I really don’t want to stop blogging. Even if I have to use a different computer — like the Mac rather than the PC — or get an iPad or something else. I need to write. It’s not merely what I do. It’s what I am. I’m not a novelist. I’m not an author. I write because I need to write. I can’t remember when I didn’t need to write, even when I was a kid using a pencil.
It might not be WordPress. I may have to somehow find a different forum, but there will be something. I can’t believe there’s no platform anywhere I can afford and use. There has GOT to be a way to do this.
Maybe by some bizarre stroke of luck WordPress will let those of us who prefer a simpler style keep doing what we do. If you can get it by paying for it as a “business,” surely they can let those of us who have been paying them for years to access it too. That would, I think, make many people happier and cost WordPress nothing since they already have the extensions available. Did you know that the WordPress Spell Checker we got for free is available only as part of their “business” plan? That’s also true of their original “Text Customize” function that were originally part of my package? All the explanations about how we don’t need them were actually more simply explained by “we don’t feel like letting you have them at the price you are paying, so now you have to pay at least triple the price”.
“Disable Block Editor” and “WordPress Simple Style” are both available — for a pretty hefty fee. We don’t need them (according to WordPress) but if you have the bucks, well, then you might need them after all. Just follow the money.
So I started started hunting around today and I found that although you can get many things for “free,” your options in a free format are quite limited and usually include advertisements. Also, no one accepts downloads from WordPress. To put it more strongly, at this point no one accepts downloads from any other platform. Whatever you have already done on some other product, from WordPress to Facebook, you will not be able to move it to a new platform.
The highest rated blogging tool is WIX. There are many great things about it including super good service and very classy templates — and very easy setup, There are limitations too, including one major one. After you choose your format, you are stuck with it. Text doesn’t necessarily flow from one style to another. Probably you could solve that by writing your posts in Word or Google Doc and inserting it as needed in any format. It’s just an extra step — and more work.
You might want to take a look at WIX. It was the only one that appealed to me. Also, on WIX, you own your content. On other “free sites,” they own your content. I don’t want my content owned by anyone but me. You might want to start by reading this review: Wix.com Review – The Flexible Website Builder.
And then take a look at Wix itself (WIX.com):
There’s a lot of material to look at and I’m mostly liking what I see. From my point of view, the biggest problems are inability to flow text from one templates to another — and of course not being able to move parts of my WordPress site to a new one platform. I could go through it and copy my best pieces into a document format — which given how big the site is, it would be a lot of work. Easier would be to keep the WordPress site and dip and delve as needed. It would cost me an extra $100/year. but might be worth it.
For all practical purposes, this would be starting from scratch. I wonder if I have the energy to do it again. At least there are choices. They aren’t free even though free options exist, but they also aren’t insanely expensive either. There are, as we say, possibilities. Pity I don’t have something to sell!
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Categories: Blogging, Humor, journalism, Words, Writing, You can't make this stuff up
I also post on Medium, owned by Twitter I think. It’s free and I have 1200+ followers there.
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I have a lot to think about, but right now, I just need to get this house in order. I start to reorganize my brain later. I’m not sure I have another blog in me. I put a lot into this and I don’t have that kind of energy anymore.
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That’s very good information. Thank you. WP definitely wants your money. That’s for sure. And I recently had to buy more room. Overall it’s been good for me however. But I don’t know that much. LoL!
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I’m just tired. I have a lot going on and I’m hoping it’ll ease off soon. Because it’s a kind of bone weariness.
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Marilyn, I can tell you how you can stay on WordPress and use the old format. I have told three or four people about this and none of them believe me. I’m about to give up. I’m going to email you. It is very very simple.. I’ve been doing this since they first sprang the last change upon us……J
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Details please! You can write me privately. Because i hate to abandon all the work I’ve already done. But I’m also weary of them pushing me around to do things the hard way. I’m tired of the hard way. I need an EASY way and to recover the fun of this.
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Marilyn, open a blog but just type a title and close. Go to your posts page, find the title and hit on the edit. It will come up in the old editor and everything will be exactly the same as before. You can also go to drafts and if there are any drafts there you didn’t complete, erase all the info and begin a new draft..it will be in the old editor form. Works like a charm. If you can’t do this, give me your phone number and I’ll call you and run through it with you.
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I actually have a lot of drafts that are a title with no text. They are ideas that I created and I usually keep at least six of them. I’ll try it. Hope it works!
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Yes.. that’s how I started out. Just erase the content but not the draft itself. If that works for you, then you can use the other process when you run out of old drafts. I think there is also a selection on drafts that says “Create another draft.” Try clicking on that and see if it makes use of the old editor.
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If my vote means anything, I like to stay here. I have downloaded the free version of Grammarly to my desktop. Everywhere I write it automatically spell checks. When I write in the word editor here, it corrects my spelling and punctuation. It’s like Spell Check just follows you around. Sometimes it suggest a word change that I may or may not accept. I would never want the upgrades that will just rewrite chunks of your text if you let it. Grammarly follows to my email and even to my Facebook comments so I don’t have to look like a Trumpster. Check it out.
