My point is the problem with WordPress is more with me than anything they do. I suppose it’s fair to say that Blogger spoiled me. Everything Blogger offers is free (unless you want a domain name) because Google is a big evil monolith of a company that gets their money by other means (in my case, cloud storage). WordPress is not Google. At least, they’re nowhere near the size of Google and have fewer means at their disposal to keep the lights on.
Recently, I’ve encountered an issue with Blogger using my browser of choice, Safari. It acted like I wasn’t logged in, even though I was. This problem’s worst aspect was being unable to upload or otherwise post any images. After a tedious back-and-forth with Google’s worthless support, I eventually figured out the issue is with WebKit, a toolkit at the very heart of both Safari and my other browser of DuckDuckGo. I waited for a few updates to my OS and had better luck, but as of this writing I’m still not able to post images. That’s a slight lie; I can post images but I have to use another browser that doesn’t rely on WebKit, such as Edge or Firefox. I don’t want to do that. I know this sounds like being stubborn, but I’m just tired of workarounds. Updates always cause certain pieces of software to break, that’s unavoidable. What’s frustrating however is how long an issue can persist. In a time of software-as-a-service, I don’t think there’s any excuse for a known issue; You’ve got the revenue, you’ve got the personnel, fix it… and no pizza or energy drinks until you do.
This all coincides with a recent change I’ve been making over the course of the past year to UnGoogle my life. It started with no longer relying on Google for logins, password management, or two-factor authentication. That was a very big step and so far it’s had no downsides. I do still have a Google account overall, including a Gmail and cloud storage. Gmail is the best email service I’ve ever used and the cloud storage is really just a backup for other storage services I have, including some good old-fashioned physical drives I have to plug in to my desktop. Blogger is my biggest anchor, the most important reason I haven’t abandoned Google entirely. The recent WebKit fiasco, however, has given me pause. Couple that with the promo pricing offers that WordPress likes to email me, and I can’t help but see it as a sign to jump ship and go all in on WordPress for my blogging needs going forward.
So, given the scope of this endeavor as well as my reservations, I consulted my decision matrix. The decision matrix is a spreadsheet that catalogs the results of three virtual assistants asked to flip a coin. At the risk of sounding spiritual, I concentrate on the question while each coin is being flipped. Heads means to go for it. Tails means don’t do it. The result is a two out of three. The assistants are Siri, Alexa, and Google. Siri said to go for it while Alexa and Google said not to. The only time I’ve ever vetoed the decision matrix was when I upgraded my phone from a 12 mini to a 15. I’d held on to the 12 for a long time, even replacing the battery at one point, and the price on the 15 was pretty hard to beat since it was on the way out. As for WordPress, there exists a possibility of being vetoed and I go all in, but don’t hold your breath. Besides, the deal would only last for three years, and then I’d have to pay closer to full price again. I just don’t feel like it’s worth it right now.
I did decide on changing the theme for my other WordPress site for the umpteenth time. I was going to go for a rather bland but practical number creatively called Twenty Twenty-Five. My only real beef with it was putting color customization behind a paywall. The more I thought about it, the more I realized the futility of the situation. For as much as I love dark mode (give me light text on a dark background or give me death), not everyone consumes blogs the same way, and that's completely fine. You've doubtless got a "reader mode" on your browser of choice and can therefore render any theme on any blog obsolete. If you want black on white, white on black, yellow on navy, orange on gray, maroon on pink, I cannot stop you and I wouldn't want the power to do so anyway. Please, by all means, go bananas with my blessing.
