david strasser

It was on this solemn date
In nineteen and fifty eight
Just past midnight I joined life
And if I could have only knew
Of the speed at which life grew
I'd have avoided all the strife.
—holden klass

Get a Random Quote Here

Sunday, January 04, 2026

Post #3315

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
—Ernest Hemingway

Get a Random Quote Here

A Face in the Cloud

he spoke to a cloud
here’s looking at you my friend
a face in the cloud
—holden klass

Get a Random Quote Here

Sunday, December 28, 2025

Post #3314

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
—Oscar Wilde

Get a Random Quote Here

Sunday, December 21, 2025

Post #3313

Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
—John F. Kennedy

Get a Random Quote Here

Wednesday, December 17, 2025

Dave Strasser's Excellent Review and Opinion of WordPress

Greetings friends and neighbors. I started my WordPress blog way back on October 13, 2013. I messed around with it for a week or so. Got tired of the stress and struggles, and dropped it like a bag of dirt. Time flies. I went back the other day to try it again. Low and behold, my account was still open. So just for shits and giggles I set up my free WordPress blog for the second time. Well, I am sorry to report - WordPress has gotten worse. But I’m gonna keep it. I’m gonna keep messing around with it, because I need the mental exercise.

So after a couple of days of setting it up, screwing it up, resetting it, and setting it up again, it occurred to me that the whole problem with WordPress is that there are just too many hoops to jump through just to get the most menial task done. In the editor there's an AI chatbot available for support. I used it, and I give it a 50 for a grade. It's just slightly better than no support at all. It’s good to help you get acquainted with the basics. But if you go beyond the boundaries of its capabilities you will soon find yourself in a loop of redundancy you never thought possible. Then, of course, it will remind you that you are a non-paying user and don’t have access to human support, which is sourced globally, and probably not any better than the AI chatbot. I have no intention of paying anything for WordPress, ever. But that doesn’t stop them from shoving the upgrades in my face 24/7. They want to hook the users. Make them dependent and they will shag you rotten for upgrades and fees.

What made me think of WordPress this second time around was a website someone had set up seven years ago. It was the finest, fanciest, most decked out site I’ve ever seen. It must have cost the lady a fortune to build and run. Because there is no way in hell she did all that herself. She’s got a custom theme, custom pages, images and videos perfectly set in place and ready to go with a tap or a click of the mouse. She’s got links going in all directions, and more plugins than you can shake a stick at. It's like Matt Mulligan came down from the mountain top and built that website himself, just for her. Now, the funny part. There hasn’t been a post on her site since 2020. What happened? I'll tell you what happened. She paid big money for traffic and didn't get any (traffic). And she gave up. She abandoned it. WordPress, theme people, domain people, website creators, they all told her to send money and we'll get you truckloads of traffic. They sold her a pig in a poke. They took her money and laughed all the way to the bank. After that I was curious. I looked around and found many more websites using WordPress that were just as nice as hers. Beautiful, but pretty much dead to the world. And abandoned. No posts in years. All that money spent on fancy-schmancy, bells and whistles, and locked into long term contracts. For what? Nothing! It all availed nothing.

Bottom line, friends and neighbors, skip all the fancy-schmancy, the bells and whistles, the plugins, the data hogs - and do it yourself. Keep It Short and Simple and save yourself a lot of money and a lot of headaches.

Cheers.

Dave

Get a Random Quote Here