Spellchecking complaint followup

I received this email from WordPress support regarding the spellchecking problem (‘blog’ is not in their dictionary):

Thanks for the report. We are already aware of that and will resolve it shortly.

Turns out their online support forums already had a bunch of references to the same problem – I thought I had searched for it and come up with nothing, obviously I messed up the search.

My point: They could have said something like, “Yeah, we know, why don’t you search for stuff first instead of wasting our time?” but they didn’t.

Instead WordPress sent me a nice thank you email – fast and polite feedback is a rarity in the customer service world (especially since I’m not paying for anything here!) – big time kudos to them.

Spellchecking complaint

I ended my last post with:

PS: The WordPress spellchecker doesn’t know the words “blog” or “blogging.”

I turned in for the night right after that post. When I woke up this morning my first thought was “Gee, I whined about the WordPress spellchecking, which is essentially pointless – unless I do something about it!” So I lept into virtual action and clicked on the “Feedback” link which is at the top of most WordPress pages, copied that spellchecker comment into the Feedback window, submitted it and tada!

WordPress folks: that Feedback link is brilliant! It’s practically everywhere, it’s quick and easy to use – great job!

WordPress post editor

The WordPress post editor has the word “Path:” in the bottom left corner of the text entry box. Nothing else, just “Path:”.

At first I had no idea what it means, and then as I type some more it says “Path: p”. “p?” What the heck does that mean? I’m a command line geek and I’m thinking is that some filesystem path within the WordPress world?

It turns out “Path:” indicates the tag hierarchy of the html you’re currently typing in. Like when you’re editing within a list it says “Path: ul >> li”. “p” means you’re in a paragraph block.

Everything else in WordPress has been intuitive so far, but “Path:” is bizarre.

How could it be done better? Or a better first question is, “Is it necessary at all?” I haven’t done enough blogging to know, but so far my answer is “no.”

PS: The WordPress spellchecker doesn’t know the words “blog” or “blogging.”

Creating a WordPress blog

When I decided to create a blog, I knew there were a few major free blog players out there. Google/Blogger, WordPress, etc. I chose WordPress because (a) it had the largest, most straightforward looking homepage, and (b) when I visited http://svec.wordpress.com it had a big friendly button that said “Create Blog.” Done.

That’s some good UI design – I had no excuse not to create a blog here at WordPress, and it was oh-so-easy to just go ahead and do it.

Post Zero

So I’m starting a blog.

Why? Here’s a few reasons:

  • I would like to become a better writer.
    Everything I’ve read says the best (only?) way to do it is to Just Do It – and write. Well, technically that’s not true, because most things I read do not talk about how to become a better writer, that would be really boring.
  • I’ve calculated that there’s a 1 in 317,184,973,246 chance that you will find something I say useful.
  • All the cool kids are doing it.
    And if there’s anything I learned from my youth, it’s always follow the cool kids.

Wish me luck – and thanks for reading!