There has been a lot written lately about changes that are happening in WordPress. The block editor and the difficulty some have had in using it especially on iPhones, the many bugs that prevent functions from working properly. I have had a relatively painless transition to the block editor but from time to time I’ve had issues too. The most annoying one recently is the change to the sidebar. I always liked to go to WP Admin and write my posts from there but this is no longer offered. I have applied a workaround to my desktop computer as that’s where I do most of my blogging but not, so far to the laptop. I also find it annoying that my image gallery displays differently now and it seems harder to find specific photos when I search for them. I am also suspicious of the notifications that WordPress sends me at times. Frequently I get a notification about a blogging “streak” of so many days in a row. When I was posting almost daily I didn’t pay much attention to these but lately I’ve gone several days without posting and I still get them. This morning I got “congratulations for posting 3 days in a row” but my last post was 5 days ago. If they get that wrong how can I trust any of their stats? I also think that the attitude of the “Happiness Engineers” towards hobby bloggers is downright rude from stories I’ve heard.

However, today I really wanted to write about other people’s blogs. When I see a new person has followed my blog or left a comment I will usually try to go over to their blog and have a look at it. I especially like to do this with new followers to see whether we have interests in common. Quite often I find that the new follower has a business style blog. Not necessarily a commercial business but someone who perhaps is trying to be an influencer or does affiliate marketing. “Why are these people interested in me ?” I wonder. I know why, because they hope that I will visit their blog or link to it and increase their site traffic. I have to admit this annoys me a little bit. I don’t feel that these people are true followers just people who are using me and the blog to increase their own views. My apologies to any of those bloggers who just happen to like what I write about but I know that’s not everyone who visits.

I did a course on blogging for money last year and some of the advice given was to read other blogs and to leave a link to your own blog in comments. The way I learned about blogging as a hobby blogger that’s not a nice thing to do, it’s like spamming. I don’t allow those links in my comment threads. I decided that I’m not really cut out for blogging for money. I can’t create content I am not really interested in personally and I am not going to bug my fellow bloggers with spam comments. I admit I have considered monetising but I don’t really want to do that on this blog or the doll blog. The people we interact with regularly I consider friends and I don’t want to use them. That’s why I could never sell Amway, or any other party plan product. I really don’t like MLM.

Another thing that I often notice when I visit a blog for the first time is how few of them bother to have an “About” page or any kind of directory or search function. I like to read about the blog author. Knowing what the blog is about or what the author is interested in helps me to decide if I would like to follow their blog. I really think more bloggers should have these pages. Photo blogs are nice to look at but I like to know more about the photo than just a caption too.

Another little peeve I have are blogs that have no original writing at all. There is a toy blog I know of that regularly links to my doll posts. They always credit me as the original author but when I visited the entire blog was just links to other blogs. No explanation as to why they had chosen the pieces or any opinion of their own. I suspect this blogger is one of the blog for money crowd and I am considering withholding my permission for future links. At best it is lazy blogging IMHO.

Anyway, that’s just a few things that I’ve been wanting to get off my chest for a bit. I’m sorry if this has been a ranty post. I don’t really like to post negative stories and don’t do it often but sometimes I just can’t help myself.