Public Policy Conjectures

In this posting I explain why I found this Blog you are reading so difficult to set up, and in the end I had to call in an IT expert. But firstly, I’ll explain why I said in the first IT posting that it was so easy 400 years ago! 

Why was publishing a blog 400 years ago so easy?

It was easy for the ordinary person in the 17th century, because the technology was easy to understand, whilst still being absolutely wondrous.  The printing press had been around for 150 years.  Martin Luther was the world’s first great publicist: his ideas spread throughout Europe in a matter of weeks, thanks to the printing press and rapid networking.  But by the 1630’s there were more and more printers, the press had been improved, paper was probably cheaper and overall getting published was less expensive.  But clearly a person had to be able to read and write and have some other learning, and have at least a lower middle-class income.  Most of the population at that time were illiterate or virtually so, and were poor, often abjectly so.  They were the true ordinary people—and the scurrilous scribbler and pamphleteer of the 17th century was one of a small minority of slightly more prosperous folk.  But for those of them who wished to write, then publishing was easy. 

Why is publishing a blog so difficult today?

Today, unlike 400 years ago, the first problem is understanding the technology: in my case of WordPress.  How to understand and operate the WordPress system.  Like any computer system new to the user, it is neither easy nor self-evident.  New words and ideas like posts, pages, criteria, tags, username, dashboard, SEO etc need to be understood and remembered.  Where to find them is also needed. How to move from one part of the system to another needs learning.  Using blocks rather than word-processing format for text is completely new.  And where to find all the usual word-processing facilities is different.  As with all computer systems, words don’t necessarily mean what you think, or what you are used to.  “Accordion” in WordPress is a big surprise. And what does “Wordpress’ itself mean?  My wife said the meaning was obvious: putting words into a squeeze-box like an accordion.  And after 3 months, when I found I had only looked at the dashboard by accident, and hadn’t used it to publish my essays, my adviser said that nobody did use it!  I asked him if he ever used the dashboard when he drove his car.  In total, this all amounts to a really big problem. 

Secondly, I found in the first week of research that WordPress is good at selling cakes, especially American cookies.  This came somewhat as a surprise as I had never in may entire life thought of selling cakes.  And it seemed somewhat remote from a blog.  Indeed it is.  WordPress apparently is more used for commercial purposes than for blogs. It is also more used for blogs with photos (with rounded corners if you wish), such as travel blogs, than it is used for essays on things like politics, history or literature or whatever.  So it is awash with all-singing, all-dancing facilities such as a chap jumping over the Grand Canyon into your photo on the home page.  It also enables you to set up catalogues of cakes for sale, ordering systems, delivery systems, even payment systems, I suppose .  Presumably it must be capable of linking to accounting software. To this end, it is full of fancy add-on packages called “themes”.  Goodness know why they are called themes—it’s a complete change to the meaning of a well-loved word, which was quite happy with its original meaning.  In fact, it becomes apparent that WordPress is a website creation tool, rather than a blog creation tool, though I did realise after a little while that a WordPress blog is in fact a website.   Finally, I realised WordPress probably meant “word” as in word-processing  i.e. text; and “press” as in a printing press i.e.publishing.  WordPress was written to enable individuals to self-publish essays etc.  So that means that “Wordpress” is now a quite misleading name for the package. No wonder I was confused. 

But you may be asking, “Well, what actually is a blog?”  

Well might you ask.  I must say I was fairly clear what it was and, another surprise, I don’t think my understanding has significantly changed as a result of writing one on WordPress.  By a blog, I mean “publishing some personal writing, expressing views or relating experiences”. A blog is not long like a book and is in a serial form over time. But that could include a book published in parts.  Some of Charles Dickens novels in the 1850’s were first published in serial form, not unlike a blog, but in established periodicals. A blog is also usually informal in style. 

When selling cakes through WordPress, are you operating a blog.?  No.    

This leads on to another problem. Like everything on the computer it is commercial. Well almost everything: Wikipedia isn’t, and even the internet isn’t. WordPress is supposed to be free also.  But it seems impossible to use it for free and get the full works.  Also, the owner of WordPress seems far more interested in paying-customers than his free customers.  So I am paying, as I don’t want to upset the owner by trying to free-ride on his wonderful system —except that it was originally free.  Maybe it’s just a freebie that you have to pay for. That makes sense. 

But it also means that all the Youtube WordPress tutorials I found, except one very basic one,  were commercial.  The basic one told you how easy and simple it was to set up a free blog or website—I can’t remember.  I think cakes even came into that. And in even that, it seems that the tutor is signed up to some commercial outfit, (a hosting what-name) who presumably gives him commission. None of them say. 

Consequently selling cakes is far more important to WordPress et al than publishing ideas on how the UK might be better governed, or on how wonderful Jane Austen is, or how to paint.  The whole system is filled to the gunnels with things I don’t want, and which I have to studiously avoid, or I’ll fall into a black hole. 

I tried to set up my blog on my own.  I spent 3 months on it.  Eventually, after getting an account and a domain name,  I gave up and cried help to the first expert I found on a Google search — well the second search actually, as Google, bless its soul, misunderstood what sort of expert I was looking for, (there truly are at least two types).   Anyway, my expert has been a God-send — I would not recommend anyone setting up a blog—a very simple website—without paying an expert. 

I think that in a month or two I will be able to use  the system as well as email.  But they do have an upgrade available now, which presumably I’ll have to use, or I can’t expect the thing to work properly.  I can’t imagine that will be easy. But Google AI says that the upgrade also is good at rounded corners.  I can’t wait to see. 

To summarise: the two main problems I encountered were firstly the sheer technical difficulty and complexity of IT computing for the ordinary person.  The second was the commercial nature of virtually all the offerings, which distorts the systems away from products like blogs, which do not bring in the cash—especially in the large amounts which the scale of computing requires.  

This means that WordPress, which still claims to get essays like mine, opinions, information, simply and cheaply published, is in reality mainly more about selling more cakes.  

And because computer offerings, (not just WordPress), focus almost exclusively on commercial interests, there is a serious lack of systems for small charities and voluntary groups, who find themselves treated like companies with boards and auditors and published accounts.  Banks also no longer provide banking for informal or non-charitable volunteer groups: they want two signatures, constitutions, accounts, treasurers and secretaries, AGM’s and minutes.  I’ve run an informal hobby group and an exhibition, each for 40 years—but the banks won’t provide a bank account now to keep the money separate from my own personal monies. Sorry mate, it don’t make money, and we can’t afford the staff, and anyway we don’t trust you.  Barclays Bank phones me up to see if I’m money-laundering when I send £36 to France for a model railway magazine!  

Banks are not community minded these days—unless of course they get good publicity and a nice shiny medal for it. 

So these are not solely problems of WordPress but of all computer systems —well certainly of information systems, IT.   But IT is the only part of computing that I use—and the only part that most of us use outside our work. And many, maybe most workers, only use IT computer systems at work as well.  We of course now find computers make our cars and washing machines work; but we are not involved in that, nor even aware of it.   

There are other major computer problems beyond these.  But these two: technical difficulty and commercial bias are two good starters. These problems all pre-date AI.  AI will make them worse; but AI also offers some of the big solutions. I will suggest solutions later.   

© Philip Morgan 2026 Public Policy Conjectures All rights reserved.