Turns out there’s an easy way to strip code out of word-processed text before pasting it into a WordPress page. On the extended toolbar there are two icons: one with a little W and one with a little T. Little W is for pasting from Word; Little T is for pasting as plaintext. Click on either, and a box comes up, inviting you to Ctrl-V into the box. From there you can click “Insert” and WordPress automatically strips out the annoying code and pastes it into your post.
Very nice.
Inserting images from the Mac is a pain in the tuchus, though, because you have to navigate the high seas of iPhoto, a very clumsy process indeed. And you have to rename the photo so it has no underscores, unusual characters, or blank spaces. Since my camera saves photos with a strange numerical code that always includes an underscore, this means any photo to be posted has to be renamed and then, from inside WordPress, searched out in the horrible iPhoto, to whom “organize” has a meaning known only to alien beings. In iWeb, you can simply copy and paste into your post, a much simpler process. Infinitely simpler.
If I can copy and paste seven days’ worth of posts each evening, it will take me 28 days to move all the existing copy over. Not counting new posts. Argh!
Despite having waffled back in the stay-with-iWeb direction, at the moment I’m feeling peeved at Apple again. Discovered the reason all the cute little beeps and toots the Mac emits at various actions have stopped is that upgrading to OS X 5.x.x put the kaibosh on the sound function. It now will output only through the headphones. No option to output sound through the built-in speakers exists. There’s a way to fix this, from what I could tell online, but its too arcane for me. I had no idea what the guy was trying to say as he described the process on his site.
So I’m again figuring when this hard drive gives up the ghost, it’ll be back to the PC for moi. And if I wanna keep blogging, I’d better be in a Web-based program by then.