Cannot follow or like other blogs outside of WordPress Reader
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The title says it all basically. When I get follows or likes or comments on my blog, I like to go to the site of whomever interacted and I often try to follow them back and/or like their posts. However no matter the site, it never works for me unless I can open their site/post in the WordPress Reader. If I try, a window will open for a split second and then disappear. After the window closes nothing has changed and no like or follow has been registered. Opening the blogs in the Reader doesn’t work all the time either. I’m always logged in to WordPress, but the little box that appears in the bottom right corner of the blogs that says ‘Follow’ will sometimes show that I’m not logged in, and it won’t work when I try to click the links within to log in. It will open up the page and allow me to log in, but then when it goes back to the initial blog, it still shows that I’m not logged in. The only time the ‘open in reader’ option shows is if I’ve already followed the blog by clicking of the ‘follow’ links from within the reader (for instance under the username when you get a notification of a like, or follow, etc). I’ve tried clearing my cache and cookies and trying again, as well as tried different browsers. I’ve also changed permissions to allow popups from the site to dip if that fixed it, and it did not. So I’m not sure what is left on my end to fix the issue. I thought that perhaps other’s may be having this problem too, and maybe no one had reported the errors to you guys yet, so I wanted to fill this out the best I could. Hopefully my descriptions made sense. Cheers!
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there!
I found this when browsing the Reader support page:
You can also add any non-WordPress.com site with an RSS feed to the Reader by clicking the Manage button next to Followed Sites. At the top of this page, you can enter the URL of any site.
Is there a specific site you could link to that your having trouble with so I could do some testing too?
I hope that helps! :-)
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Hello,
I thank you for your response, but I was actually referring to wordpress sites. I like and follow buttons I’m referring to I believe are exclusive to wordpress sites. I know they both have the wordpress logo similar to that of the “Press This” button. Your tip may still help me if I can’t get the normal methods to work when trying to follow, but the issues I’ve described are dealing with WordPress widgets not working the way they should be. Thank you anyway though!
Perhaps this is the wrong area for me to post these problems. It was recommended by the @wordpressdotcom Twitter page, but if there wasn’t enough characters for me to describe to them the specific issues, so they may have unknowingly pointed me in the wrong direction. If there’s somewhere else this should be posted, please let me know and I’ll post it there. Thank you to whomever may respond!
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Hi @marullowriter, if you’ll send links to a few sites you can’t follow, we’ll check to see what’s wrong.
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Hello Super,
It’s a little challenging because I’ve managed to find workarounds, but the way these things were suppose to work didn’t work for me and will continue to malfunction even now after I’ve already done the workarounds.
Take this blog for instance:
https://critiquingchemist.com/2017/05/10/assassins-fate-by-robin-hobb/This is one that I managed to lookup in the Reader, and from there was able to follow her blog and like her posts.
Yet, I got an email saying that the user who owns this blog liked one of my recent posts, and when I clicked on the link within that email to open up her page – I get the same issue. The Follow popup box in the bottom right corner shows up, but when I hover over it I don’t get the option to open the page in Reader, it asks me to login – then when I try to login, it fails.
Also, when I click on the Follow blog wordpress button, it opens a blank page that flashes for a second before disappearing, and then I remain on the blog page without having followed (there is no indication that I’ve followed or that anything at all has happened).
The same sequence that I describe above occurs if I try and like a post (even a post that I’ve already liked from within the reader).
So if I click a link from within the reader to open up her site in a new tab, the little follow box will instead show that I follow, and at that point I can click the little box and the option to “Open in Reader” is there because it already has me logged in. However even when I get to her site this way, I am still unable to like her posts from her site – I have to like the post while viewing in the Reader for it to work.
This is a set of issues that is rather difficult to explain in text and would be much easier to do over the phone where myself and a technician can both be looking at the same page while talking. If that can be possible, that’d be great and I’d be happy to supply my phone number.
