Life in progress

Category Archives: WTHWordPress


by 36 Comments

One-Liner Wednesday – I don’t think this is mathing

Is it just me, or does this seem a bit … off?

Photo: From my WordPress stats: 61 visitors but only 39 views. … What were the other 22 visitors doing if not viewing my posts?

If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.

4. Add our lovely badge to your post for extra exposure!

5. Have fun!

Badge by Laura @ riddlefromthemiddle.com


by 23 Comments

One-Liner Wednesday – My theory

Regarding the thousands of bots looking at just one blog post each: I believe they’re AI data scrapers. What other reason could there be?

Photo: My WordPress dashboard showing the numbers above for November 11, 2025.

If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.

4. Add our lovely badge to your post for extra exposure!

5. Have fun!

Badge by Laura @ riddlefromthemiddle.com


by 43 Comments

One-Liner Wednesday – Are you seeing this on your blog?

This is just one day—1,100 views by 1,100 visitors on 1,100 posts. The bots are busy!

 

Photo: My WordPress dashboard showing the numbers above for November 11, 2025.

If you would like to participate in this prompt, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a pingback, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a pingback from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.

4. Add our lovely badge to your post for extra exposure!

5. Have fun!

Badge by Laura @ riddlefromthemiddle.com


by 15 Comments

Just like old times

I updated my pinned post yesterday to include the offer for both The Magician’s Sire and Swallowed for free to my newsletter subscribers, and look what I got to work with!

The old editor!

It was so nice. 😀


by 19 Comments

JusJoJan24 the 18th – Ahhh!!

This post is part of Just Jot it January, and the prompt for today comes to us from Carol Anne. Check out her blog here!

It’s been an interesting day for my blog. And by interesting, I mean scary. You may have noticed it kinda went down for a while.

I spent most of the morning trying to authenticate the email address that’s associated with my domain. I still don’t know whether it worked, but whatever I did in the attempt made me despair for the coming days and weeks of Just Jot it January!

Anyway, in changing the DKIM and the SPF and DNS, I apparently DNR the instructions ASAP and ended up UN-securing my website. I cried. I screamed, I … Okay, I didn’t do either of those things, but I might have yelled “WHAT THE HELL?”

And then I emailed WordPress. And they got back to me three minutes later with a fix.

So my despair was short-lived. For now. But the authentication thing? Still not happening.

If my website disappears again, know it’s just me fiddling around with things I probably shouldn’t be touching.

TYFL to my rant.

This decidedly UNcomfortable post is part of Just Jot it January! Want to join in? Just click here to get to the prompt and drop your link. It’s fun!

Thanks again to Carol Anne for the prompt!


by 7 Comments

Pingbacks still not working

Pingbacks still seem to be hit and miss today. If you participated in One-Liner Wednesday today, make sure to comment with your link.


by 23 Comments

Poll for Pingback Users

Pingbacks have been unreliable for a while now, but it seems in the last week or so they’ve gone from fickle to downright unstable.

I’d like to conduct a little experiment, to see if different types of accounts/different editors have anything to do with the recent issues.

Please choose one of the following, and let’s see if there’s any clear correlation between the technology we’re using and the pingback failures many of us are having.

Thanks for participating!

And thanks for the idea, Shelley!


by 11 Comments

Pingback PSA

Just a quick note to let you know that the pingbacks are hit and miss today. Ones that should be working, aren’t.

If you participated in SoCS, make sure you check the prompt post and see if your pingback showed up. Here’s a handy link: https://lindaghill.com/2019/04/26/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-27-19/

Thanks!


by 35 Comments

Bots and Pingbacks – Beware

Here we go again. The bots and spammers have found a new trick. I had a spammer ping back to one of my older prompts this morning. Fortunately I get a little preview in my notifications of what’s in the body of the post where the link to my blog is situated. UNfortunately, you can’t see the preview in the link in my comments.

The one I caught this morning was trying to advertise steroids. All this to say if you see a pingback that’s suspect on one of my prompts, don’t click on it. I’ll do my best to zap them before they cause any trouble. And if you get one of these bots pinging back on your own blog, be sure to hit the spam button rather than delete, so maybe Akismet’s algorithms will catch them. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Please spread the word either by reblogging this or writing your own post. Don’t let the bots get the upper hand! Thanks!


by 62 Comments

Outlook Spam?

Am I the only one who’s getting an influx of spam from Outlook e-mail accounts? About half of them are getting through the spam filter, and if I had to estimate, there have been sixty or seventy in the last couple of days. I don’t want to turn off the option to let people who aren’t WordPress users comment on my posts, but this is getting ridiculous. And they’ve started swearing–and threatening to touch me, too! Here’s the last message I sent to spam:

F*ckin’ amazing issues here. I am very happy to peer your article. Thanks so much and i am looking ahead to touch you. Will you kindly drop me a mail?

That was on one of my Second Seat posts. What the bloody hell?