WPengine: burying the lead

I am going to do what WPengine does when it sends me a security notification. I love them, as much as it is possible to love any hosting service in this day and age (and generally I have believed that a host is only good for a couple of years before it goes downhill, so I do not lightly profess my attraction). They are pretty speedy, they have a pushbutton staging/dev server for busy lazy people like me, and a damn fine affiliate program.

So accustomed to their wondrous ways, I expect more of them, nay, I demand more of them. I have to really look to find a problem sometimes. Really, many people would say I’m being petty to complain.

Today, I am irked by their message when they encounter a vulnerable plugin. Like this blog post, it starts out with a lot of words. Then there is a space in the middle with some numbers, and at a quick glance, I come away with the impression that there is some sort of trouble at the mill and I should do something about it. What the problem is, I have to pause and sift through the words, and that takes time. Time that a busy lazy person like me just does not have. “Come on, man, out with it, just what is the problem?”

Here is the message when viewed in list mode:

The underscore is bothersome. It just seems geeky and technical. The repetition of WP Engine in the From as well as the Subject is annoying. The problem is not in the Subject, it just trails off…

It would be better if it was more like this:

“Vulnerability” might get ellipsized…. but even if it became “Vul…” that might suggest “Vulcan” or “Vultron” and that might pique my curiosity. And changing the From to WP Engine Security solves the problem of the repetition.

But, assuming I was brave enough to click and read a possibly geeky and technical message, sure enough, it is geeky and technical:

I have fallen asleep before the first sentence. When I wake up, the thing that sticks out is:

The flayrob on outaskew is running version 4.1.4.

While knowing that there is some version number running on an environment (flayrob) on a server (outaskew) might help me, I have to back up a line to understand that this is the enable-media-replace plugin’s number we are talking about.

Really, just drop the dashes and add some capitals and come out and say it:
Enable Media Replace plugin.
And put it on another line.

Or better yet, just start out the message with this important information:

Please update the Enable Media Replace plugin (in your flayrob environment on sever outaskew) ASAP! More details on the vulnerability below.

Then you can get into a long tale about how seriously you take these things and prove your point with links, etc. 

I would give you bonus points if you made the word “update” link straightaway to the location within the WP Dashboard, because then I could take immediate action.

Anyway, glad to get that off my chest. I doubt that my screech in the wilderness about this petty annoyance will have much effect, but if you happen to know someone who might want to do something about this problem, hasten to it with all due speed! I’ve got a dozen more where that came from.

P.S.

And just for yucks, since everyone talks about AI these days, here is what ChatGPT suggests to clarify the message:

We urgently need to inform you about a security issue with the enable-media-replace plugin on your sites hosted at WP Engine. To address this, please take immediate action by reviewing and updating the plugin to a secure version.

The specific site, flayrob on outaskew, is currently running version 4.1.4.

The vulnerability identified by WP Engine involves…

But, to be fair, I had to prompt ChatGPT a little bit:

And I stand firm on my believe that it would be wiser to give the Proper Name of the plugin rather-than-its-slug.

So if I were to write this blog post properly, I should have said that to begin with.

The clever little AI bot within WordPress tells me:

The post content discusses the author’s feedback on a security notification message from WP Engine. The author expresses their frustration with the wording and format of the message, suggesting improvements to make it clearer and more actionable.

1. Make the notification message more concise and direct, clearly stating the issue upfront.

2. Remove the underscore in the message as it seems technical and unnecessary.

3. Avoid repetitive use of “WP Engine” in the “From” and “Subject” fields.

4. Begin the message with essential information: “Please update the Enable Media Replace plugin (in your flayrob environment on server outaskew) ASAP! More details on the vulnerability below.”

5. Provide a direct link to update the plugin within the WP Dashboard when mentioning the “update” action.

6. Consider using the proper name of the plugin instead of the slug.

Overall, the author suggests improving the clarity, brevity, and accessibility of the security notification message to make it easier for users to understand and take immediate action.

LegacyBox: Now comes the spam

A new message appeared in the Inbox today, from Kodak Digitizing. Rumor has it that LegacyBox and Kodak Digitizing are one and the same, and this confirms it. We used a special email address for LegacyBox and they have so far given it to two different companies, Kodak and Southtree.com.

The “emotion of the past” in this case is not quite rage, not quite disappointment, but something in between, perhaps irritation, that we have to suffer yet again from irresponsible vendors who can’t seem to understand that the CAN Spam Act was meant to prevent behavior like this. We have unsubscribed to any sort of list they have sent, yet now begins the marketing from different sides.