But this is why it doesn’t matter if I give you one link or a hundred, every one of them will behave in this way for me and it’s obvious that this is not the way these widgets are suppose to behave, but it’s seems like it is not a quick fix sort of situation.
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That is challenging. Let’s address this one piece at a time if possible, and see what happens to the other pieces as we go.
when I try to login, it fails.
Let’s start there. Are you logged into WordPress.com already in that browser? What happens when it fails?
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Well, I did already explain this and I’m not sure how else to explain it. First off, when I’m doing the method described above, I am always logged in to WordPress .com in another tab. So the issue isn’t that I cannot log in. The issue is that these features (which I believe are part of the Jetpack plugin features that are suppose to be built into WordPress .com for their end-users to utilize for their sites) are not working properly. I think this is the wrong place for this to be reported because like I mentioned, this is not something that I need help with per say, rather it is part of WordPress’s software that is not working properly that their programmers/developers/engineers should look into. I am merely reporting a bug in the software. The only reason I created this forum post is because that is what was suggested to me by the @wordpressdotcom Twitter page,and like I mentioned previously, I don’t think they had enough information (due to Twitter’s character limit) to be able to properly direct me to where this issue should be reported. If you know where I can report these bugs to the software programmers/developers/engineers (I’m not sure which team specifically would be responsible for looking into this), please let me know and I will report it to the proper place. Otherwise, if you can report these bugs to the proper places, then by all means please do so. Please know that I am not trying to be rude by any means, this is just not an issue that you and I can resolve as it is something going wrong on the back end of the software. I do appreciate your attempt however and I do thank you.
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Got it. I agree it’s a bug, and for what it’s worth, either of us can report this at https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/ . I’d just like to find reproducible steps first, as well as find an idea as to which component is causing the problem.
By asking for more details about “then when I try to login, it fails” I’m hoping for an error, or something that would let me search the code for more info which could also help me figure out how to reproduce what you’re seeing.
Sorry I missed this part earlier:
I’m always logged in to WordPress, but the little box that appears in the bottom right corner of the blogs that says ‘Follow’ will sometimes show that I’m not logged in
Usually that box will only appear for logged out visitors, so that should also be a clue.
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Thank you. For what it’s worth, there were no error codes or messages that popped up. It just goes to the log in screen (even though I am already logged in within another browser tab), I type in my log in credentials (correctly), and it just goes back to the blog page as if nothing happened, with that “Follow” box still showing me as not being logged in. This happens when I go to the blog in any way except from the the “open in another browser tab” button from within the Reader. If I go to the page from within the Reader, it’ll show me as following the blog (obviously, as long as it is of course a blog I follow – which, as mentioned before the only way I can follow a blog is from within the Reader). In the same manner, the “Like” button won’t work on the blog page, I can only “Like” a post if I have it open within the Reader. If I try to “Like” a post from the blog page, an about_blank page will open for a split second and then immediately close, and the “Like” won’t be registered. If there was anything more that was happening that I haven’t already explained in this post or above, I would certainly have included it. I wish there was more information I could give you, but that’s all I can report. Please let me know if you’ve submitted the bugs to github page already. If not, I’ll be happy to do so as I previously mentioned. I just don’t want to give a duplicate unnecessary report if it’s already been done. Thank you again.
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Would you be willing to check the JavaScript console to see if any errors are there?
Also, if you’er willing it would be helpful to know which sites are giving you trouble. We can try to see if it’s something on that site or something (possibly) with your account.
You mentioned you tried different browsers. Were these all on the same computer? If so, what platform? Are you using any security programs that would block scripts or cookies?
And I’m just reiterating here (for clarity as my coworkers read this) that you see this issue with notifications, be they in email or through the notifications toolbar.
And, if you visit the site itself, you see the follow box as though you’re not logged in at all. Clicking that prompts you to log in, but logging in just “blinks” as though nothing has happened, and the follow or like does not take effect.
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