When summer comes and we are all supposed to be otherwise occupied with sun, sand, sea and yet more sun, it appears that the WordPress gremlins take advantage of our absence to play. Being British, you can take ‘sun’ and ‘more sun’ out of that equation, which is probably why I have been noticing the odd little tweaks, trials and anomalies around here lately. It is either WordPress playing again or my blog has developed a vicious streak of its own.
As I am certain that after all the complaints about ‘improvements’ the Happiness Engineers would never sneak something appalling up on us behind our backs again, I can only conclude that the blog has some sort of grudge and is extracting a mean and sneaky revenge.
It started by swallowing a horde of followers. They just disappeared. Not, I hasten to add, because my content had so appalled them that they migrated en masse. Or at least, I hope not. It happened in a split second… three hundred of them disappeared for no reason. Then, several days later, they reappeared, regurgitated from some unmentionable place deep within the digestive tract of the blogosphere.
Meanwhile my blog decided of its own accord to unfollow a number of other blogs. Quite why it took that decision, I have no idea. Perhaps it was hormonal… it is getting on a bit these days. Perhaps it just wanted to assert itself. One I had restored the missing blogs (I hope), it decided to sulk and switched off all email notifications once again. My email account colluded and sent the few that did get through to spam, leaving me wondering if the entire world was on a summer blogging break for a while…
Just when I thought it was behaving, a couple of bloggers let me know my blog was refusing to post their comments. They were perfectly good comments, too, so unless my blog has chosen to become a literary critic with ideas above its station, I can only assume this was the next phase of its attack… the first of the stealth tactics. The next was its refusal to send any of my posts to the Reader. I was alerted to this by Ritu, or I would have known nothing about it. I was just sitting there wondering why the ‘views’ had dropped by about six hundred a day. The only post with its full complement of views was the dog’s…but that is normal. She always does better than me.
I have begged, pleaded and implored the blog to let me know what I have done to offend it. I have lovingly reset every setting I can think of and tended its every corner and need. I hope it will stop whatever it is doing now and let me get on with reading and writing.
If not, I may have to suspect WordPress of tinkering again after all…
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
Those gremlins have a lot to answer for!!!
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There is a lot to be said for sticking them in the blender 😉
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Lol! Messy Too!
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But tempting…
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With rusty blades!
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Ouch 😉
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Bwhahahahaha! 😀
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Reblogged this on Blog Pad 2017.
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Thanks for sharing, Henrietta.
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You are welcome!
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I feel so much better, thought it was just mine. However, mine has replaced some images with alt headings. And like you, I don’t know what I did to offend WP, nor where some followers went. Updating a post is one thing, repairing glitches is another. Back to work on repairing instead of writing, but at least I know we’re both experiencing the problem. Technology….
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I know the feeling, Marilyn… it is a real pain when you have to waste half your day putting right what should never have gone wrong in the first place…
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Oh, don’t! The bleedin’ thing is completely haywire.
)
Lost a ton of blogs that refuse to appear in the reader, but if you scroll back far enough, sneaking up on the database from behind, there they are! Not sure whether it’s the back room lads and lassies (surely they are out there in the sun, too?) or whether the thing has gotten too big for it’s rickety, wheezing, database britches…
Not just here, either – social media is a “surprise per day”, and never in a good way.
Tech is the future? My ass…
* (because actually putting an image in a comment is a step beyond my limited ken…
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LOL – The main bit (after the *) has been rudely deleted… hence the last phrase makes entirely no sense whatsover. *sigh.
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Never touched a thing, H… the blog ust have got hungry while I was at work 😉
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I am only glad I got into this stuff early enough to become inured to surprises… At least it keeps my brain cells on their toes…
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It’s all so mysterious. I took a 2 month break, and “unfollowed” so many folks, without my knowledge. There is so little in my Reader, I also assumed that many bloggers were on a summer break…now, I wonder ???
