WP desktop and the ‘oh hai!’ curse

  • Unknown's avatar
    0ddn1x · Member ·

    I’m really tired of installing the latest desktop app, only to discover I have to purge it and reinstall wordpress.com-linux-deb-4.6.0.deb (which is the last desktop version that works), so thought I’d give it a poke.

    Every wpcom desktop app (Linux, .deb) above v4.6 redirects me to an Automattic hiring page and your v5.1.1 seems similarly ignorant of where wp.com (and my blog) live.

    _It will invoke my browser and send it to Auttomatic, but it won’t let me get past the page when I click the button underneath._

    First, I blocked access to automatic.com and http://www.automatic.com at the system level; that got me sane (can’t-touch-this) errors on the browser when I clicked on the ‘get in touch’ button (instead of a page I couldn’t get past).

    That suggested app misconfiguration, so I looked and there’s a file named ‘hey.html’ in /opt/WordPress.com/resources/app/public_desktop/ that seems to control the first page your electron app goes to. In it is this…

    ====
    Oh hai

    Glad to see you here.
    Did you know that we’re hiring?

    Get in touch
    ====

    I renamed the file: ‘# mv /opt/WordPress.com/resources/app/public_desktop/hey.html
    /opt/WordPress.com/resources/app/public_desktop/GTFO.hey.html’ and now wpcom v5.1.1 comes up normally *except the app _still_ doesn’t go to wp.com or my blog (even though the app already has my login credentials)*.

    So… it’s a ‘Broken As Designed’ flaw, but it’s not alone. :(

    I realize you guys are probably playing buffers for the developers, so please tell the devs they might want to look further into this app’s malconfiguration because it’s clearly bollixed with the parameters it’s being built with _and_ it’s not failing gracefully (by continuing to the user’s blog admin page) so it violates user expectation.

    Hope this helps and thanks a bunch. :)

  • staff-mckluskey · Staff ·

    Hi there!

    Thank you for all the details. Unfortunately, this is a known bug reported here:

    https://github.com/Automattic/wp-desktop/issues/783

    You may subscribe to that issue to be notified of any update and you can also add a comment with more details.

  • Unknown's avatar
    0ddn1x · Member ·

    Thanks, staff-mckluskey, I’d noticed – but I’m not on Github and it was listed as a Windows problem there; I just wanted to clarify that it wasn’t unique to Windows.

    I’ve re-installed v4.6 and will wait this issue out, but if I can’t use the Classic editor after Monday, all this may be moot anyway.

    Thanks for getting back to me on this. :)

  • staff-blorbo · Staff ·

    Thanks for the extra details!

    Just to clarify, you’ll be able to continue using the Classic Editor, even under the latest version of WordPress, long after Monday. :)

  • Unknown's avatar
    0ddn1x · Member ·

    Thanks, staff-blorbo… that’s music to my ears! :)

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