How to format code correctly on wordpress.com

Preamble

For literally years I’ve been doing it wrong, and relying on <pre>...</pre> HTML tags, for code blocks,  and wondering why the code looks awful, with line wrapping, etc..

WP: Footnote renumbering for WordPress.com posts

Preamble

Idea for a PERL script to automatically renumber footnote references that take the form:

This is because a tuple is required⁸:

or in HTML:

<sup><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/66372700/4424636">8</a></sup>

These footnote references have to be entered by hand. If a new footnote reference is added (inserted) before a series of other footnotes then the successive footnote references require renumbering. Renumbering by hand is a major chore.

The script was actually written in Python, using BeautifulSoup.

Code available on Gitlab:

WP: Change headings en-masse for WordPress.com posts

Preamble

Following on from my WordPress.com Perl extension tools, how about changing all heading levels, en-masse?

Reading WordPress pages in Perl

Preamble

I wanted to add some functionality to the WordPress to table of contents Perl script to grab the HTML code of the WordPress page, rather than require the user to manually copy the HTML from the Text tab of the WordPress editor.

However, whilst researching how to add this functionality, I found that a simple get(), using LWP::Simple, doesn’t work when trying to retrieve WordPress pages, and empty string is returned:

Use of uninitialized value $page in print at ./GetPage.pl line 13.

Create an external “links” section for WordPress.com posts

Preamble

Following on from my partial success (issues due to the automatic HTML formatting of WordPress are causing the lack of total success) of the table of contents (ToC) creator, see Create table of contents for WordPress.com posts. I then thought that it would be useful to have a script that pulls out all of the (external) links referenced and places them under the heading of “Links”…

Create table of contents for WordPress.com posts

Preamble

Whilst writing particularly long posts I realised that a table of contents (ToC) would be most useful, based on the headings in the post.

It wouldn’t be that hard to do, in Perl.

Code on GitLab.

Managing media by file size

Preamble

I’ve reached my limit in media (3 GB), of my free WordPress.com plan’s allocation. So, I thought I’d try to view all of my media by file size, in order to remove any over sized files (I know that there are some large PDFs running around in the library, somewhere).

However, WordPress.com doesn’t seem to have that functionality (although the real WP does)…

Stopping the Block Editor

Preamble

If you use the classic WP Dashboard, and then you click the “Classic Editor” link on a post that was once edited, or created, using the horrific Block Editor, you will be presented with a dialog notifying you of such and offering you the choice of the Block Editor or the Classic Editor:

Annoying Block Editor prompt dialog

This dialog quickly becomes infuriating. Like really infuriating. It is not only displayed the first time you re-open a post for editing in the classic editor, but also each time you make an edit in the classic editor and hit the update button, it will also show up.

To stop this behaviour, you need to strip out all of the custom HTML block markers, that are hidden in the post.

Blogging for cash

Preamble

Wanna make money from your blog?