I have tried, and I have given up.

The idea of extending the functionality of WordPress via plugins is good in principle.

But…

Let me start with what I wanted to do. I wrote a series of blog posts that were to be published on a fixed bi-weekly schedule. In this way I could concentrate on getting the blog posts up to scratch, and have them published while I was working on something else. Then I wanted these blog posts to appear automatically on my Facebook page, together with one of the images from the blog and a comment that was perhaps a little more informative than the usual “New on my blog.”

In order to achieve this, however, the world, the wheel and everything else had to be reinvented. That’s all.

Facebook insists that an app has to be written for this. OK, so I upgrade my FB account to developer status, and set up an app. Then all hell is set loose, because they now require a blow-by-blow account with screen shots of what my nefarious app will do to innocent bystanders, including having a privacy policy, etc, etc. No clue as to why any of this is necessary, and I begin to think that the NSA is really the lesser evil.

And then, you guessed it, it doesn’t work. Scheduled publishing runs just fine, but nothing turns up on my FB page.

Complain to the WordPress forum, and get the usual “advice” on uninstalling the plugin and reinstalling it. No reason to think that this might work, and it doesn’t. The WP/FB developers seem to be on the task for about two days in a year, and one hopes that in the meantime that they are doing something useful with their lives, like sweeping the streets. For them “resolving” an issue is done by clicking on the corresponding button or allowing the problem to decay, rather than actually doing anything about it.

This bears remarkable similarity to the same old computer ripoffs I’ve seen time and again. Make something that glitters, describe it in bombastic terms, pero no va. Don’t even attempt to check whether it works. Cargo cult in an age of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

I’ll leave you with what one MarieHaze had to say, just before her website disappeared:

Marie’s Last Words

I am literally crying right now please someone help me

I have been trying to get this plugin to work for two days. I’m literally crying right now trying to figure out what I am doing wrong. I created an app… Apparently my app detail page is being reviewed for approval? None of the features work, it isn’t posting to my page.

All the guides make it look easy, but when I tried to follow the directions, I was directed through a lot of extra steps such as uploading screenshots, creating privacy pages… all to no avail. I want the comments box below posts, I want to be able to automatically post to website facebook page…

Glug, glug, glug.