Their email is also badly done. If you’re going to send a mass email, if you are any sort of marketer at all, you should realize that not everyone has “show images” turned on. Observe, the large pink block where the mail client has prevented the display of their message, which is a series of images. Also apparently during the email-list-import they didn’t include the “BKJ” portion of “BKJ Productions.”

LegacyBox, I understand how they could be so shabby, but Kodak? Really? Shame! We expect better of you, we will no longer buy your batteries.

So now, we need to spend unnecessary time filling out a complaint with the FTC.

Elementor Editor: Context

Recently editing a Template Section in Elementor, I found I was unable to see all of the parts, because the Header is being shown when editing Template Sections!

This is very annoying; there are very few situations that I can imagine where I want the header/footer visible while editing a Template Section.

The point of a Template like this is to be used somewhere else, and so the context does not necessarily include the header/footer. In my situation it’s going to be used in both a Pop-up and on some other page.

Likewise, the “Preview” option should not show the header/footer.

A workaround would simply be to add this CSS to the editor when you’re in template editor mode:

div[data-elementor-type="header"] ,
div[data-elementor-type="footer"] {display: none;}

Digging a little deeper into the code it seems that Elementor adds some classes to the body when it is editing, so this may be a more “global” workaround:

body.single-elementor_library.elementor-editor-active div[data-elementor-type="header"],
body.single-elementor_library.elementor-editor-active div[data-elementor-type="footer"] {display: none;}

This would also work for the Popup editor, which doesn’t necessarily need the context of the page (as much).

Now, is there some way to inject the above code into the Elementor editor on the fly?

Of course it would be vastly easier for Elementor to fix this, but trying to put this documentation and explain a narrow edge case in GitHub or Elementor Support is a bigger chore than I want to take on at the moment.

It does seem possible to add this to your theme (or using some such CSS editor/injector like the one by SilkyPress that we have been using to good effect recently) and it would work because Elementor loads your theme’s stylesheet even in its editor.

So, let’s go a little further and add a message:

body.single-elementor_library.elementor-editor-active:before {
    content: "The header/footer are not being shown here because you are editing a Popup or Section.";
    padding: 1em;
    border: 1px dotted red;
    margin: 1em;
    position: absolute;
    opacity: .5;
    width: 320px;
    color: red;
    font-size: 14px;
}
body.single-elementor_library.elementor-editor-active:hover:before {display: none;}

This will put a little message that disappears when you mouseover the editing area, so it should not be too obtrusive. And the class elementor-editor-active should keep it from interfering with your site design.

WARNING: This does cause a problem when editing a Template Page such as a 404 Error page!
DO NOT add this css to your site if you cannot live with this little blemish (not seeing header/footer).
In most cases, though, by the time I’m worrying about the 404 Error page, I’ve gotten familiar enough with the header/footer to not have to worry about seeing them.

So to solve that problem, change the message.

body.single-elementor_library.elementor-editor-active:before {
    content: "The header/footer are not being shown here because you are editing a Popup or Section, or one of the Template pages that uses the standard header/footer. If this is a problem, then turn off this CSS.";
    padding: 1em;
    border: 1px dotted red;
    margin: 1em;
    position: absolute;
    opacity: .5;
    width: 320px;
    color: red;
    font-size: 14px;
}
body.single-elementor_library.elementor-editor-active:hover:before {display: none;}

Some investigation

Body class when editing. Disregard the id-related entries, such as page-id or kit-, and who knows what the e–ua-blink stuff is about?

Page
page
page-template-default
logged-in elementor-default
elementor-kit-12
elementor-page
page-id-421 elementor-page-421
e–ua-blink e–ua-chrome e–ua-webkit
elementor-editor-active

Popup
elementor_library-template-default
single single-elementor_library
logged-in
elementor-default
elementor-kit-12
elementor-page
postid-23 elementor-page-23
e–ua-blink e–ua-chrome e–ua-webkit
elementor-editor-active
dialog-body
dialog-lightbox-body
dialog-container
dialog-lightbox-container

Section
elementor_library-template-default
single
single-elementor_library
logged-in
elementor-default
elementor-kit-12
elementor-page
postid-344 elementor-page-344
e–ua-blink e–ua-chrome e–ua-webkit
elementor-editor-active

