In response to those who have contacted me about the difficulty they are experiencing when trying to respond with a comment on any of these posts, and to those subscribers who have let me know they haven’t gotten the expected email notifications when a new post comes out – all I can say is that I am sorry and throw my hands up in exasperation regarding WordPress and its ever-growing shortcomings. While WordPress has made a few improvements over the years, in other areas it has very much devolved.

I understand how frustrating it is to want to quickly respond to something and find you have to jump through a number of hoops, sign-ups and re-sign-ups, only to be thwarted at the end and finally give up. I appreciate those who have tried. Once upon a time it was not that way, so I don’t understand what has changed. Some comments are now coming through as “Anonymous”, even though some of those comments are from regular, long-time readers who are not anonymous at all, but just end up going that route, as it seems to be the easiest path.

Suspecting it was a problem I created myself, I’ve gone through all the settings, but they seem to check out fine. I’m not into adding plug-ins and all sorts of other whistles and bells and complications. Honestly, I don’t understand all of those details. I’m computer savvy up to a certain limit and after that, well…… I really need a WordPress Expert to help me out and Fix Things. In the past I have tried contacting them and gotten No Response.

As a test, I tried subscribing to my own blog using a different email address, requesting to be notified. I’ve yet to receive even one notification saying there is a new post. Some people are getting them and others are not, and I don’t understand why.

This blog does not generate a whole lot of traffic, which is fine, as garnering a huge readership was not the point of starting it, nor continuing on with it. I’m not into putting this stuff out on social media in order to gain any attention, although every once in a while a post has found its way there through who knows what source. There are sometimes surprises. Lately I’ve been wondering who at the New York Times has been stopping by to read. I get hits on this site from places all over the world – some very unexpected countries – at any given time. Unless I hear from someone, most of my blog readership seems to be shrouded in mystery.

Perhaps there is a particular keyword in the content which causes it; maybe someone is looking at my photos, or somebody somewhere out there far away stumbled upon it and just enjoys or relates to what is being said. Actually, you would not believe which posts tend to get the most attention. I Can Make Poison Arrows Now (7/29/2011) is one of three that gets more hits than any of them! Why???? Do people think there is a recipe in there for that? Does somebody want to make them???? It makes absolutely no sense.

Once upon a time, WordPress used to tell you exactly what keywords were driving readers to a particular post. Now that option seems to have vanished. I suspect you might now have to pay for that feature – which would kind of stink. I don’t want to have a significant monthly expense in order to post on a site that has a very small (but devoted) subscribed and followed readership. This is not a business, this is not my job. It’s bad enough they insert advertisements within the blog now (which I think you have to pay to get removed). They giveth and then they taketh away. Are these deliberate monkey wrenches they are throwing in now to create a case of “you get what you pay for?”

Then there is the question of bots and spam, most of which have come from a particular country (which you can probably guess), but will not name, since that might just end up generating more spam. If you want to block that particular country from spamming you, you have to pay for a plug-in or a separate service to do that. I don’t know why WordPress just won’t build in a feature that just allows you to click a button and immediately block that entire source instead of having to track down and meticulously block each IP address – it’s ridiculous.

But oddly enough, over the past few weeks my spam folder has been totally empty. Nil. I used to get pages and pages of often very obnoxious spam replies every single day, mostly from the same two countries. Right now there are zero comments in my spam box. While it is kind of a relief, I have to wonder if these posts aren’t even reaching the spammers anymore? Go figure……

I follow a few writers on WordPress, but they are mostly high-volume sites who are doing this professionally. Are they encountering some of the same issues? A few people have declared that “WordPress Sucks” and have suggested I ditch them for a different venue. The thing is, this has been my “home” since January 2011. That’s twelve years of writing on this site. It’s comfortable and honestly, it’s not something I’m up for changing at this point.

So I just want to say that I apologize for any difficulties any of you have encountered here, be they from this platform or caused by my own shortcomings. I appreciate those who do like and respond to posts, and especially appreciate those who have gone beyond to make the effort to do try to post a response. I continue to acknowledge those of you who do read and just aren’t the commenting type. Some of you I hear from via messages and other venues. I’m grateful to those who for some reason are not receiving email notifications regarding new posts and still take the time to check the site to see if there is something recent there. I will continue to click around and try and fix things (hopefully not to make it worse).

Thank you all for being there….

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