Interesting Times

Ian Hutson

UPDATE 07:50 hundred hours o’clock 02/04/2022 – upon checking this morning, equally suddenly – and perhaps equally unreliably – the storage on this account is now shown as ’13 (thirteen) GB’ with 7.3% used… Another mistake, a correction of a mistake, a roll-back of a prematurely rolled-out change? Who knows.

Forgetting for a moment that corporations have no sense of humour I did wonder if this was some sort of exceedingly dull All Fools “joke”, but the WordPress pricing page does now (still) show storage as 0.5 GB… and the lowliest paid option as being £15 a month paid in advance for one year… https://wordpress.com/pricing/ No joke.

UPDATE UPDATE – according to the WordPress forum – via “staff” posts – the “free” storage and the price plans are being reduced and increased respectively to make the service available to a wider customer base, or some such bollocks. The 0.5Gb applies (at the moment!) to newly registered blogs – and WordPress weren’t even aware (and hadn’t bothered to check) that the change they made affected all “free” sites, new and old. Don’t “professionals” run checks any more? You know – look to see what the changes they have made have actually done, that sort of thing? https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/reason-behind-plan-upgrades/

Apparently the storage for “free” (i.e., with WP advertising) is now 3Gb, which means if true and if stays true that this blog is roughly one third of the way through its very rough life-span. If…

and wishes are ships, much. Running a Meths & Irn Bru cocktail party in a Glasgow bus shelter comes to mind… as in wouldn’t be able to .

WordPress, without a word of warning or a hint of a smidgen of ceremony, just reduced my storage limit (to a paltry 500 megabytes all filled in bright red where previously it was shown as ‘13% of capacity’ and fine and dandy). I can’t upload any images.

…and there I was just a post or two ago saying how I’d continue with this blog!

The adverts you’ve seen on here are placed by and profit WordPress, not me.

So, until an alternative can be found I may be quiet…

I could just blog here in text only, sans images – but I suspect that this “solution” would be as popular as an emission of warm, wet alimentary gases in a confined mechanical device transporting people from one floor to others in a vertically un-challenged building.

I am doing my research. I might try one of the more peculiar bloggish websites. It would be sensible to do all of the above. If I can then I’ll post the re-direct here of course, somehow.

In the words of The Terminator; I’ll be back.

I hope.

Any and all suggestions (other than the anatomically implausible) for alternative bloggery-pokery providers/mechanisms welcomed.

Cheers folks.

Ian H.

19 Comments

  1. The basty nastards did it to me too, and I thought t’were a money-grab at the time.
    I use the free version and pay only for the privilege of having my own domain name.
    I thunked thinkish thoughts and realised that as my life is about to undergo a rather spectacular change, (and the need to choose one’s battles) it might be time for another post purge. I’m damn sure that no-one reads my posts of the previous decades, so it’s off with their heads … except for a few pertinent ones throughout the ages.
    I’ve kept copies of everything, for posterior’s sake, and in an odd sort of way it does feel rather effervescent to be free of that baggage.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. You’re not wrong there. One of these days wouldn’t it be nice to find oneself suddenly engaged in a “reverse battle” with some corporation? Fending off better value, increased customer service, cheaper prices… In the Multiverse there must surely be some alternative dimension where that is the problem. 😉

      Liked by 2 people

  2. I think it might be a ploy to force everyone onto a paid plan. I gave in when sleazy looking ads started showing up on my blog. I pay $60 Canadian (about 30 pounds, maybe?) per year to keep it ad-free, and get 6GB of data space.
    In any case, I hope you find a solution. No one on the planet can do spoonerisms like you!

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Thankibode and ta muchly, ma’am (rhymes with ‘ham’ apparently). You may very well be correct, and I do wonder if it’s some sort of streamlining prior to selling off – perhaps the founders have decided to go down the yacht and villa route? 🙂

      Liked by 2 people

    1. I think that they’ve just joined in with the global corporate profiteering, they seem to have significantly raised the prices of the paid options as well as drastically cutting the storage available. Doing it now amid the general throng of world nonsense, hoping to shake off the disapprobation in the confusion. WP seem to be proving themselves to be as cheap and spineless as the rest. No surprise. 🙂 This comes in tandem with my being kicked off Facebook (for having opinions not “approved”. I am already “shadow banned” by Twitter, being unable to “like” or share a lot, and having my tweets stifled. Social media, it seems, is not so very social these days!

      Liked by 2 people

  4. I still have 6 gigabytes. No idea why. Is it only a matter of time before I lose it? Is it maybe because I pay for whatever it is that keeps ads off my site? Whatever “it is,” it’s not expensive, surely not 15 anything a month. Crowdfunding, Patreon and all are a bit of a bore to babysit, but ( “b”s in my bonnet today) I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be happy to buy you a coffee now and again. I think it’s pretty easy to set up. Don’t leave us! We’d be curmudgeon-deprived and that would be sad.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Thank’ee kindly, I’ll find a way around this – still looking at options. 🙂 I do enjoy this blog, and it’ll take more than a miserly corporation to stop me, somehow… 😉

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Hi Chris, that’s exactly the set-up I do have here at the moment but overnight they’ve taken away the storage that I had, I can’t upload any images now. One option is to begin another and entirely separate “free” WP blog with a new address, but whatever I do it’ll be either expensive or messy. 😉

      Liked by 1 person

        2. Chris – update on the storage and price options (see box at top of post). Organising alcohol poisoning in a vodka distillery, the usual mess – as far as they say (at the moment) the reduced storage is for the good of NEW “free” customers and the increase in lowest price plan is to make their service available to a wider market… 😉 WordPress have slipped over to the Dark Side.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Thanks, Ian, I’ve just checked my media storage and it’s back to 3GB, of which I’ve used 2GB.
            Each month I remove redundant posts and associated media for the previous months and keep only author and writer resource posts and media in order to minimise storage requirements.
            I also limit photo/image media size to 300 pixels high and use jpeg/jpg format only – png, etc, are way too heavy to keep.

            Liked by 1 person

  6. I’m sure I speak for all your regular readers when I say we don’t want to lose you either Ian!
    Can we crowdfund you to continue on here somehow maybe? Although I do understand that would probably fly in the face of your principles 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Thank’ee kindly – I get a lot of fun from writing this blog, and it’s nice to know that someone enjoys reading it too! Crowdfunding would be very much “not me”, I am a bit too stuffy and old-fashioned for that sort of thing. The best option so far looks to be another “freebie” WP blog with a different name, but I’m still researching options. In one way tis an opportunity for an entirely fresh approach, but then there’s always me – and I am definitely not fresh or looking for a new approach! 😉

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