404 Page
elementor_library-template-default
single
single-elementor_library
logged-in
elementor-default
elementor-kit-12
elementor-page
postid-459 elementor-page-459 elementor-page-459
e–ua-blink e–ua-chrome e–ua-webkit
elementor-editor-active

This is sort of a heggledy-peggledy mess, looking at it this way! Let’s put some order into this, by way of a spreadsheet:

Page	Section	Template 404 Page	Popup
			dialog-body
			dialog-container
			dialog-lightbox-body
			dialog-lightbox-container
	elementor_library-template-default	elementor_library-template-default	elementor_library-template-default
elementor-default	elementor-default	elementor-default	elementor-default
elementor-editor-active	elementor-editor-active	elementor-editor-active	elementor-editor-active
elementor-kit-12	elementor-kit-12	elementor-kit-12	elementor-kit-12
elementor-page	elementor-page	elementor-page	elementor-page
e–ua-blink e–ua-chrome e–ua-webkit	e–ua-blink e–ua-chrome e–ua-webkit	e–ua-blink e–ua-chrome e–ua-webkit	e–ua-blink e–ua-chrome e–ua-webkit
logged-in	logged-in	logged-in	logged-in
page
page-id-421 elementor-page-421
page-template-default
	postid-344 elementor-page-344	postid-459 elementor-page-459	postid-23 elementor-page-23
	single	single	single
	single-elementor_library	single-elementor_library	single-elementor_library

So here we see the problem: The css rule I’ve created for the Section Template also applies to the Template 404 Page!

So a better way around this: Somehow add some code/class when editing a Section Template, to distinguish it from the Template 404 Page.

Copyright Infringement Scam

My, but the scammers are getting more clever every day! Here’s an email where the scammer pretends to be someone legal/high up at MailChimp, who claims to have found images on your website(s) that violate copyright law. Generally speaking you can safely disregard. The link will probably download something dangerous for your computer. (Who knows why YandEx is allowing their service to perpetuate this scam?)

Name: Kenneth
Email: <KennethAlbert@mailchimp.com>
Comment or Message:
Hello,
Your website or a website that your organization hosts is violating the copyright protected images owned by our company (mailchimp Inc.).
Check out this official document with the hyperlinks to our images you utilized at example.com and our previous publications to obtain the proof of our copyrights.
Download it right now and check this out for yourself:
https://forms.yandex.com/u/[randomhexadecimal]/success/?b=[randomhexadecimal]
I think that you deliberately violated our rights under 17 USC Sec. 101 et seq. and could be liable for statutory damage of up to $140,000 as set-forth in Sec. 504(c)(2) of the Digital millennium copyright act (”DMCA”) therein.
This letter is official notification. I seek the removal of the infringing materials referenced above. Please take note as a company, the Dmca requires you to eliminate and/or deactivate access to the infringing materials upon receipt of this particular notice. In case you don’t stop the utilization of the above mentioned infringing materials a lawsuit will be started against you.
I do have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as presumably infringing is not authorized by the legal copyright owner, its agent, as well as law.
I declare, under consequence of perjury, that the information in this message is accurate and hereby affirm that I am authorized to act on behalf of the proprietor of an exclusive right that is presumably violated.


Sincerely yours,
Kenneth Albert
Legal Officer
mailchimp, Inc.
mailchimp.com

Tips for moving

We’ve just moved to 1 Central St. Suite A, Stoneham, MA 02180.

Since we’re updating our online presence, address-wise, we thought we’d share some of our experience along with a few tips.

You can update your address with the US Post Office online for $1.10 or walk into a local office and do it there for free. Prepare for an onslaught of junk mail related to your move.

First things first

1. Update your website’s footer or wherever you have your address. Consider making it a clickable link to Google Maps if it’s not already. (Easy to do– just put your address into Google maps and then click the “share” link to get a URL like https://goo.gl/maps/34yvxHyALGV647DF8.) If your phone number has changed and it was a clickable link before, make sure the HTML link is accurate as well.
2. Update your email signature. (Don’t bother making a clickable link to the map, as the fewer links in an email, the better.)
3. Send a mass email to your clients to let them know. Follow up with your top 10 clients via a personal email or phone call.
4. Update your invoicing system with the new address. (In our case, it’s the wretched application known as QuickBooks, simply replacing a JPG image.)
5. The bank! Don’t forget the bank! And credit card companies. They’d probably like to know you’ve moved.
6. Maybe the state government agencies. The Feds will probably track you down, but a good idea to check there.

