As I’m sure you’ve noticed that our BigLittleMeals blog has a new look. After nearly 7 years of sameness, we took the plunge to completely overhaul our site’s appearance. Actually, to say “we took the plunge” gives us way too much volitional credit; it would be more accurate to say that we tripped and fell into a deep, scary black hole.
It all began when we noticed that the editing program we use for our blog was becoming increasingly sluggish. Unable to figure out what was wrong, we decided to contact our provider, WordPress, for help.
You have to understand that our blog is just one of among the 810 million websites using a WordPress platform. I’m not sure what a web platform is or does, but I do know that from the beginning we’ve been using a particular WordPress “theme” called Yumblog which determines our blog’s appearance and organization. We should have known better than select a theme with a name like Yumblog – but that’s water under the bridge now.
Evidently, unless you’re on the WordPress board of directors there’s no way to speak directly with a real person to get help. The closest you can come is a “live chat” with a “Happiness Engineer” – and for that you have to be a “premium” member (which for a $99 per year fee we are) and even then you have to jump through a number of hoops before getting to the coveted chat level.
After spending a frustrating couple of hours trying to convince Wapuu, the WordPress robot AI assistant, that I needed more than boilerplate suggestions, I got to “chat” with a “Happiness Engineer” to explain my issue.
After doing a few mysterious remote diagnostics on our web site the happiness engineer informed me that unhappily Yumblog had been retired by WordPress and was no longer supported (even though we could still use it). To see if the problem was with the Yumblog theme itself he suggested that I should “try” a theme called Twenty Sixteen to see if it would be as sluggish as Yumblog. However, he warned me that if I downloaded the new theme Yumblog would disappear and could not be retrieved. - so I had to be double careful not to actually download it!
The “Happiness Engineer” failed to realize that he was dealing with an elderly, tech-obtuse blogger to whom he never should have suggested to “try” anything. Of course, within about two minutes of fiddling with the new theme I did something, I’m still not sure what, that downloaded it and made Yumblog disappear from our computer forever.
When I discovered my error I think that all of our Railroad Street neighbors could hear my f-bomb (I should note that my outburst failed to support my assertion in our previous blog that swearing could bolster holiday cheer).
Ann and I suddenly were the reluctant parents of a blog theme that we hadn’t planned on and, worse yet, that needed lots of changes that we didn’t know how to make. Plus, it was Dec 23 and all of the happiness engineers had now taken off for their holiday break.
Fast forward to after Christmas. Following another hassle convincing Wapuu to put me in contact with a Happiness Engineer -by this time I was beginning to seriously despise the “Happiness” adjective – this message popped up (it was now 10 pm and I was tired and grumpy):
I explained as well as I could what changes we wanted in the design. Following several minutes of throbbing ghosts on my screen he wrote that I should enter the following (to me unintelligible) “CSS” code.
To my amazement, the changes looked pretty good. We finally had an appearance we felt worthy for our next post. The “Happiness” adjective now seemed more fitting.
Feeling a sudden rush of affection for my Happiness Engineer I asked him for his first name and whether he would mind if I mentioned him in my next blog post. I will close by sharing our parting exchange. It made my day.
Happy New Year, Syed, wherever you may be.
[Editor’s note: The appearance of our BigLittleMeals blog is still a work in progress. Expect some changes in upcoming blogs – hopefully without the need for more f-bombs on Railroad Street. Thank you for your patience.]
omg, that’s so cute!
And that was your daughter saying that, but apparently I’m not logged in. —Sara
Oh! What a lovely mess, Ollie! It’s just so real!
At our casa, Gayle said her ‘puter was spitting up or some-such this afternoon and I went in to perform a miracle. She had one incomplete and unsent outgoing message on the screen, so I helpfully deleted that. Everything else seemed fine and she was even “up to date” with updates according to Microsoft. I said she was good and have heard no more complaints. Gayle does have a special “way” with her computer and phone. She can make them perform in mysterious ways, ways that I cannot fathom.
Bob Carleton, Albuquerque
At least you are keeping your cool and avoiding f-bombing outbursts.