The Atomic Mage sucks
… at decorating and unpacking and finding kettles and matching egg cups, and largely at life in general – though it’s always fun trying to make it through another day. Question: How cool can you make a blog look on a WP free account until you decide to plan-up and throw them your hard-earned euros? Don’t ask me. Ask Oppenheimer, the American bald eagle who just moved into the attic space. Oppenheimer has offered to be my new assistant editor in exchange for tea, chocolate cake and French pastries. Oppenheimer already tells me that if you stare long enough at The Atomic Mage home page, the WP header banner eventually disappears under the weight of its own self-importance. Not that I can talk. Have you ever seen any of my profile pics? Good thing I’m not on (insert any social media platform you wish apart from WP and Twitter), I would be a laughing stock. But seriously now, I don’t do pretentious, ever – however, when I do, I do it in style.
HOWDY!
WP currently powers 40% of the web (so they told me the other day). When they reach 50% will there be a big party? How about a fancy dress do, where everyone dresses as blocks! Cool. I want an invite, but when I go I’m going to dress up as a classic editor and see how long it takes for security to throw me out on the street. Seriously now, I don’t do bitter, ever – but when I do, I do it with the finest sour grapes the mediterranean has to offer.
It’s not that I hate WP these days, on the contrary I still love it. WP has been a constant in my life the past ten years over at my other blog TVTA (which is on hiatus due to me not being able to afford the bills, a slight case of burnout, and maybe some leftover Covid-19 particles still running around in my brain, and… because WP blocks makes it an unnecessary struggle to edit my picture-heavy posts there).
First I was afraid, I was petrified…
When I first started on WP it was easy and quick to use, just how blogging should be, no? It didn’t take long for me to go down the spangly rabbit holes of their paid plans and, honestly, gain a whole lot of fun and pleasure in their blogosphere. I had purchased a Maserati! Now I am presented with spare parts for a Renault Clio (nothing against Clio drivers – I’ve driven a top of the range one myself, and it was pretty cool – but you get my point. Seriously, I don’t do car shaming, ever – but when I do I choose Clio).
Question: How happy is a Happiness Engineer?
The Atomic Mage has conducted a top-secret, exclusive poll to find out! We asked almost 100 WP Happiness Engineers just how happy they are. You might be surprised at the findings! Below is our poll results table as constructed and presented using super easy-to-manage WP blocks designed to allow the user to create media-rich content on platforms which are not yet broken and are already easy to use and understand.
PARaGRAPH, italic, bold, HOWDY THIS IS A POLL
Title, bold HOW HAPPY IS A HAPPINESS ENGINEER?
- Howdy! THiS iS a LiSt
- OVER THE MOON – 1%.
- VERY VERY VERY VeRY verY HAPPY – 2%.
- Write list…
- MILDLY ANNOYED – 27%%.
- TOTALLY UNIMPRESSED UNHAppY HOWDY BAD – 50%.
- THINKING OF DARK THINGS – 10%.
- %3#§!!!@!
- WHAT IS THE POINT GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD – 5%.
- ALREADY PUSHING UP DAISIES – 5%
- Write list…
- Write list…
- Write list…
Shocking eh? Almost as shocking as the dog’s dinner blocks has made of my poll results table. Excuse me while I go contact a Happiness Engineer to register my unhappiness…
Seriously though, I don’t make fun of Happiness Engineers, ever – but when I do I only pick on the ones who are happy by nature.
So, atomic mates, what is the point of this post actually? Not to beat up on WP that’s for sure. I only posted here today to test out the blocks, and to show off a couple of art pics. Crikey, this post was only meant to be one sentence long!
Hm. Seems my new assistant editor Oppenheimer has taken my words and ran!
Talking of running, time to end this post. Thanks for joining us 🙂
The Atomic Mage 
Haha, you are in a mood eh? You know mine, concerning the block editor…so I admire your ability to express yours in such a manner – instead of a whirlwind of f$$@@&%#@$×!
Don’t we sound like those grumpy old men at Muppet show? I’ll bet you anything that’s how they see us down at WP HQ!
Anyhow….
…Girlie said also that you suck a couple of days ago lol !!
Good luck with fine tuning Maserenault!!
And may ITGOD help us…
Cheers!
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Thanks, mate. Oh yes, was it Statler and Waldorf? Lol. Us muppets and old school suckers prob have our profile pics pinned to dart boards at WPHQ right now. Bullseye! 🙂
Maserenault – 😂
And yes, may ITGOD help us!
Cheers right back 😎
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LOL!
Adore your paintings.
Hanging on to my Classic Editor for now.
Have had thoughts about trying to compact my 2 blogs into 1.
Still can’t get a grip on how.
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Thank you 😊Don’t blame you for hanging onto Classic! For posts with multiple images it’s the best option as blocks is just meh. Good if you can combine your two fave endeavours into one blog, but as you say not easy, especially given all the history and networking done on both sites. That said, having two distinct ‘areas’ is good too.
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I know.. 1 ….2 and they are quite distinct.
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At first I was afraid, I was petrified
Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side
But then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong
And I grew strong
And I learned how to get along
Oh, I feel for you!
While I really don’t mind the editor, I find it really confusing that my posts don’t appear under #gnome or #kitsch which is really kinda meh. No Happiness person can engeneer this. Fun stuff. Sometimes I want to call it all quits, too but there is all this community … We might be stuck here for good
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I’m getting used to it but it’s cranky to work with. The captions text below each picture is almost as large as the body text and looks messy. Tags, categories – bizarre.
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I’m using the old one for work and they both come with pros & cons … Whenever I have internet sads I look it up on YouTube. Someone for sure has made a tutorial that is just tailored for your needs. Maybe you’ll find your fix there?
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Good advice. I just figured I can back to the ‘ all posts’ page and use ‘Quick edit’ to add the tags and cats which is easy and fast, as opposed to opening classic. Will do that for now 🙂
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Hey, though I went pretty quickly to WP.org for the Doctrine, for some reason I still use WP.com for my serial stories.
How little did we appreciate the golden days of blogs (Tuesday August 13, 2009 through March 8 2014). A time when blogs sites were a yellow line pad (that never tore, like ragged) and a supply of No. 2 pencils that never needed sharpening (but were never sharp enough to tear the paper, even when writing a response to a submission rejection).
So, I imagine that the money changers snuck into WP, sometime around 2017 and started whispering, “Hey, WIX, Foursquare and those are guys are cleaning your clocks on market share for website building.”
One voice might have suggested, too shyly, “But the millions of blog writers are doing that, writing… they’re just not interested in anything but new posts with platform-friendly architecture.”
The newly hired expert engineer, the one with Scrivener stickers on his laptop, stood up and shouted, “But we’ve got them bloggers by the short phrases! What are they gonna do, go to Blogger?”
On the shoulders of the ones that were not fired for heresy, he rallied the troops with a traditional scrivener cheer, “More is….more!! More is…”
hey, fun to see a new site…is that bullet point supposed to be there?
lol
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Lol you’re probably spot on there. Either the product doesn’t meet the anticipated expectations of the new user base they want, or the existing user base doesn’t want to move forward. I remember when Twitter was really simple and easy on the eye, and their photo hosting and display was ideal – the interface now is like staring at the scattered pieces of a 1k-piece really difficult jigsaw puzzle during a storm 10 gale. I still use it periodically, and can’t moan as it’s free. What peed me off about WP is that paying customers had no say or choice. We can vote with our feet, but it means throwing away years of content and networking. They have us.
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