An awful lot of folks like to use WordPress. And for the most part so do I. But there are times when I question the overall quality of the site and its products, especially the mobile products. And what makes it worse is when WordPress keeps pushing their mobile products over their web-based products.

What started this morning’s rant was my attempt to clean up two misspelled words in the last post; ‘forth’ and ‘angle’. I’d meant to type ‘fourth’ and ‘angel’. So I opened up the post in the iPhone WordPress app and quickly fixed those two words, then saved the edit. When I went back to view it later on a regular desktop browser, the post was broken.

• The image at the top, which was centered, was offset to the left. I had to go back into the desktop web-based editor and recenter the image.
• The caption underneath was no longer a caption. The caption tags had been removed. I had to go back onto the desktop web-based editor and add those tags back in again.

Two minor problems, right? Perhaps if these kinds of problems were few and very far between, but they’re not. I have learned the hard and bitter way to never use the WordPress app (both iOS and Android) to neither edit existing posts nor create them. I’ve even tried to use Ulysses as my primary editor and then export to WordPress, but that’s been something of a shambling mess as well. Ulysses is fine for general writing, but as a front end for WordPress, it’s even worse than WordPress’ own apps.

If I want to write on my blog the only really consistent and powerful tool is the editor under wp-admin/post-new.php. This in spite of the little popups that keep telling me about the more modern and wonderful editor on the web side. No. The app editors and the modern web editor all suck dead hamsters through a garden hose. I almost wish (almost!) I had access to the app source so I could fork it and then fix all the annoyances and outright bugs, at least on the iOS side. I really would like a consistent experience between the classic web page editor and iOS. With iPadOS getting ready to drop this fall, it would be even nicer if I could migrate over to one of my iPad Pros (I have the 9.7 inch 2017 and the 12.9 inch 2017) using the native WordPress app. But until a miracle occurs and WordPress cleans up its iOS apps, I’ll continue to use the classic web editor. And here’s a clue for the WordPress developers: I’m beta testing iPadOS on the 9.7″, and the Safari editor is complete enough that I can use the classic web-based editor on my iPad in place of the app. I don’t really need the app. And neither does anyone else for that matter. Think about that…