Creating Download links that actually work
I learned something strange and semi-important and not-obvious.
If on a PC you put a download link to a file (like an epub file) on a web page, both Edge and Chrome will block the user from downloading it directly unless it is an https file.
It’s funny because my domain is already secure and Edge/Chrome show that to be true.
The user can eventually override this to download an http link, but it is not that easy for many users.
In other words, from now on, every download link must start with:
https://www.ghostlypopulations.com/random28/3times18.epub but NOT
WordPress Notes
I’ve been fiddling more with WordPress. It’s super easy to create WordPress instances, but a bear trying to integrate the different websites and mixing static HTML with blogs. Also, I have a few WP websites running older themes which are not mobile-friendly, and only in 2023 or so did I start working with mobile-friendly themes. (Yes, I am embarrassed).
I’m pretty good at using Gutenberg and designing functional and easy-to-navigate pages. I’m not so much at making everything pretty (as the home page on my website demonstrates). I’ve gotten more experience using WP’s block editor and block themes, but I haven’t tried anything daring really. For this site I’m using only the default 2023 theme. On this blog it sucks (yes, I’ll admit that!) , but I’ve made it look relatively decent on another site.
Here are some notes I’ve compiled with trying to implement the 2024 theme on another site.
How to add Javascript properly on wordpress sites. The short answer is to download a WP plugin like WP Code which inserts headers and footers. I’m reluctant to add another plugin, but this separates the customizations from the theme files.
How to remove certain WP web pages/WP posts from search engines. The SEO plugins let you do this on a page-by-page basis. I am using Yoast (which is sort of bloaty, but seems to do the job and then some).
I’ve been tinkering with the 2024 theme, and frankly it’s harder to get the design elements just right. With the block editor you can do a lot of sophisticated things just through the interface, but there are so many moving parts that it’s easy to drown in complexity. I get how patterns and parts work; it’s just hard putting them together in the right manner. Fortunately WordPress.org has some killer video tutorials for Content Creation. My goal is to move my static Personville Press site over to wordpress, but the key was removing a lot of the bloggy elements and making it easy to add book pages and related content. Stay tuned.
Update. I seem to be getting the hang of it. Part of the problem is that I didn’t/don’t properly understand what part you need to modify for a template or pattern which you plan to re-use. It can be very complicated — especially for the 2024 and 2025 themes which have a lot of “templates” which you can apply and just change as you wish. Template is used differently in different places. Another problem is that it’s better to create your own template parts for headers and footers, and then put them into the page and post defaults.
Mailing List Woes
For the last few years I’ve been promising/threatening to make an email newsletter. Several things keep getting in the way, and to be honest, it has been a low priority for me.
One thing I admire about substack, wordpress.com and other places is how they have fused the newsletter with the blog. Unfortunately these things aren’t practical for self-hosted wordpress websites. I have an idea about the work involved; I just don’t want to do it.
Authors are strongly encouraged to use mailing lists to maintain contact with readers. Everyone says to do that. But it’s hard to be so devoted to it when email subscribers are minimal. Also, there are email management websites that can handle a lot of the backend for you. But they are a recurring cost, and I usually can’t afford it. As a result, my newsletters tend to be amateurish and prone to the whims of the third party service.
A few years ago I signed up for Mailerlite (because it had been recommended by several places). Setup was somewhat complicated, and verifying the sender’s domain turned out to be very complicated. Eventually I figured everything out. It quickly became obvious that the main clientele of these places were not authors sending out occasional newsletters but Internet marketers trying to sell goods. Mailerlite’s toolset was geared mainly to promotional emails for the purpose of selling stuff. It was overkill for what I wanted to do, but I could manage. Besides they had a free plan that seemed to service my modest needs.
Fast forward 1 or 2 years later. Apparently Mailerlite just erased my marketing campaigns and email signup page due to lack of use. Mailerlite even lost a list of the small number of people who had faithfully signed up for my mailing list. I ahd to begin the process all over again. For perhaps as long as a year, I had a newsletter signup form which didn’t work at all. (Here’s the bad one and here’s the one I just threw together).
So I started again from scratch. It wasn’t that hard, just tedious.
Font Issues
I don’t pay attention to fonts and typography except when I absolutely need to, but I love Oliver Schöndorfer’s Pimp My Type blog; it introduces me to lots of free and commercial fonts I never would have otherwise known about. (Also he does a lot of font/css vids. Here’s a great article on how to pair fonts using a font matrix and why you should store your version of a Google Font on your own server.
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