July 2020 – Something Odd!

Crowdsignal Polls in your Block Editor

The Crowdsignal team at Automattic have been quietly working on a new poll block for the last few weeks. We finally made it public today on WordPress.org!

We set out with the task of creating a block that would allow the writer to quickly insert a poll in their posts using the block editor. More than that, it had to be simple to use. It also needed to be themed to match the look and feel of the website it would appear on.

We’ve created a block that does that. It also records the votes collected on the Crowdsignal website where you can analyse the results using reports Crowdsignal users have always used.

Search for “Crowdsignal Forms” on your plugins page to install it in the usual way.

A free Crowdsignal account is required to use the block. We made it really easy to connect your site to your Crowdsignal account. If you don’t have one then creating a new account is simple too.

The first 2,500 responses you collect are included in your free account, and further votes are recorded but free users are encouraged to upgrade if they want to do further analysis of all the data they collect.

15 Years at WordPress.com

Yesterday I was notified that I registered on WordPress.com for the first time fifteen years ago. I wasn’t going to mention it but Matt blogged a screenshot of his notification so it piqued my interest and curiosity.

I decided to look up what WordPress.com looked like back then, and it was a very simple message. There was no way to sign up. Nothing to hint at what it would eventually become. It wasn’t until later in the month when a registration form was added.

I took a quick look at what I was blogging about in July 2005. Wow, I used to post a lot didn’t I? See how easy it is to dive back into history? Try do that with Twitter and Facebook!

On the 26th I did blog about WordPress.com inviting people to sign up. Four reactions only but Matt’s post has more comments on it.

I was concerned about the price of petrol in 2005. I paid €1.05/lt on July 27th and Tesco announced they were going to increase prices to €1.20/lt. It hasn’t been that price in the last decade but it did hit a low point during the recent lockdown. I’ve been tracking fuel prices since around 2010 so I should make a blog post about that sometime. One thing it does reveal is working from home saves fuel. We refill the car once every 2 weeks usually.