Introduction & Scope

This WordPress website and Blog is the Sandbox of Ian Glendinning. I blog and do social media mainly as Psybertron and also currently manage the Robert Pirsig Association (RPA) website.

This Sandbox is about prototyping and trialling different designs & themes, functionality configuration & plugins, even underlying software (eg PHP) versions, for either or both of those sites. As a consequence what appears here will be radically changed, broken and even blown-away, between visits. Both the production sites have robust tried-and-tested back-up and restore capability.

It also happens to be the first original post I’ve done with the Block or Gutenberg editor and is currently published with only the default DreamPress set-up – no additional themes or plugins. There are list of things to be checked-out.

• Database failures (?) between Classic Editor and Block Editor created and edited posts on the Psybertron site?
• Differences between DreamHost VPS (Psybertron) and DreamPress (this and the RPA site) hosting features and functionality?
• Differences between back-up arrangements between DreamHost, DreamPress and JetPack VaultPress?
• Differences / omissions between staging and production sites? (on DreamPress only – this Sandbox is a reflection that the staging site fails and that a JetPack dependency remains unresolved.)
• Differences between Subscriber and automated Email / Notification behaviour and configuration options between WordPress.COM the WordPress blog and Plugins like Noptin and WP Mail SMTP? (It’s got too complex and manually intensive with Noptin on the RPA site.)
• Differences between inter and intra site PingBack functionality. (Inbound, inter or intra, failed on Psybertron some months ago, whilst outbound inter still works?)
• Automated Social-Media notifications of post and page publication and updates. JetPack or … ?
• Manual subscriber social media sharing buttons per individual page, post or comment. JetPack or … ?
• Value of block editor based themes and patterns text, image and video content to the current sites, browser and mobile app.
• Value of block-editor based theme and plug-in bundles JetPack, Astra, Divi, BoldGrid, etc?

Checking the subscriber functionality first, with some test email accounts.