 1and1.com’s fault after all. I won’t say they’re making up excuses; the villain could be something more subtle than just a possible MySQL problem.
By the way, how do you both feel about the new look of the page? See not-so-positive comments from other readers of this blog. The “look” is a work in progress. My present response might be to get a no-frills page going with larger-than-average print.
Thanks,
David
I am a big fan of usability. If people tell you that contrast is too low, or font size too small, those can be useful hints as to what to improve. 🙂
Personally, I feel the entries all look a bit sameish, but that is probably because you stopped using images, and because all entries are now more or less of the same length on the front page of the blog. The images and varying lenghts provided powerful clues as to which entries I had already read. Not that you should reinstate them for that reason.
The colour scheme is nice. It seems to shout out: Read me!
Hey, Branko, thanks for speaking up. I’ve just come back from a trip to your own WordPress blog and it looks great.
Because you’re bowing along with me to the gods of usability, you’ll understand why I’m going to ditch the present color scheme. I myself like it–it reminds me of the rice paper art that my late father used to do. But my friends Roy Lewis and Rochelle “Raccoon” Hartman and Mike Ward and a few others aren’t so crazy about it, at least certain elements, and they’re not the only ones. Besides, with the red, there are disability-related issues, and of course I’m a standard-issue Bleeding Heart.
So I’m going to experiment with darker greens and probably no red or orange links. Ideally I can come up with a decent alternative. And the typeface may be Geneva, which Rochelle thinks will stand out better on her monitor (it better–it’s the one she uses).
Please. Keep the feedback coming, whether or not you like the final results! Besides, when it comes to blogs, nothing is final in the end. Sooner or later I’ll be back to a Branko-friendly look! Hmm. Robert Nagle like the new look as well. Must be something among us WordPress believers. Traffic count definitely is up, way up, though I don’t know if that’s because of or despite the colors.
Wait. A question for you and others about photos. If there’s enough demand, I’ll bring ’em back, which I was planning to do to some extent anyway after I adjusted to the software.
Anyway it’s a trip to have the comments. With WordPress I seem much better protected against comment spammers than I imagined. Well–famous last words? Let’s see how long it takes for the bastards to discover me.