Tag: WordPress

I’m back

I made it through Missouri Hope. The grand total was 135 role-players in 240 roles (some did multiple slots) over three days. In other words, a lot of work. I would call it the most intense weekend of my year, because I tend not to schedule intense work on weekends. I need my weekends to relax and write.

I have to admit the past couple posts were mainly to keep from losing my record, which is either 70 days or 90-something. The record-keeping software on WordPress has a glitch somewhere, and I don’t know whether the higher or the lower number is the glitched one.

Now is time to recover and work on getting ready for November. I will be writing my latest Kringle novel in the month of November with a goal of 50k words. I will not be participating in NaNoWriMo, for reasons I’ve laid out here. The wheel of the year keeps turning, with Homecoming and Halloween soon, then the holidays, and I am carried along with it.

WordPress is a Mystery

How popular is WordPress as a blog, anyhow?

According to this source, WordPress.com users published over 52.3 million blog posts and more than 4.9 million web pages in January 2024. That’s nearly 2 million a day.

I didn’t realize that WordPress was so big. How does anyone get their posts seen? How do people occasionally find my page? I guess it’s all about hashtags, but I don’t know that my hashtags are all that special; yet I sometimes have those moments where sixty-something people find me. Even yesterday, 15 people found an older post of mine. How did that happen?

I suspect to really be seen, I would have to spend money on their SEO tools and advertising. I don’t have the budget for that, especially for the fact that this is not where I advertise books (at least not very often). I’d have to be a lot more serious and intentional for this blog to be something I promote. I guess WordPress’s workings will just have to be a mystery to me.

Hostinger Tutorials. (2024). Top 23 WordPress Statistics: Defining Trends and Insights for 2024. Available: https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/wordpress-statistics?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwl6-3BhBWEiwApN6_kgCefZ7YZq2h_l318pel9KTNgBKulOMO8vnDd-9-fbWuZwLA7sNG_hoCPdYQAvD_BwE [September 19, 2024].

The Tyranny of the 24-day Writing Streak

In WordPress, I click on the purple bell at the right corner of my home page to find the announcement:

You’re on a 24-day streak on Words Like Me!

I never intended to blog for 24 days straight. Normally, I don’t have enough ideas for 24 days in a row of content. But after the first four days of steady content, I found I didn’t want to break my writing streak, and so I kept writing. Now I’m looking at my 25th day, and I feel chained to my laptop for the next update.

I am naturally a competitive person, and the person I vie with is myself. Write a novel? (There was a time when I had never written one, and that was only 12 years ago at age 48.) Walk 60 miles in three days? (I’ve done that too, at age 40.) So that writing streak counter in WordPress makes me want to write another day.

The horrible part is that if I decide to not write one day, my streak goes down to zero. That didn’t bother me when I only wrote every other day. A 1-day writing streak broken doesn’t feel like a tragedy. A 100-day streak? Or even a 20-day streak? Much more impactful.

Oh, no! What if I run out of words?

My husband assures me I will never run out of words, as I have never managed to during long car trips. (He’s correct.) But what more do I have to say about writing?

I haven’t let you read any of my writings lately. That’s certainly one thing I could blog about. I haven’t written down a character interrogation lately, either. Or talked about any one of a dozen other things. I want to stay interesting, though, which is a pressure that almost equals the pressure to write another day. Almost.

I’ll write daily as long as I can stay interesting, and I’ll try to write about writing as much as possible, because I think it’s more interesting than hearing about my very uneventful life.

Gamification

Gamifying defined

Gamification is the practice of building in rewards to activities on the computer through completion badges, notifications, and other incentives. Often used in online lessons and certifications, gamification can motivate people who need a boost to get through activities. Completion is not always its own reward, especially when the time put in seems large compared to the outcome. Gamification, even with its virtual and nonmonetary rewards, can give a sense of completion.

Photo by Anna Tarazevich on Pexels.com

Gamifying WordPress

I would have skipped writing today, but I would miss getting that “You have posted for XX days in a row!” notification from WordPress. And, eventually, that “You have posted XXX posts on WordPress!” notification. I have fallen victim to the gamification of WordPress, and I’m fine with that.

Until today, I didn’t associate WordPress’ notifications as gamification, until I realized that they were driving me to blog.

Gamifying daily life

One piece of advice for goal setting is to include a reward for meeting a goal, not too expensive or fattening. There are plenty of apps on Android and iOS that motivate achievements and tasks with gamification. (To find these, search for “gamification”.) I have not tried any of these yet, but they all work under this gamification concept.

This works better with an online app rather than setting up the rewards yourself. I think the act of someone/something else giving the award makes it more satisfying psychologically.

A query for the reader

Do you reward yourself for completing disliked goals? Boring goals? Tell me about your motivation/gamification strategies in the comments.

Word Press Tricks?

Oh I have questions …

I haven’t been on WordPress very long, and WordPress is a very, very complex site. I like to play with the bells and whistles — but I don’t know them. Maybe it’s a matter of learning HTML, but I’m too old a dog to learn that trick, unless you have a quick way of teaching me. Maybe I haven’t found the right button.

I know about the context-sensitive menu on the right, and I know about the floating menu when I type, and I know about adding blocks, but a lot of the options I have trouble understanding. Here are my questions:

  1. How do I make a numerical list? Never mind; I found it. And I found strikethrough too.
  2. Can I do footnotes with numbers? Or do I have to fake it by superscripting in text and then at the end of the document in the descriptive part?
  3. How do I get a bigger caption size so I can describe a photo?
  4. How do I indent a block without using block quote?
  5. How do I get a photo to left-justify with wraparound? I don’t want all my photos to right-justify?
  6. What is the coolest or most useful “bells and whistles” you’ve found here?
  7. Why is the inline image below not letting me wrap text around it?

It’s your turn.

Readers — if you can answer the questions above, please let me know!

Things I Don’t Understand About WordPress

First thing: How can someone like your blog post without visiting your blog post? I’ve noticed this a couple times, where I get an announcement that someone “likes” my post, yet doesn’t show up in the visitor count? Have they even read the post?

Second thing: How do I get more followers that aren’t trying to sell me something? I am growing skeptical as I peruse the blogs of the people who follow me and find information on questionable investment schemes and promotion services. I don’t believe that these people are really reading my blog, but they like it every couple of days so I don’t forget about them. Luckily, not all of my followers are so content-free.

Third thing: Is there a book with hints for how to do all the cool things I don’t know how to do? Or aren’t there any cool things? Or are those things that are only possible if you have the paid version?