I have changed the theme of the site for the moment to one which is… ugly, to be frank. However, it has the charm of allowing all the pull-down menus to work properly. Before I explain what’s happening in that department, I will also quickly mention a new page for a jolly interesting new pen (which does not look it)– the Wing Sung 601. There’s also been updates to the First Time Buyer Suggestions, because I realize I have some more pens that I would suggest, and a picture of a rather good Sheaffer J8C added to that maker’s flat tops page.
[Edit, not an hour later: Found an easier solution than I had expected. Some of the moaning which follows is moot, and the ugly phase is now over]
Now, the tedious explanation– the last lingering effect of the Great Catastrophe is that the WordPress software cannot see all the picture files I’ve downloaded over the years. This is not a big deal, as I discovered to my joy, because if I know the link address for any given picture, I can still cause it to appear in the content of the page.
However, what I can’t do is set it as the banner image at the top of the page. And it seems that the theme I had chosen, if not given a banner image to present, gets a little strange about very long drop-down menus. This would also be not a big deal, except what people mainly come here for it the catalogue of pen models, and getting at any Waterman model, or any of the few makers below Waterman, was not easy. Since I don’t want to put people off by making their lives difficult, I am putting them off by making the site look less appealing than it did.
The ideal cure would be to get my WordPress Media Library to take notice of all my pictures again. However, searching for a solution seems to come up with stuff that sounds like it might have worked for WordPress 3.5 (and I’m now stuck with 4.9) or something along the lines of “Just reload the pictures. Sure, this doubles your use of storage, but that’s not a big thing as long as there’s not too many of them.” You may imagine the unhealthy laughter with which I greeted that advice.
While I continue to seek a real cure, what I plan to do is upload some kind of universal place-holder, along the lines of the one which has spontaneously appeared on all the pages in this theme. This is presenting some mysterious stumbling blocks as well, which I have finally worked out how to get around while remaining mystified on the subject of “Why are you doing this to me?” I will then have to go to each page and add a fresh banner. Once that’s seen to, we’ll be back to the slightly more appealing look of the site.
Yes, I am slightly cranky about all this. If only I had something less nebulous to blame than Teh Intarwebz and the looming facelessness of WordPress.Org.