So, not my normal type of post (two in a row!), but I’ve been looking for a WordPress reblog workaround since I posted earlier about whether a WordPress Business Plan was worth it. Basically, I discovered other bloggers can’t reblog my posts because of my overpriced Business plan. Talk about annoying (More features, loss of basic functionality! Woohoo!). I’ve been in communication with WordPress’s Happiness Engineers looking for a solution. (Anytime I see a job title like that, I get a sinking feeling I’m about to be very unhappy at the end of the interaction). Anyway, I explained the problem and lodged a complaint and waited a few days. I just got a short note from a Happiness Engineer — with a potential workaround!

I scanned the abbreviated email quickly. Really!?!? This is the solution?!? It had two links — one to a plugin called Add to Any and another link to a support article on a WordPress feature called Press This. (Doesn’t that sound like something you’d expect a creeper to say to a woman trying to be funny?) I looked at the first link — it’s a plugin to add social media buttons. ‘How the hell is that going to help?’ I wondered. I already have social media buttons. I read the other article about using Press This. It allows you to easily capture bits of the web to add to a post. Supposedly, you can activate it easily on your support page by dragging it up to your bookmarks bar. So I tried it and got instantly aggravated. It only captured the page link and nothing else — Oops, I did it wrong. User error — I didn’t read the directions properly. I tried it again, it worked, so I deleted the mildly snarky email reply I had gleefully started to my Happiness Engineer about his failed fix. (I can’t help it, Schadenfreude is my default state). Anyway, don’t you love catching those emails before you send them and look like an idiot?

WordPress Reblog Workaround: The Verdict

Well, it appears it’s basically a bastardized way of Reblogging. You simply highlight what you want to capture on the website you’re visiting. Then you click the Press This icon up in your bookmarks or favorite bar. WordPress automatically sets up a post for you under Drafts — the post contains what you highlighted and a link to the original webpage. You can go review it under your Drafts and modify it before hitting the publish button.

Yeah, that’s awesome if I want to press something — but kind of a pain in the ass to convey to visiting readers. I guess I can create some kind of footer with instructions if someone really wants to reblog.

Anyway, it’s a workaround.

Here’s the link again to the article on how to set up Press This if you ever run into someone’s post you can’t reblog. I’m still waiting to find out why the Happiness Engineer sent me the social media button plugin — maybe there’s extra functionality I overlooked? I’ll let you know if it’s anything useful.

Hopefully, this is the last mildly technical post I have to do for a while!

Interested in reblogging a post? Sorry, won’t work because of my dumb Business plan. However, you can use WordPress’s Press This feature as a poor man’s reblogging tool. Just follow the link to see how (it’s easy to set up).