A Day Of Mistakes

I basically wasted my afternoon today. It took only five hours for me to mess things up with the blog as much as possible, then fix them. I am usually pretty careful when I am working behind the scenes of my blog. Today I made a couple of errors that cost me some additional time. Of course the hounds didn't change their routine. It was a cool 41° but they both spent some time outside this afternoon. Stella took me out for two walks and with a camera in the afternoon walk.

It all started when I thought I wanted to change the blog design back to where it had a front page with three columns showing the most recent and past blog posts. The number of posts on that page is something I could decide. It's like I said the other day, every blog I have checked out does not have all that I want.

Probably what I want the most are wide large photos when you are reading a post. With the current theme and the one I have used since Thursday morning, it has photos 8-1/4" wide. That looks good on a large monitor but may not make much difference if you are reading the blog from your tablet or smartphone. I always check the blog site on my iPad and iPhone to see how it looks for readers.

The blog title looks pretty messed up on an iPhone 8+ but if I try to fit it on one line to fit the phone, it makes it too small on a desktop monitor.  On Wednesday I had found a one column blog with 10" photos but as Ed pointed out, the blogs listed did not have dates. I found out after looking at it, there were also no dates in the archives either. So I changed it to what you see now.

I know somewhere out of 386 themes to choose from, there has to be one that has a front page showing three columns of blog posts AND have blog photos at least as large as I have now, 8-1/2" wide.

Three columns of blog posts to see on the front page or a long list of them?

So besides of 'activating' a different theme I was working too soon, thus making it look much different if any of you stopped by during that short period of time, I also deleted the post with all of the butterflies I posted a few days ago. I didn't try to re-write the original post but added all the photos back to a post earlier today, with a short paragraph.

I also went back to logging in my food in MyFitnessPal app. Stopping that logging of food will be a slow process if I do it at all. I have taken breaks from using that app in the past, so anything is possible.

As we finished our walk I could see Heidi heading toward the door. She didn't see us coming. I called her names a couple of times and had a loud barking basset hound by the time Stella and I reached the yard. She must have been cold.

She is a lot more vocal since her surgery in September for an impacted tooth, plus another tooth pulled after finding a problem while cleaning them. Today she was named an "Official Food Beggar". I was eating nothing more than a raw avocado and she moved off the couch to my feet, looking up barking at me. She doesn't know that she has the wrong approach and the wrong kind of food.

I'll continue my search for a 3-column front page, no sidebars and photos that are at least 8-1/4" wide when you are reading the post or scrolling through the photos. I have an IU game to watch but after that I most likely will be back on the computer looking through themes, IF I can even find one as much as I like this one.

Found one that did both ... columns ... large photos at 10pm Saturday Night

This is the 3rd post of the day from 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

A Very Strange WordPress Story

Normally I would list more than two photos but today it is more about a very strange thing that happened on this WordPress blog yesterday and makes you wonder who is tracking who and what. I just added two photos today to show you what these two hounds have been doing a lot of lately as winter approaches. Be sure to scroll down to read my strange, weird WordPress story.

This is not my main blog but one I started as a test by listing just a few photos and only a paragraph of content. I wanted to see what kind of response I would get (dismal) and to find out if I could spend less time blogging. Plus I like WordPress better than Blogger but it's almost impossible to import 7 years of blogging with a million photos from one free Blogger blog to the free version of WordPress. They don't play well together. So you will not see many blogs that I follow on the right sidebar. That area is the key to this story. When I glanced at my blog yesterday, maybe the day before, I saw a list of blogs under "Blogs I Follow" ... and I did NOT know any of the five that were added to my sidebar!!! Who added them??? I am the only administrator/owner for this blog ... but there they were ... listed below my original four blogs. As I told the story to my friend is when this story went beyond the bizarre. He traveled for many years, living on the road fulltime on a motorcycle. I don't own nor have I ever owned a motorcycle .... BUT THE FIVE UNKNOWN BLOGS WERE ALL BLOGGERS WITH MOTORCYCLES. During our conversation I found out he made a rare visit to my blog that morning to check on my photo quality as he is trying to sort out some photo quality issues on his own WordPress blog where he pays for his own server and domain name. So here are two things that make it possible that something this weird could take place on my blog without my input. He has friends that travel on motorcycles and they own blogs on WordPress He visited my blog within an hour that I noticed the strange blogs listed on my sidebar He made a comment on my blog I think that is the answer to how it 'started' As I moved to my blog Dashboard to remove them from my sidebar ... they weren't listed anywhere. I could not delete them because they were not listed and showed only the four blogs that I personally added and are listed even today. I opened a new tab and clicked on my WordPress blog home page ... THOSE FIVE BLOGS THAT WERE LISTED WERE GONE !!!!!! To say I was confused would be an understatement. I am computer literate. I have blockers installed to block advertisements and videos from auto-playing when I look at any website. I don't even have Google Chrome installed on my computer to decrease the chance of being tracked everywhere I go. I also don't have a Facebook, or an Instagram account. My location setting is turned off on my iPhone. The story gets much much weirder. My friend that I told this story to, KNOWS ALL FIVE OF THOSE BLOGGERS, and had talked to me about one or two of them in a phone conversation. His phone OS is Android based, my is an iPhone. At no time did we mention names and he did not even know the addresses of those blogs so he could send them to send me. He does not have any blogs listed on his WordPress blog sidebars. Only the first names of two of the bloggers were mentioned in our phone call. I only found out that the five bloggers traveled by motorcycles when I clicked on each blog link to see who they were. I found their blog links on the "Reader" side of my WordPress admin page. For my own sanity and the sanity of my friend that knew these bloggers ... can anyone explain what happened here? Has anything like this happened to your 'free version' WordPress blog? I am not concerned just mystified.