Perhaps buy a rubber stamp with a cross-through-line and your new address in red ink. We ordered one from VistaPrint that works pretty well– there are a few thousand envelopes we’d rather not put into the recycling bin just yet, so we can just stamp it on top of the old address.

Then, find some mindless TV show to watch in the background as you delve into this onerous, tedious task. It being Christmastime, we’re watching Nick Offerman’s Yule Log. Though NBC’s La Brea is also pretty good if you’re a Land of the Lost fan.

Things to have handy:

• Text document to jot down all of the email addresses and passwords you may need for accessing the online services. This is a good time to think about tracking-who-is-tracking-you–consider creating a special email address for each account, or using plus addressing.
• Text document with your address and a blurb about your business. This avoids re-typing.
• Logo at various sizes.
• Access to your junk email folder to receive any email for password-resets. Not surprisingly, many times these messages will trigger your spam filters.

Start out with a Google search for your business and the city name:

This will give you a handy list of the most likely suspects to update, in order of priority.

The first result is probably your Google Business Page. Assuming you can still remember your password, you can edit your location there and they may send you a postcard to verify that this is a legit request. It’s probably the most important thing to update, given the general monopoly they have for search results.

We found a Yelp page that was unclaimed, so fixing the address there requires an account with Yelp.

Yelp is going to offer you all sorts of advertising opportunities, which you can probably ignore. Hopefully these days they’ve stopped with their strong-arm “protection” scheme, where some unpleasant review appears and you may need to pay some money to help push those reviews to the bottom.

Linked In is pretty straightforward about updating your address, and they offer an opportunity to post a message to anyone in your particular group.

Tip: Have a text document handy with your default message written up: “We’ve moved to 1 Central St. Suite A, Stoneham, MA 02180. The phone number remains 781-662-8800, as does the website, http://www.bkjproductions.com.&#8221;

If you haven’t done all of the various actions to “build your page” now is a good time to do so.

Another tip: Have a few sizes of your company logo handy, as you’re going along. Generally, most social media platforms want some sort of huge square logo that will get scaled down into an icon, and maybe a really wide banner. For example, besides the square logo, LinkedIn wants something 1,128px x 191px. You’d think they would want something in round numbers, or even a standard 16:9 ratio, but everybody’s special.

Yellow Pages is still around, surprisingly; they came up third in the search results. In our case, we hadn’t yet claimed the listing, so another round of account-setup and verifications. Also, they’ve got the wrong type of services, so this is another opportunity to fix up that.

What is interesting is that Yellow Pages wants you to “connect with a business advisor” to actually do anything, so that sounds like it is going to cost money. Is it worth it to pay them to publish correct information? The relevance of Yellow Pages is still in question, so we’re not going to worry about them too much. Also, they do not support plus addressing, so we’ve created yet another email address to handle this.

Next up is Alignable which must be some sort of LinkedIn wannabe. In our case there must have been an account. Requesting a new password results in a wait of about five minutes or so before it comes in.

After logging in, there’s an opportunity to connect with Facebook, like we need another connection, and the ubiquitous “Maybe Later” button that is not as dominant as the Connect Facebook button– how about a “Rather stab myself in the eye with a seafood fork” button?

While there, take note of any messages or alerts or whatever is going on– at the top of their website are a set of icons, some of which may have red numbers:

These are generally alerts from other people who might want to do business with you, who have probably been more active about responding to messages from Alignable.

Buzzfile came up as another place to update the address, which is sort of interesting, because we can’t recall signing up with Buzzfile yet they have the address and company president information. Manytimes you’ll find that some service has bought a list of company names and set up a free listing for you, in hopes of getting you to subscribe and pay for additional features— a long time ago, it was Manta who was one of the first, but surprisingly they are not showing up in the top 10 search results. Buzzfile has compiled a list of Q&A about company revenue, number of employees, etc. which is not really that accurate.

In this case there does not seem to be a way to claim the listing, nor does it recognize the email we usually use for online services. Tucked away in the footer is an address, info@buzzfile.com, so we’ve written to them to ask them to please update the page. They do offer a “Remove Business” link, so that is also possibly a good option, in case this turns out to be one of those subscribe-to-update situations.

Minutes later, they respond:

So this means that whenever we get around to updating the business with the Secretary of State, then Dun & Bradstreet will update their records, and then Buzzfile will finally catch on.

