Testing

Testing time (again) . . .

/ Tony / 6 Comments

I’ve just installed the Jetpack mobile app for WordPress. It seems to all intent and purpose to be not much different from the original WordPress app.

I only tend to use the mobile apps to read and approve comments, so using the app may be a little bit of a challenge. We shall see.

So this is a test on an iPad. I shall test with my android phone at a later date.

Only problem I can see immediately, is that there doesn’t appear to be any way of fully justifying text. That is a disappointment, but that may be a feature yet to come.

It’s really intuitive and I have yet to find and master all its current features, so there may be some way to go yet.

I don’t see this replacing my desktop application, more of another string to my bow.

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So the original post was written on my iPad and then edited using Jetpack on my Android phone. Seems to work okay.

Good start to the day …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

We have been hoping that our youngest can come home for a weekend visit today. He has been in ‘lock-down’ at his care home since he went back on 28th December due to him and others testing positive for the virus. The ‘lock-down’ on his unit was lifted on the 22nd and preparations have been in progress since the 10th.

So this morning, K*** and me had our Lateral Flow Test. Not a particular pleasant event, but the result came back negative. This (I believe) means that neither of us have the virus and that our son can come home for the weekend. So two great positives there.

Then, K*** got a text message from the doctors say that she can now book her test. Another great one. However, that was soon short lived as twenty minutes later she got another text from the doctors apologising for getting it wrong. Apparently the doctors had been given incorrect information. But here’s the interesting thing, she was half way booking online at the centre I had mine and decided that she would wait for the doctors to call. When the second message came through, she went back online and booked her appointment without a hitch. All a bit mysterious.

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I am giving the desktop version of WordPress another go. I had given up with the app because of issues I was not happy with. One of the issues is with the way when the app opens, it opens with the last post you have written with the app. In my opinion, it should open at a blank page with the option in the file menu to open a previous post. It gets a bit annoying if you create a couple of posts via the browser or Blogpad on the iPad, and then use the Desktop app and it opens an old post. In this (ver 6.10.0) and previous versions opening a new post is done via the Window menu which is a strange way of working. I have mentioned this in the forums and the answer I received was that the app was still a ‘work in progress’. There doesn’t appear to be much difference that I can see from the last few versions but I will persevere and see where it goes.

Word Blog Post Test

/ Tony / 9 Comments

This is my 2nd attempt at testing Word as a blog post editor. Unfortunately, the Blog template does not support tags. However, if the post is uploaded as draft and then edited, tags can be added then. It should be noted though, that post will open as a ‘Classic Block’ unless the Classic editor is used. Formatting seems to work fine, but as I found out recently, the font displayed depends on the font supported by the chosen WordPress theme. Also fully justified text is not available unless the ‘Paragraph’ option is selected. The classic ‘Shift +Alf + J’ does not appear to work in the template.

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Trying the new editor …

/ Tony / 5 Comments

I’m having a look at the new editor for my WordPress.com blog. I normally use Open Live Writer to compose my post and then post it as a draft post. This is so that I can see how it looks prior to publishing and correct any obvious typo’s.

So I’ve been looking around and still cannot see how to publish my post as draft. . It says it is saving as a draft post, but I know from the last time I tried it didn’t and published immediately. I’ve also looked and ‘Save as Pending’ but am not sure if that is correct either. I did manage to find out how to use Full Justify, but that option was hidden in the More Rich Text Controls drop down instead of being in the Text Alignment section of the block editor where I would normally expect it.

Decisions, decisions …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

When I first had the idea of creating a blog, I sought some online advice as to how I could go about getting my thoughts online. It became apparent, quite quickly that the free version of WordPress was the way to go. I toyed with Blogger, but it seemed to lack any kind of quality so I went for WordPress.

Much of the advice centred on the software I could/should WLWuse to get my message into the blog. Quite a few people said that if I wanted an off-line editor, then there was not much to fault the built-in Windows program “Windows Live Writer” or WLW as it became known. This was part of a suite of applications called  “Windows Live Essentials” that came, ready to use with Microsoft Windows. It seemed the most logical way to go, and most of my earliest posts were written using WLW. Then, OLWas is usual with Microsoft, it was announced that Windows Live Essentials was being run down and no further development work would be done. Around about the same time coincidently, a piece of software appeared called “Open Live Writer” (OLW). This was an open-sourced version of Windows Live Writer set to replace the former. I have used this now for a long time, being my prefered editor.

Now to the point. Over the past few months, I have had a couple of occasions when uploading a post from OLW, that the upload fails and the post is lost (the draft post seems to get corrupted). The problem is that there has been no development work on OLW for some time, and it is now beginning to show its age. In fact a post that I was going to upload yesterday failed and was lost. So now, Im beginning to think that it is time to move on again and choose anothe blog editor for my laptop.

I’ve done a little research and have come up with the following options:

  • Continue with OLW
  • Use the WordPress editor (this was written with the WP editor)
  • Blogdesk
  • Microsoft Word
  • Windows Notepad and paste into the WP editor or
  • some other paid for application (not my ideal choice)

So for the next few posts, I will be writing using a different method each time to test which I find is the most suitable method.

(Written using WordPress editor)

 

Just a quick test …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

I thought I would give this “Blog Pad Pro” iPad app another go. It’s not the easiest app I’ve used, but it is a lot easier using a separate keyboard.I really need to get up to speed with it. Struggling with adding categories and tags. It’s not as simple as with the laptop software, and I’m not sure how to post as draft. I must try and find a downloadable manual.

