app

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.

Can’t keep shifting the blame …

/ Tony / 1 Comment

I don’t know what has happened to our postal service over the past few months. I know coronavirus has a lot to answer for, but twelve months down the line, you can’t keep blaming it for the current issues. We seem to have seen an increase in issues over the past two months.

Back in November, a parcel was delivered to the wrong address and annoyingly the people at that address moved house just a day or so after the parcel had been delivered. Since then two more, smaller parcels have gone astray. Last week three bank statements, all with the same address were delivered to three different addresses. One came to us and the other two went to neighbours at either side of us. The week before, K***’s new bank debit card was delivered to someone in the next street. We even had a letter from the DWP hand delivered by someone in the next village. It is not good.

On Friday, the post did not get delivered until just before 2pm. Now I’m old enough to remember when we used to get a second post, which was usually around mid-day, but that’s not really acceptable, considering how little is actually being delivered by the Royal Mail.

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I received a reply back from WordPress support regarding my ‘suggestions’ for the desktop app. I get the impression that it was a standard reply. Basically thanking me ‘for reaching out‘ and for my ‘feed-back‘. I am told that they ‘...can’t say whether or when they’d be implemented, but consider them noted…’ which is better than nothing. I do hope they consider them, as the app could be a great asset.

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Youngest son did come home for the weekend on Friday, which was great news. Because right up until his car and support worker pulled up outside the house, I had a very odd feeling that it may not come off. But he was in a happy mood when he got here and S**, his key support worker and friend, said that he was so happy that he could come home and see us. He will go back on Monday sometime and hopefully he will be home again in two weeks. His regular ‘home visit‘ pattern is to come to us every other Friday for three nights, but outbreaks of the virus at his care-home put paid to that again. So as long as there are no outbreaks on his unit and we stay clear, it could be back to normal(ish).

Good start to the day …

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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.

A bit of fun … bad me

/ Tony / 6 Comments

I’ve been having a bit of fun with the neighbours. Leeds has produced an app for the smartphone that tells you which waste bin to put out and when. It’s free and can be used on the iPhone or and Android phone. There is even an app for the PC. The take up of this app has only been about 15%, which considering the work and the usefulness of it is a shame. What happens in this street, is that most people will not put out their bin, until I do. They see which bin I put out then follow suit.

Now, this is where the fun comes in. The bin has to be at the roadside by 07:00am. Often, well occasionally I will put the wrong bin out on purpose. For example, I’ll put the recycling bin out on the evening before the general waste bin is due to be emptied. Then the next day, before 07:00am, I will swap the bins over and put the correct one out. Then I sit and wait and watch the reactions.

I know it’s bad of me, but we are all responsible for our own rubbish, so it’s up to us to know which bin and when.

I suspect I’ll get my comeuppance the day I forget to swap the bins over.

Giving it another go …

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At the end of last year, in fact my last post of the year I mentioned that I was going to stick with Open Live Writer as opposed to the WordPress block editor. I was also occasionally using BlogPad Pro on my iPad. But things have changed a little since then.

I had read about my sites Media Library and decided to have a look and see what was in there. I was rather shocked to find that most of the images I had uploaded for my posts had duplicates. They didn’t appear to be taking up much space, but I wanted to know if it was ‘the norm’ to have duplicated images.

I posted a query on the WordPress forum and after a few questions and answers, it became clear that it was the desktop software (Open Live Writer and BlogPad Pro) that were causing the images to duplicate. It looks like a thumbnail image was being created when the main image was uploaded which was linked to the main image. As I understood it, deleting the thumbnail image would prevent the main image from showing or something like that.

The crux of it all was that the only way to prevent this happening was to use the block editor. It was also suggested, that as I prefer to use desktop software to write a post, that I should use the WordPress app instead.

So, I’m giving it another go …

Not happy … Daily Prompt

/ Tony / 2 Comments

I’m fast coming to the conclusion, that the iOS WordPress app should be renamed the iOs WordPress (CR)app. I’m sat in the sun, with a nice drink and I quite fancy having a go at today’s Daily Prompt. “Hmmm,” I think to myself. “How do I get the ‘ping-back’ with the issue I’m having opening the Daily Prompt notification?” I know! I can go to the Dashboard, open the notification from there, then open the post and copy the link. I’ll just have another drink before I start.

Twenty minutes later, and the bl**dy post is showing as “Not available…” Awkward is not the word I used. It is so frustrating and I cannot believe I am the only one having this issue. I don’t like using the editor, as I prefer to double, even triple check my musings before they go public. I’m using the BlogPad Pro app, which I’m gradually getting used to, and I don’t want to have to lug a laptop on holiday with me. I know I don’t post every Daily Prompt, but it would be nice to do so when I want to.

The developers are supposing looking at the problem, but it seems to be taking some time over it. I know where I worked, if we had a problem, I would have to have it fixed within a couple of days or questions would have been asked!

Just a quick test …

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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 …

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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 …

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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