Website verification problems at WordPress
I need to test my links more often. On Friday I googled the terms “Closed captioning and indexing,” the file name of my last post. Great news, the entry placed on the first page of the results. When I clicked on the link, however, this annoying dialog box popped up. You’ve seen it elsewhere: “[C]an’t verify the identity of the website. . .” What a way to kill traffic. What’s worse, a relation to Go Daddy was described. The two are related!? A friend once asked me to manage her Go Daddy domain and it was a disaster dealing with them. Never again. Yet here we are. At first I thought this had to be a server side problem, as I have done nothing unusual with that post. But it may be more complicated than that.
Google is indexing that page as one at a secure site. Hmm? Google is assigning it an ‘https’ prefix instead of the usual ‘http.’ Since my domain certificate is for a non-secure site, Google says it can’t authenticate what it now thinks is a second, secure site. Why it is doing this, and for just this post, I do not know. My other Google links are fine. Customer service at WP says, “I can’t pinpoint exactly why Google is indexing your site as HTTPS, but one possible solution would be to verify your site in Google Webmaster Tools.” I will now root around there to see what I can find. The Bing link to that post is just fine, with no HTTPS prefix.
Verification update using Google Webmaster Tools and WordPress Tools
I’ve now done what I can to verify to Google that I am the owner of my site. This should stop the invalid certificates I described above. I had to log onto Google with my account, get information there, and then log into the Tools section at WordPress. At that point I entered the Google provided information. I did not realize that there are so many sites that today require you to authenticate your identity. I’m not going to go through this process with every site, just the ones that become a problem. WordPress has provided great customer service along the way, I would not have been able to get through this maze without their assistance.
Update: 06/10/1916. The above information may be out of date. Right now I can’t figure out how to validate my website which is hosted by wordpress.com.
Image showing WordPress verification service page
Facebook observations
I’ve figured out why Facebook on my iPad, my mobile device, looks so much different than what I see on my iMac, my desktop machine. I usually connect to FB on my iPad with a Facebook app, which turns out to have more bugs than a swamp. Stories from seven hours ago are often put ahead of stories posted seven minutes ago. Some posts don’t show at all. The solution for mobile devices is to connect to FB using your browser, not your app. You should then see Facebook correctly. Having said this, I notice some posts displayed in the FB app do not show on my desktop browser timeline. In particular, many of my “Liked” sites show on the app and not on the desktop. And vice versa. Let me break this down to see if I can explain what is happening. Or, at least give you my best guess.
Like so many others, I have an iPad and a desktop Mac. Many have an Apple laptop and an iPhone. In both cases we are dealing with two different operating systems. OS10 for the Apple computers, and iOS7 for the iPad and the phone. There are therefore three ways to “Like” a website. With the mobile you can 1) use the app, or you can 2) like the site by going directly to a page with a browser, most often Safari. With the two Apple computers you like a site by 3) using the browser when you hit someone’s webpage. If you clicked on different sites in these three different ways, which is totally possible in our multi-tasking life, then somehow everything must be synched to work together. Ideally, when a person sees a Facebook timeline it should reflect all of their activity in the same manner, from device to device. That’s not happening.
I only use FB with friends, but if I had a business I’d be concerned that my customers aren’t seeing posts at the time and in the way I send them out. The bugs in the FB app mix your posts in a seemingly random manner, and the lack of coordination between operating systems adds to the problem. My iPad and Mac desktop do synch with many things, music and photos particularly, but obviously it’s not perfect. Has anyone else been through this? Or is a uniform FB experience for customers and clients still a work-in-progress?
