If you think that you as readers and commenters have trouble with WordPress, so do I. I had a couple of typos I wanted to fix in the piece below, and so called it up for edit, fixed them, and then WP offered me not “Update” but instead “Publish”, but I thought it was normal and pushed the button. The new piece now sat on top of the old, but all comments and likes had been stripped. I was able to recover the original from trash, make the fixes and then not “update” but rather “publish” one more time, but this time the comments and likes were intact.
Each time I did that a new email went out to the blog followers, who if they still follow the blog wonder what in the hell is going on, the same post being republished three times. Me too.
Now to publish a comment, since I have been involuntarily signed out of my own blog, I must reenter my login info, even as every time I do that I tell it to keep me signed in. I’d like to move this blog to a new venue, but fear 1) censorship (WordPress leaves us alone) 2) my own ineptitude that might destroy the thousands of posts, one or two of them pretty good, that reside here.
I am open to suggestions.
Piece of Mindful 
WP does seem very glitchy and what’s really annoying is not being able to edit comments. You could keep your site more as an archive while allowing comments on posts still, and move to Substack. People complain that censorship operates at Substack but I haven’t noticed it. Whether it does or it doesn’t now there’s always the possibility in the future but I like the sociality of it with other Substackers and I’d say it’s probably easier to build readership there if wanted.
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Thank you Petra. I need to understand Substack better but I am very interested.
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Substack is a great idea. You’ll reach a larger audience too.
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I agree with you, Petra. Substack seems to be a good option because it designed to encourage people to spread the word. I’m sure the readership would expand if Mark set up a Substack version of this blog.
The problem is what to do with the existing archive. Would it be practical or even possible to transfer everything to a new site?
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How did that name get there. Last time I checked, I was Tim Groves.
Truth be told, I have been having a lot of trouble trying to comment here for some time, and it’s something WordPress is doing.
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Petra’s right. Check out Substack.
Of course, you could just republish old posts on the new site. It might also be fun to go through past posts from years ago and rewrite them for Substack to incorporate insights gained from the comments on those posts and new information you’ve uncovered since then. I could see you gaining a significant new readership over there.
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I don’t know Mark, be careful what you wish for. I don’t think a wider readership is necessarily a good thing. Maybe that makes me an outlier. I just want to have a conversation here with a few honest people, the masses are beyond saving, and no amount of truth will change anything. We are just saving ourselves.
I have very little trouble with wordpress. If you migrate, you would definitely want to preserve the existing comments and articles, it’s a highly valuable archive.
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The other question I have Mark is how do you keep out the trolls? I never see trolls here, which is highly surprising. Just something odd. I don’t perceive shills either, I don’t hear a lot of pushing of useless nutritional supplements or shady drugs – a good thing, of course.
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You’ve been on my blogroll for quite a while now so I figured I’d venture into your comments and say howdy —
I’m a wild eyed Beaverhead County Montana hayseed that currently lives in Great Falls, and I use WordPress out here in the wild. Too many problems with WordPress being hosted on the WordPress servers. I left the WordPress servers in 2011 and haven’t had to worry about glitches or being censored ever since.
I control the servers that host my blogs, and those that have chosen to come over to host on our side get a dedicated ip address and all of the space and bandwidth they could ever need.
Migrating to independent servers for me was a bit tricky. I still have a ton of data from 2005-2011 (from the WordPress.com platform website) that I haven’t taken the time to re-date and publish back to my current database –
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After reading through the comments it sounds like migration to a new publisher is wise. And a broader readership, with more comments, is not a bad thing. There are many topics I can think of which I have never seen discussed in depth online, which I would be happy to provide material on.
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