Adding Stabalisers to WordPress

Writing

Writing is easy.

Well, comparatively easy.

I can sit quite happily writing poems, stories, improbable adventures, and conversations between bears and wooden creatures without feeling the least bit technically challenged.

Then I decided to set up a blog.

This was my mistake.

WordPress, I discovered, is rather like being handed a perfectly serviceable bicycle and then being told that the handlebars are under Menus, the wheels are somewhere in Templates, the brakes may or may not be controlled by Blocks, and the seat has been automatically generated.

Yesterday I spent hours trying to make my Posts page behave.

In the editor, there it was: my page, my content, exactly where I had put it.

On the live site, however, WordPress cheerfully displayed something completely different.

I deleted things.

I restored things.

I changed themes.

I blamed the innocent theme.

I asked WordPress AI for help. It removed a few mysterious template items, cleared the page, and then appeared to wander off, leaving me standing in the wreckage.

At one point I was within a whisker of deleting the whole site.

Then came the discovery.

The moment you nominate a page as the official Posts Page, WordPress politely takes control of it and more or less says:

Thank you. I shall now ignore what you put here and show you what I think ought to be here instead.

Ah.

The solution was absurdly simple.

Stop using the official Posts Page.

Make an ordinary page.

Add a Latest Posts block.

Carry on.

In other words, WordPress needed stabilisers.

Once they were bolted on, the bicycle became rideable even for the technically challenged.

Of course, my editorial team were no help whatsoever.

Sir Hugo, Editor in Chief, supervised from a safe distance and demanded chocolate.

Splinter, Junior Mischief Maker, also demanded chocolate and was later discovered examining one of the stabilisers because he thought it might be “a spare bit”.

Writing remains restful.

Blog building remains an extreme sport.

But at least WordPress is now wobbling along the Little Compton lane without throwing me into a hedge.

For the moment.