A letter to WordPress

ltrtowordpressUsually, I write about things that are on my mind or problems I’m trying to find a solution for. I would like to bring some issues to the team’s attention that I have noticed through interaction with WordPress.com:

Sharing Buttons

There is no one for Facebook Like when official style is used. It’s only a share button. As there is a Google +1 button, we expect to have the same for Facebook. People now are more into making G +1s or FB Likes for sites they visit. It’s faster and easier. Relatively, WordPress default sharing icons show the counts of sharing or likes on Facebook button but not on Google’s. Here, we expect a fix or an option to hide the counter from being displayed.

wpsocialsharebuttons5

Commenting System Layout

Sorting order is confusing if the last page of comments is to be displayed first. Moreover, threaded comments at the last level don’t have reply button. This isn’t a problem for WordPress members that are replying through the control panel or the mobile application; but it is for non-members that are using a browser.

wp-threadedcomments1

Media

The page of displaying an image (e.g., carousel) should have an option to disable comments if needed. I’m not going to mention the indexing issue of each uploaded image as a single page; many like it this way.

WordAds

There should be more options of locations and types for optimized ads. For example, disabling video ads and banners are in header only. Yet CSS can be customized to hide unwanted location or type, it doesn’t prevent the script from being executed. For performance issue, I might prefer two banners only – on top and below the post.  I know WP Support Team will argue that performance issues have been considered carefully throughout the design, but speed analysis tests don’t always say so.

Following

We can see a list of followers and followed sites. It’d be appropriate though if the Followed Sites have an indication of following back if any.

wp_followingyou

Admin Area

It’s confusing that there are two versions of admin areas. The new version doesn’t have everything from the old one. On the other hand, some settings on the old version aren’t valid anymore. Should I mention the top admin black bar? It appears for the logged-in WordPress members only. However, it would be nice to have it optional as it’s in Blogger.com.

Windows Phone

WordPress app on this platform wasn’t good at all. I understand thus why they stopped developing it on Windows 10. However, I’m sure that there are many who are using WordPress because they don’t want to use Blogger form Google. Isn’t this a good point to be considered?!

(Relatively, you may like reading my other post: Back to WordPress)

I’ll try to update this post with additional points if I came across any. Meanwhile, let’s hear in your comments what else you wish to be added or fixed in WordPress.com?

38 thoughts on “A letter to WordPress”

  1. I don’t use the share buttons at all but currently I do ‘promote’ posts on Facebook (and twitter). However, I thinking of stopping it for reasons given in my most recent, short, post. I think the WordPress app on iPad is terrible. To do anything on my blog I go into my browser and call it up, and use only the old admin which is so much better than the ‘new’ one. Why do these geeks insist on ‘mending’ stuff when it ain’t broke?

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    • Personally, I use the mobile app for push notifications and quick replies. The browser is still the way to go for me. Replying comments isn’t good on browser though – as I mentioned above…P.S., some are arguing that social counting is good for search engines ranking.

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  2. Wow-wow- I never thought about those issues until now! You should mention them to the Team, then perhaps we’ll have something, let’s say, more advanced. 🙊🙉🙈 Great post!

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  3. Even self hosted wp is becoming a mess. It’s a tad frustrating to say the least -_- also before you could share old posts to other apps, now you must be premium.

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  4. I’m relieved to see you take care of these tech issues for us👍, since I’m not a techie. Do you think we must change the blog format based on certain updates made recently? Also I’m not into stats besides seeing people from which countries do WordPress and those than I might interest in common concerns, so suggestions / post are welcome. Thanks for your support!

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    • Thank you my friend for such encouraging words. I’m not sure if I understand your question regarding updates. However, I think you’re using wordpress.com and thus there should be no worries about updates. They’re doing that for us. Thank you for mentioning the point of statistics. Stats page is doing the job but it could be better.

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  5. Hi Mohamad,
    Good points you raised there..i am new to wordpress myself so i haven’t encountered many of the issues you mention in your blog.

    I did read the comments with a particular intent though; to see if you have had a response from WordPress. Am not sure i have seen any; so can i ask if you have had any respinse at all?

    Many thanks,
    Caroline

    Reply
    • Thank you, Caroline. I communicated these in WordPress Ideas Forum as advised by them in other place. They can’t make official reply on a personal blog. Though, I believe they read and concern about such ideas and reports. The more likes this post gets, the more it shows in search results on WordPress’.

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      • I did suspect they wouldn’t be able to respond to individual blogs-i can appreciate the challenges of scanning through all blogs for feedback. I was going to suggest using the ideas forum but can see you have used it already. Hopefully the issues will be looked into if they haven’t already.

  6. Thank you for highlighting these issues. I am having problems with my notification button (the alarm bell). It doesn’t open anymore to show me my notifications on my site. Is this happening to anyone else?

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  7. And moreover,if we publish any new post, it gets added to the home page and we can’t create a new page for a post. When I searched in Google, some pages mentioned that we can do but I am unable to do that. If anyone could help me, I would be thankful…Thanks in advance

    Reply

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