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WordPress update

August 20, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink

I thought it only fair that I should add quick addendum to my previous missive on the difficulties of turning out blog content using WordPress 5.5 (the latest update at the time of writing) – should one be wedded (as am I) to the ‘Classic’ editor rather than whatever it is that WordPress want us to adopt now.

My complaint (should you have missed that message) was that the ‘Classic’ editor (which WordPress is trying to phase out) ceased to work after the recent upgrade to WordPress 5.5.

After further research online I have ascertained that the problem actually lies elsewhere – probably with one or more third party plugins that get referenced by the editor.

OK – now this is going to get a tiny bit technical, but I promise to keep it as simple as possible.

These older plugins had continued to work across previous upgrades because the WordPress build itself used to include a library called Jquery.Migrate – the purpose of which was to provide a mechanism for out of date code to continue to operate even if using deprecated methods. WordPress have now removed that library – hence the pain.

Some good-hearted folk from the Open-Source community have kindly and generously provided a workaround in the shape of a new plugin – Jquery.Migrate.Helper. This gets tools such a the Classic Editor working again – albeit with a constant background cacophony of warning messages.

WordPress seems to be determined to be shot of the whole affair, however, which doesn’t bode well for future upgrades… regardless of the veritable howls of protest from around the community.

Now – what else does that remind you of?

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WordPress woes

August 15, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

I am not a happy bunny!

I consider myself to be a long-term user of WordPress – the platform on which this blog is constructed. I have used the software since establishing the blog in 2012, but have also built a number of websites on it and have cheerfully recommended the platform to others looking to establish any sort of web presence themselves.

I am – to put it mildly – a fan.

I am not – however – a fan of some of the things that they have done recently.

When one writes routinely and regularly – an activity which requires speed and accuracy – one demands that the tools that one uses do a good, efficient job without getting in the way of the creative process. Such folk – and particularly those who are growing a bit long in the tooth (such as I) – do not like their tools to change because that interrupts the process, disrupts the flow and requires an agonising re-learning period just at the point that one is trying to focus elsewhere – on that which is being created!

The editor that one uses (or used to use) in WordPress is fairly basic, but it is simple – not unlike using a word processor such as Word. It had its drawbacks but many of us loved it and knew intimately its various foibles.

In their wisdom WordPress decided to replace it. Many of us old farts immediately disliked the new tool – a very different beast called the Block Editor. WordPress claims that it is simple to use. Well – let me tell you – it ain’t! Now – I realise this is the equivalent of some teenager telling you that his new mobile device is ‘simple’ to use. That is because it is – to him! Not so the rest of us…

Fortunately – in this case WordPress relented slightly and allowed us old buggers to continue using the ‘Classic’ editor whilst the hip young things got on and did whatever the heck it was that they wanted to do. So that was OK – until the recent upgrade to WordPress 5.5. Now – though the Classic Editor is still visible and can still be opened – lots of bits of it don’t work anymore. It is for that reason that this post looks a mess – ‘cos I can’t access the tools that I am used to employing to format it properly. I can’t format the image – I can’t add tags – I can’t look at the page in raw text mode – I can’t tell how many words I have written…

In fact – I can’t at the moment tell what it is going to look like when published – so my apologies if it is simply unreadable!

Bah!

Not impressed!

 

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