MapQuest: We can’t recall the last time we visited this site, but amazing it’s still around. Hidden amongst the ads is a handy link to “Claim this business” so we give it a click. And, up comes Yext which says it will handle much of this updating stuff for us. Rather than clicking on their enticing signup, there is a dim recollection that this was something we did LAST time we moved..

…

It’s about two hours later and we’ve only done five. But, you get the general idea.

Legacybox: The Long Game

• 

Recently we sent over a bunch of old film and audio to LegacyBox.com. Ever on the upsell, they are at least diligent at updating the progress while we wait the approximately 10-12 weeks for Standard Processing. Between weekly marketing emails about Discounts that are Almost Gone and Going Fast, we’re getting messages that our memories have been delivered to the secure processing facility, checked in, barcoded, reviewed, put in line to be processed, and progressing. Here’s a screenshot of the messages since 5/2/22:

We have the sense that the reels of film are on a very long conveyor belt that is going through different sections of the factory, with Oompah-Loompah lab technicians in airtight clean suits busily inspecting our items with loving, individualized care. We can prod them (likely with an additional service fee) if this is not fast enough, as the first message says:

Digitizing time is 10 business days for Guaranteed Rush, 3-4 weeks for Expedited Processing and approximately 10-12 weeks for Standard Processing.
If you need your order completed faster, please reach out to our Customer Support team.

It is possible that they will run out of things to say about the progress, as the latest Update on Our Order says the order is about to enter the digitizing process. Perhaps once that is done they will send messages that the order is about to be put back into the box, the flaps are being closed, tape is being applied, stamps are being licked…

We had honestly thought maybe it would go faster than this, and really, if they didn’t send a reminder every week or two, perhaps we would have forgotten, and then been surprised how fast they had done the job. As it is, with these constant messages, the process seems to be taking quite a long time. This sort of drip campaign is like a mild water torture. However, it’s sort of the reverse of the process that got us here. Gone are the days of sending a Super 8 cartridge off to Kodak and waiting weeks for its return; perhaps it is better to savor the slow progress as these precious memories are preserved.

---

Update 7/12/22:

Update 7/13/22:
LegacyBox has given our email address to Southtree.com. Probably they are creating the illusion of competition. The plot thickens, though, AV-Workshop.com has an interesting article about this duplicity:

EXPOSED: The Truth about Southtree / Kodak Box / Legacybox Film Transfer Service

But of course, AV-Workshop is a competitor. Their service is higher end, and they don’t offer a package deal—you have to get a quote first. So, we’ll see what we get out of LegacyBox and perhaps give AV-Workshop a try next.

---

Update 8/23/22:
We’ve gone well past the 10-12 Weeks for Standard Processing. 16 weeks and one day, to be precise. On 8/19 there was a glimmer of hope with the subject line “We’re transferring your film!” Which we thought was what they had been doing most of this time.

Today we have started the careful process of digitizing your film. We’re one of the few companies in the country to digitize home movies using the same technology and process as the Academy of Motion Pictures. One of our trained technicians will scan every frame, then compile the footage, and correct the frame-rate so your film looks smooth and natural. Then, they’ll render and master your digital files.

Legacybox 8/19/22

We are certainly glad the technicians are trained. A quick search for the Academy of Motion Pictures film transfer process doesn’t result in many useful hits, but there is another company using this same phrase, Stilson.com. The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia has an interesting description of various ways to clean film.

The bright hope of the digitization being nearly done was dashed against the cliffs of despair the following day, by the subject line “Heads up on your order.”

We wanted to give you a heads up that one or more of your items had some pre-existing quality issues that arose in conversion. We still converted it, doing everything we could to ensure the highest possible quality transfer. However, given your media’s original quality, the transfer isn’t great and doesn’t meet our normal quality standard. We’ve found that our customers still want the digital transfer and prefer we capture the footage, even if it’s poor quality.

The link to Follow your Order was blocked immediately by a pop-up offering 50% off when signing up for more emails. After entering the order number and original email, then the whole glorious timeline is revealed:

Rushing straight to the Google Drive to get the files, they are there!

One is a film scan, 24.5MB. The image quality is just 640×480, which is what we are sure the Academy of Motion Pictures used perhaps in 1972. The frame rate is strange; most 16mm film at the time was either 18 or 24fps, but this is 17fps?

There are a lot of bits of fuzz in the film.

So much for wet-transfer gate, which we suspect is what the Academy of Motion Pictures would use!