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If I can stay, I will, but we’ll see how far they feel like pushing their idea of how we should do our blogging. I was bullied a lot as a child and young woman and I have some very strong feelings about it. But like you, I’ve put mountains of work into this blog and I’m thrilled with the idea of rebuilding it. I’m not even sure I can.
That being said, one way or the other, I have to cut back. There’s just too much going on and I need to leave more time to get things that are not blog-related taken care of. Nothing is going to happen quickly, regardless. I’m very slow to make this kind of change. We’ll see how it goes.
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Don’t leave WP Marilyn. Writing on another program and pasting it in blog seems a good option!
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It would be a lot more work. But I am tired of having the benefits I was supposedly paying for stripped away and made inaccessible to anyone who won’t pay their top price. So if they push me any further, I won’t put up with it. I do not like being pushed around especially when I’m a paying customer.
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You’ve as very valid point. Do these people think that by applying these tactics, they can force people to pay more. The only thing that is likely to happen is what you are contemplating, moving elsewhere.
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I think that I will probably stay where I am but I will take a look at Wix. Naomi hates the block editor too but I don’t know if she will want to learn a new system and I have to think about that. I don’t feel like I want to start from scratch either. I certainly don’t want to pay $25 a month which will be more in our money for the business account which probably has a lot of features I don’t need. It is a dilemma we all could have done without.
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Apparently there’s nothing much to learn at WIX. No special writing formula or anything else. I don’t think any of us should be forced into a high learning curve for no special reason except that WordPress is out to make a few extra bucks. And that is ALL it is. If you pay them enough money, you don’t have to learn it, but if you are a “regular” customers, you’ve been stripped of many of the benefits for which you’ve paid because these benefits now belong to a higher price program.
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I didn’t realise that those other options existed under the higher paid tier. Explains a lot. 😦
One thing though, you can actually export your work and import it into another blogging platform. I discovered this a year or so ago when I was flirting with Medium. I can’t remember the exact terminology any more but essentially you can create like a ‘publication’ on Medium, but instead of containing articles from lots of different writers, it contains only your own articles.
You can then import your WordPress text into individual Medium articles. Formatting them takes time and…Medium uses a block editor too. That said, it’s a much /better/ block editor than the clunky monster WP decided to use. There are other issues with Medium, but at least it is an option.
I looked at Wix back then as well and liked what I saw but I’ve never been able to afford a paid account so went with Medium.
I still have that Medium account and it gets regular hits even though I haven’t updated it in a very long time. If you’re interested, this is the link to my publication which is called Tikh Tokh
View at Medium.com
If you do decided to start afresh on Wix please let us know how hard/easy it is.
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It depends on the platform and the current answer is that for Medium and Ghost, yes, but I’m not interested in either platform because they own your content and I will not hand over my content to anyone — unless they are paying ME.
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lol – If you’re in the US and sign up, Medium will pay you for views of your content. [as far as I know, Australia bloggers aren’t part of this largesse].
Unfortunately that also means that anyone who doesn’t subscribe to Medium only gets 3 free views per month. That’s part of what made me stop actively using the site.
Every social media platform – including Twitter, Facebook and WordPress – makes money out of our content. Directly or indirectly. Without /us/ none of them would have anything to sell. It’s one of the nastier ironies of social media. 😦
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I don’t mind them making money. I mind them forcing their decisions on me when their decisions have nothing to do with what I want to do. I don’t understand it, either. WHY force us into one channel when they don’t have to? Why set a price on every little thing, even though we used to get those as parts of our plan, but now they are part of a more expensive plan? There’s no reason for this.
Fine, make money, but treat your customers with at least a modicum of respect.
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Oh, you’ll get no argument from me! Not about that. I suspect that the change in attitude has something to do with size. Once a company gets to corporate size the game changes from ‘let’s make the best product the world has ever seen’ to ‘how can we squeeze the last cent out of this product’. Maybe the change happens when the creative types take a back seat and the bean counters move in. I honestly don’t know but the pattern rarely changes.
Small businesses know that their survival depends on their relationship with their customers. That’s why the ‘customer is always right’.
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I may take a look at Wix, but right now I pay $4 a month for an ad free site with my own domain (the Personal Plan). Sounds like $13 a month would be the closest equivalent on Wix. The WP Business Plan is $25 a month and I could get the Classic Editor plug-in with that. I guess, if I would consider paying $13 to move to Wix, I might have to give consideration to the WP Business Plan for $12 a month more to avoid the hassle of switching blog hosts. Or maybe I should just throw in the towel and quit blogging.
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We all have to make our own decisions. I’m very unhappy with WP and have been for a long time. This is not a new thing for me. I know what was in my original package and they have been downgrading it piece by piece for years. They have no ethics or honor and I resent being pushed around by people I am paying.
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Well, if you do decide to go elsewhere, I may follow you.
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I have used the free version of WP since I began with them as Xanga collapsed. I’ve never had the problems of change that you have, and, even with a photo-heavy site, I am only just now coming to the end of the amount of photos that I can store with my blogs. I use WP as my ONLY platform — no FB or anything else of theirs, and no other blogging platforms. I don’t worry too much about numbers of followers, etc — just blog and enjoy it!
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I’ve long since exceeded the “free” amount allowed for photographs. I post a lot more often than most people and I post more pictures. And I loathe their advertisements.
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