But to other things. Today is the “Royal Wedding” and that is all I want to say on the matter, as far too much has been said already.

Moving on. Today is also the FA Cup Final, but as I’m not a big fan of football, lets move on again.

That’s about it for now.

Back to the usual …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

Blodpad IconStill testing the Blogpad app on my iPad. A bit of a way to go yet, but I’m starting to get the hang of it. One of the downsides I’ve found, is that you cannot post your missives (is that what I mean?) as a draft in your WordPress blog. Well I’ve not found a way, if there is one. The way it works is thatBlogpad 2 it is stored as a draft in your defined storage area. You can then ‘preview’ your work and see how it looks, before finally publishing it as a live post. Another downside seems to be the ‘autosave’. I can’t find a setting that sets the autosave frequency. I Blogpad 3discovered, to my cost when the app crashed, that the crash happened before the ‘autosave’ kicked in, so I lost a good portion of the post. I’ve now decided to click/tap on the Save icon every 20 words or so.

This app is not going to be my main blogging editor, I’m still firm friends with Open Live Writer, but I needed something to work with when I go on holidays. Don’t want to take the laptop with me (K*** would kill me if I did) and as I have mentioned before, I’m not too keen on the WordPress built in editor. At the moment, there are more ‘up-sides’ than ‘down-sides’ to the app, although I’m not liable to have a tantrum, I just hope ‘up-sides’ continue to grow faster than the ‘down-sides’.

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I’m still having an issue with the WordPress app on the iPad. When I’m in the ‘stats’ screen and I click on the Notification Bell at the bottom right of the iPad app, the notification list comes up as normal. Now the issue is, that if I tap the Daily Prompt notification, I get a very unhelpful message telling me that there has been an ‘Error Loading The Post’. I hadn’t noticed this before, it’s only since I have been having a go at the Daily Prompt that the iPad app has become more active. Anyway, the good people in support are looking at the issue and I am hopeful they can come up with the solution.

Well I think this is interesting …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

Youngest is doing his usual Saturday ‘thing’ and watching YouTube videos on my laptop. He does this every weekend, after he has had his wash/bath, he’ll come down and sit at my laptop until his lunch is ready. I was going to use my older laptop to do some work on but I thought I would give this a go.

So, I am sat at the living room table, with my iPad Mini and TechGear bluetooth keyboard, writing this post directly into the iOS WordPress editor! An unusual experience to say the least. I think I may have tried using the editor before on my laptop, but usually like to write posts using Open Live Writer (OLW), which is a free piece of software born out of the now defunct, Windows Live Writer. If you’ve not tried OLW, can I suggest you give it a try. Back to the post in question!

I found the settings for Tags and Categories and managed to add some, but it is a lot harder to actually work with. In OLW I have a single button that will post some work as draft. I can then go into the web version of WordPress, check for any errors (there usually is a couple or six!) before I finally post. The iPad app seems to offer the same facility, but it is going to take me a while and a lot more practice if I’m going to make a habit of it.

One thing I have found, it seems to quite difficult to centre a line of text. There must be a way, but maybe not with this keyboard.

** Update** I think I may now know why. The Techgear bluetooth keyboard is mapped for an Android no iOS. There are (apparently) a number of differences between the keyboards of the two systems

That seemed to work quite well …

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After a couple of false starts, I eventually got an email post to look almost the way I expected. A bit disappointed that one of the text effects didn’t transpose from the email. Using a coloured font does not seem to have an effect. It maybe the email client I used (work Outlook 2010) which is getting a bit past it’s sell by date now. I shall have to try using Outlook 2016 and also try using Outlook.com.

I’ve not tried embedding an image in a post, which is the next test followed by posting multiple images. From what I understand, if I post multiple images one after each other, they will be converted into a gallery. I want to test if the same happens if I post multiple images with some text in between each image.

I also noticed, that using the Independent Publisher theme does not appear to show any tags, that I add to a post. The categories are displayed but not the tags. I dropped a query into one of the help forums because I thought tags should be visible.

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Stupidest comment I have ever heard “I suppose I will vote to leave, but I don’t really know why!”

This was in response to a question about the EU referendum. Now I know that there has been a huge amount of information and dare I say it ‘misinformation’ about this poll, but you have at least to know why you vote the way you are doing. But then that is the way our country works. Many people suffered and even died over the years, to give us the right to vote. It always astounds me that the same right gives people the ‘right’ not to vote. I could rant on for days about voting, but that maybe for another time. In a nutshell I believe that if you don’t vote, without a good reason, the you should lose that right. Not straight away. Possibly a ‘three strikes and your out’ type of thing, but there should be some deterrent.

Testing ‘Blog by Email’ option

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I seem to recall giving this a try some time ago. I must have had some issues with it (or maybe it had issues with me!) because I think I would have posted more this way. There has been the occasion when I have not had access to the internet. An email post via my smartphone would have solved the problem.

Anyway, this is just a test, so …

TEST TEST TESTING TESTING TEST TEST TESTING TESTING

Bluetooth rules ?

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I am writing this post using a Bluetooth keyboard and my Tesco Hudl (for info on what a Hudl is refer to a previous blog.) I have done this before, but wanted to have a go again, just to see if I could manage to write a proper post with this equipment.

It seems a little strange when, I’m used to working with a full sized keyboard, to actually be able to write a post like this. What it does mean is that if and when we have a few days away, I should be able to use this set up for email and the like.

If I had thought about his first, I could have taken a photo to show. But I forgot, so the image below was added later.

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