Housekeeping 2023

Done quite a big rationalisation of email accounts and domain names – AND a switch back to Google and Chrome as my default interfaces, synchronized with Android phone etc, whilst maintaining Microsoft for Office 365 document tools. That mostly seems to have worked without a hitch. Also means I have multiple TB’s of storage in different domains.

I’m sticking with WordPress as my main hosted publishing platform (after trying out every other tool going, Medium, Substack, etc.) and like many have a Mastodon channel parallel to Twitter / Tweetdeck, though happy to stick with the latter for now. (Still absolutely hate Facebook, and only persist for a few key groups. The algorithms are SO intrusive and distracting and frankly insulting.) (PS I believe there should be a marginal charge for every social-media post or email – so that the advertising model can be ditched – very small, 0.0001 penny say x no of addressees / followers, but it would generate revenue on a fair personal and commercial basis. But that’s another story.)

My “problem” with WordPress is I have 23 years of content all still backward compatible with my current WordPress version and theme, except for a few rarely followed old broken links – an occupational hazard. But I do have some glitches in Dashboard, Stats, Page & Post Editing and in published Page & Post functions: – (1) loss of Pingbacks – (2) unpredictable behaviour between Classic and Block Editors and advanced editing Plug Ins – (3) unpredictable behaviour losing “sessions” requiring fresh log-ins every few mins between the different functions above. Secure but time consuming!

So I need to do some maintenance to the blog.

Changing theme seems the first port of call – I’m still on 2016, but all those 2020 onwards are very graphic block focussed – and I do have (a few) manual edits of widget contents whose behaviour might be lost and need rebuilding? Not a big deal.

Or, something I’ve considered before, maybe I preserve an archive version of the blog to date – with all working links preserved and any broken ones lost to history – and start a fresh one. But what about a fresh start having a different domain address. They can’t both have the same root address. I’ve noticed for static pages some people are simply using The Web Archive / Wayback Machine versions, but surely live links branch out to original addresses?

Decisions, decisions.

(Anyway – standby for some hopefully temporary glitches as I trial a few options. Let’s start with a full back-up.)

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