I’m feeling the need to rant today. I’ve been blogging here on WordPress for about a year and a half now and during that time I’ve noticed quite a lot of changes. I know I’m not alone in saying that most of them I have not liked. Many of the bloggers I read have complained about them.
I gather that a lot of these changes are being made to accommodate those people who use phones and tablets to blog but it seems that the rest of us have become second class citizens as far as WordPress is concerned.
What really annoys me the most is how WordPress is trying to persuade us that the new features are better than the old ones. I didn’t like the new editor, not because of the beep, bop, boop that fellow bloggers have complained of, I’ve seen that elsewhere. I don’t like it because I find it awkward to use compared to the old one. I generally ignore it and go straight to the old dashboard. I’m finding though that although the older features are still available it is taking longer to click through to get to them. This is a waste of my time. If I’ve got an idea that I want to write about I don’t want to jump through hoops to get to where I want to go.
The new stats page is especially annoying . I’m a new enough blogger that I like to check in once a day to see who has been reading my blogs and while at first the link to the old stats page was placed near the top of the page it has now been hidden at the bottom of the page. Did you think I would not notice that WordPress or that I would not be bothered to go to it? Every time I log in to the stats page I’m greeted with either “Have you tried the new stats page” or “Why do you prefer this one?” I keep giving the same answer but I’m sure that it will make no difference and eventually they will just take the old page away.
I hate these “Salami tactics” changing things bit by bit and I hate being taken for stupid which is how I feel WordPress is treating me. I admit that I don’t always care for change. I am a Taurus after all. I particularly don’t like change for the sake of change which is what I feel this is. I don’t know if anyone asked for any of these features to be improved. I certainly haven’t come across anyone who has said “Good job WordPress.”
At this point I’m not planning to go elsewhere. I’d rather persevere with WordPress than find a new blogging platform and have to start learning all over again. I feel as if I’ve made friends here too. There are people whose blogs I enjoy reading and some who seem to like mine. I would like to think that if enough bloggers complain WordPress will at least keep the old features that we preferred accessible. I know the new ones are probably here to stay. But please WordPress don’t treat me like I’m an idiot who needs to be persuaded to use something new. I’m stubborn that way. The more you try to make me the more I will refuse.
Our Other Blog: Two Sisters and Two Points of View 
You know, I just can agree as I complained about this too. It’s true, if you take a look, you mostly find people who dislike the changes. I saw the official WordPress posts where they praise their changes, but if you take a look and see the user comments, almost everybody is complaining. Same for the blogs I follow, a lot of people wrote about the changes and mentioned that they dislike it. And finally there is the forum with threads of hundres complains. It’s clear, the majority of people is shocked about the changes.
Reason is as you said, it’s apparent that the changes are target for mobile device usage. The so called “happyness engineers” in the forum are silent since some time now, because they noticed that there is nobody who likes the changes. The last messages were those like “We (WordPress) like the changes and we will develop forward”.
The problem is that we probably can’t blame the supporters and developers. Maybe they just got the order to do these things. Whoever charged it, there must be both greed and fear that other platforms like Instragram, Tumblr and so have or could get more users. However, that doesn’t detain me to speak my opinion out loud too. I pay for upgrades and feel sad to see where they are heading to. When I mentioned it in the forum, one of the supporters said “You could also selfhost”, that means she suggested me to leave the place if I just complain. Of course I don’t just because a supporter wants me to.
I am not sure anymore how much games, or software products I used or tested in my life, I am not against changes, as you I am just against changes that do make the usage of the product more difficult. And I am not alone, a lot of people mentioned it, but WordPress doesn’t want to listen but it would be better for them if they would, it’s their community.
At the moment I am quite lucky that there are still ways to access the old pages. As you said, the way to access the old pages does nearly change weekly (laugh), it’s annoying but I am lucky that there are still ways. But yes, they change things bit by bit and I am sure that there soon will be no way anymore to use the old stats page and so on. It’s sad.
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Reblogged this on Diary of Dennis.
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Thank you for the reblog Dennis.
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I tried to reblog your post but there seems to be an issue 😦 Your photo seems to brake the whole layout of my blog. See, that is the problem… there are quite a lot of issues with WordPress and it would be great if they would work on theme related issues for example, rather than backend designs. I sadly had to delete your reblogged post 😦
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That’s OK Dennis. I used an image from flickr because I didn’t want an all text post. Never mind. I know we agree on that subject.
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That might be the reason if it is flickr embedded. I had trouble with a similar site called Photobucket. Since then I only upload to my blog so that the photos are working. Might be a problem with my Twenty Ten theme. In some cases it works, and sometimes not. But you are right, we agree on the subject anyway, it would just have been cool to share it as I sign it to 100%. I wish you a nice weekend 🙂
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I FULLY agree.
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