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I’d be tempted to check you are still following them, Van… and whether their posts are actually making it that far…
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Oddly enough I couldn’t post on your blog yesterday. It was Ritu’s gues post and I’d clicked Like and tweeted it, write my comment and nothing happened. I couldn’t click on post comment. In the end I went back to the email notification and clicked ont he link. I could see I had liked the post so I put my comment back in (I’d copied it from the original) clicked post comment and hey presto it appeared. I assumed it was a fault at my end but sounds like it might not be – or maybe we’re all infected by WP gremlins.
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Well, considering comments… I just nipped into this post to correct a typo my misbehaving keyboard had created and find I can now answer all comments on the post from the editing screen (I’m on the classic editor). I am pretty sure this was never the case before…
It may or may not, prove to be a useful tweak… but it might explain at least some of the problems…
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My main problem is getting comments going to spam that are not spam. There are garbage comments that wind up in spam, but some normal comments from people who have commented before end up there. In general I like WordPress and it seems better than Blogger to me.
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It is by far the best platform I have used, but it does have its foibles… including sending friends to the spam folder every so often.
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Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
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[ Smiles ] Oh, I grew tired of WordPress; which is why I blog solely on Blogger.
Every time WordPress does upgrades, it affects a percentage of their bloggers (Which I think is, unacceptable).
By the way, we use to follow each other years ago (The days when I had a WordPress blog).
Also, it is nice to see that you are still blogging.
Do have yourself a wonderful week!
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I wondered where you had gone 🙂 Glad to see you too are still blogging, even though you ‘moved house’. I still rate WP as the best of them, though I admit I have been here so long the others may have caught up now.
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I still believe WP to be the best in spite of all the frustrating glitches. This has happened to me two or three times but you and Beetley Pete seem be affected more than anyone else in my circle. https://beetleypete.wordpress.com/2017/08/14/here-we-go-again/. https://beetleypete.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/spam-check-please/. He couldn’t get past his rage!
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I’m not surprised.. it really is frustrating, Sarah. But I agree, it is still the best platform I’ve found.
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Those Gremlins like to keep us on our toes, Sue and very often play up just for the hell of it! I hope they are behaving themselves now! 🙂
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We’ll see… I’m holding out little hope…
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They stripped about 1200 followers off my blog and I don’t even KNOW how many were active followers, but I think quite a few. I keep getting notes from people who think I’ve been on a prolonged vacation. I’ve done what I can, going in and trying to restore connections … but obviously i was never following all those people, so there’s not much I can do. Folks on WordPress.Org — some have completely lost connection to the server and are very, very unhappy. Overall, I’m about 20% to 25% down from two weeks ago. I don’t know if i’ll get everyone back. It’s particularly frustrating because some of the people who have disappeared were people I considered friends. I hope, at some point, they try to get in touch with me some other way.
There is obviously something going on with their server. Maybe they were hacked? Or maybe it’s another bad version of their permanently screwed up software?
I though I had inadvertently offended everyone at the same time!
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I hope they get it sorted soon, they are bound to start losing followers too if this continues…paying ones.
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IMMEDIATELY after I wrote the preceding note? THREE THOUSAND FOLLOWERS returned to my fold! There’s hope! Now, if only the people who were disconnect get reconnected … YAY!
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That’s an incredible number to have ‘misplaced’. I wondered if they had been fiddling with their connections to one of the social media sites.Glad yours have returned!
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Dang gremlins!!
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I can think of worse names…
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Reblogged this on anita dawes and jaye marie.
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Thanks, Jaye x
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Is this problem affecting the self hosted WP too!
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I’ve been having problems being able to like or comment on some of the .org blogs too.
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Sounds serious then…
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I think all my little problems are solved and along comes another.Oddly enough they seem to be all WordPress related. I’m currently unable to make comments on certain blogs and can’t find a way round it. Difficult as I can’t spend hours at the keyboard at the moment. It’s just apologies to everyone.
xxx Massive Hugs xxx
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There seems to have been a steady stream of problems. I can never get half the .org sites to load properly and seldom get a ‘like’ button appear or the ability to comment…which is frustrating.
Hugs, David xxx
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The gremlins have been working overtime these past few weeks everywhere. I know this well. 😦 I’m blaming the lunar eclipse on technical snafus, lol. 🙂 mxx
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I hink Iprefer to blame the gremlins anyway 😉 xx
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