technology – Beesquared

I had nearly given up this blog.

Not because I didn’t have more to write, but because I ran into a glitch with the site itself. Whenever I clicked on links from the archive, I received a message that read “Oops! That page can’t be found.”

For the better part of a year, my attempt at a fix was to call tech support at the company that hosts the site. Tech support didn’t have a fix.

In time, I stopped posting. It seemed I always had something better to work on. But that didn’t feel right either.

Then I searched Google. That seems like an obvious go-to; I think it took me as long as it did because I imagined the problem lay with hosting. Thanks to Google, I learned the problem lay with WordPress.

WordPress users suggested a change to a setting on the back end of the site. That didn’t solve my problem, but it got me to play around with a few other settings. I tweaked one. Not it. Then another. Nope. I changed a third setting. Voila. The archived posts appeared.

I feel so pleased to have fixed the problem that I’m posting this.

With my MacBook in the shop this week I’ve used my iPhone exclusively for all things digital. That includes paying bills, refilling a prescription; purchasing tickets to a concert and typing posts such as this one.

“This is one of those times when an iPad might get you most of what you need,” my significant other told me. Overall the phone is fine. Still, I’m struck by the tasks that seemingly ought to be mobile yet for whatever reason require a workaround.

For example, at Ticketfly, an online merchant that sells what the first part of its name suggests, my attempt to purchase one ticket to a show this September ended in what the site termed a server error. Ticketfly suggested a phone call to complete my order.

Walgreens asked me if I would like to purchase a membership in a program for discounts on drugs. Intrigued, I clicked on a PDF file of a brochure that described the program. But the site failed to deliver the file despite my trying at least three times to open it.

I also tried to pay my Visa bill at Bank of America. The bank issued me a new card recently. That required me to connect the card anew to my bank account. But the site could not direct me to the page where you enter your banking details. I later completed the setup from a desktop Mac at the library.