First, I want to send a short apology!
Last night, I was updating some old content (mostly just changing categories), and for some reason WordPress decided to notify followers as if I were publishing them as new posts. I was completely unaware of that until my sister let me know she was getting emails for merely updating old posts!
Incredibly sorry for any notifications – have no idea why WordPress does that or if there’s a way to stop it from doing that when you update old posts. Suffice to say, I’m done moving things around, and I rarely do that, so hopefully that will be the end of it.
Lilting Fiddle
As some may know, I had pulled fiddle content into this blog a while back. Earlier this year, I decided I wanted to explore hosting it somewhere else again and trying out a new site editor I was messing with.
While I was able to do that using this site editor, I wasn’t 100% happy with the results. Mostly because the blogging side of the site editor is lacking in a number of features I need to make a robust blog. While the software is continuously being updated, I’ve been watching what they’ve been focused on, and none of it seems to be around the features I need.
Along comes the full site block editing for WP where I’m now able to create templates to make parts of my blog look like a completely separate website. I did this for my Uke content, and I knew I wanted to try it for my fiddle stuff, too.
The one design snag that was keeping me from doing so was that I couldn’t figure out how to put a background image on a template page. I don’t know why, but my fiddle blogs HAVE to have this woodgrain background image just because that’s the vibe I want them to have.
This past week, I finally figured out how to make that happen (you use a Cover element as the container – that can have media as a background). So, I knew that once my concerns about WP plans were eased, I’d be moving my fiddle content back to this blog.
I say moving, but I really didn’t have to do much in the way of moving. The posts were all still here, just set to private. I did change some categories around… so again, apologies if WP notified you of things it shouldn’t have!
Mostly, I needed to construct templates for the main fiddle page, side fiddle pages and post pages for fiddle content. I’m getting a lot more proficient at making block templates, so this went far more smoothly than previous template construction, and I was able to get the content all up and running last night as the Lilting Fiddle section!
Gaming and Geek Blog 
9 responses to “Apologies & Lilting Fiddle Returns”
No worries. I was wondering what happened when I got over 70 emails! I figured it was something like you described. Stuff happens.
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Holy cow! Over 70 emails?? I had no idea it was that many. I’m so, so sorry! D:
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No worries, but yeah, it was around 70.
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I double checked and there’s no options set for notifications when you go to update an old post. Nor does it warn you it’s sending a notification! WP really needs to check into that because that’s bad for those of us with large blogs who might need to move things around sometimes… and doubly bad for those following. 😦
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Now that you mention it, I wonder…in the past when I made big changes to old posts (reorganizing), I wonder if or how many times people got notified?? Yikes. 😐
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Part of it also was I was changing the status of old posts from being private to public again. But that shouldn’t re-publish it like this, and given no warning that people will get notifications!
Whenever I follow folks on WordPress, I make sure to turn off the email portion. I check my Reader enough to keep up with new posts on my own.
Lately, however, WP has made it so that following another blog has the email portion automatically turned on by default – it used to not be that way. So now I have to opt out with every blog I follow. Not that I don’t want people to get an email to let them know I have a new post, but in situations like this, it’s worrisome!
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Yep, anytime you change the status of a post, WP treats it like a new post and those who receive emails from you get it.
If you’re just editing a post, I think if you hit the update button it will make the changes without sending the email. But if you edit it as a draft and republish it, yeah, its “new”. I found this out the hard way when I was updating my backlog of old reviews. I was backdating the posts but a couple of people who were email followers got every single one. I think one weekend I did over 100 without realizing what was happening. Not cool…
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That seems to be what happened – I moved old posts from being private to being published again, and it took them as being new. How crummy! I’d have done it in smaller chunks if I’d known it was going to do that. But either way, it would have been a lot emails from my blog that I had no control over sending – whether over time or all at once. : /
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I did on the wp forums of a way to turn off the notification of new posts, but I can’t find it now and my search-term-fu isn’t working. It is possible, but it is site wide so you have to remember to turn it back on.
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