The other is a Hi8 or Digital8 (videotape) and is 720×480, with a frame rate of 59.94 frames per second and has audio. The lower resolution is to be excused, possibly, because if it was Hi8, that would be the maximum and perhaps boosted (400 lines would, in theory, be 400 pixels high). The initial 1m45s is just blue, then the video starts. It is far grainier than we would hope. Still, it is 2 hours long.

Returning to study the timeline, we can see that there are at least two humans involved in the process, Katie and Kimberly:

They are essentially saying the same thing; Katie must be in charge of the videotape (“home movies”) and Kimberly is the one who has scanned every frame and apparently missed more than a few spots, judging from the number of hairs and flecks of dust on the film.

This is a “small” two-item order, and while the periodic email drip-campaign has not said so, the timeline shows that the originals have been placed inside a shipping trailer and shipped.

Most packages are delivered within 5 – 8 business days, so get ready as your memories will be arriving soon! Of course, we always return your originals along with your new digital files.

We have another order with 10 items, and it is still in process, “another few weeks at most.”

Update 2022-09-24: The final 10 items are digitized. Total wait time: 125 days, or nearly 18 weeks.

All-in-all, if you can stand the waiting, and don’t need HD or 4K quality video from your film, the price is not too bad. You may be able to find a Groupon discount, and remember, LegacyBox always has a sale of some sort! We may try sending the same footage to AV Workshop, which is pricier but could be worth it.

Elementor: Submissions

I wish that the development team for Elementor would focus more on the missing bits in some of the front end. Someone had too much time on their hands and has given us a “Submissions” panel which provides a lackluster way to capture the form submissions. There is a far better plugin that gives you a straight dump to Excel, by MDSimpson, over at Github: Contact Form 7 to Database Extension. It seems to work with most other contact form plugins, though it has CF7 in its name. However, that plugin has not been updated in a while (since 2018), and it always makes me a bit nervous to use plugins that are not in the WP Repository.

Elementor Tip: Merged Galleries

Suppose you have two Galleries on the same page, and you want the Lightboxes of both to be the same.

This is useful, for example, when you have a row of three images and then a row of two images, because you have five images total and you don’t want to use a gallery of five images, make sense? Visually you have

A B C
D E

That is, three images ABC in one gallery, on top of two images DE in another gallery.

The galleries aren’t linked normally.

So what you do is add a bit of javascript in the form of an HTML widget, thus:

<script>
jQuery(‘.e-gallery-item’).data(‘elementor-lightbox-slideshow’,’merged-slideshow’);
jQuery(‘.e-gallery-item’).attr(‘data-elementor-lightbox-slideshow’,’merged-slideshow’);
</script>

This is basically telling all of the .e-gallery-items to change their “elementor-lightbox-slideshow” value to be the same— originally they will have different random numbers assigned.

Test of “new” editor in WordPress

I have started writing a block. There is nothing at the top of the content area to tell me how to do bold or italic, like in Word, so that is a bit disappointing. And the text is wrapping at some unknown point.

When I hit return, there is a little black square with a “plus” symbol .

Then, if I mouse around, there is a little floating thing that has a paragraph mark, three lines, B I and a link symbol, and a down caret, and three dots.

If I do click the little black square with a plus symbol, I find that I can do things like insert various forms, business hours, something called Calendly(paid) and so forth. It’s hard to find out where I can insert an image, that’s at the bottom of the list of things, but probably something i am more likely to want to do than to insert a form or business hours.

Here’s what that Blocks window looks like:

It does change its appearance, moving Image into the blocks area when I’ve inserted a few images, however.

Here is the little black square with a plus symbol:

The nice thing is that I can paste a graphic in, but then it is really hard to move it around.

And when I hover over the graphic in an effort to move it, a couple of other floaters appear:

There is some feature where you can type / to choose a block, but I guess that is only at the beginning of a paragraph, because I just typed / and nothing happened.

When I type the / at the beginning of a paragraph, I get a choice of blocks:

Some major annoyances:

There does not seem to be H1 through H6 heading styles available.

Throughout my editing area, when I have a blank line, it shows
Start writing or type / to choose a block

I cannot change one word to a color, it has to be the entire line.

I cannot select multiple paragraphs to change them.

When I go to publish, I have to hit the Publish button twice.

Yegads, they are putting Gutenberg out into the world!

Elementor Wishlist

Elementor 2.5 has come out and has some great improvements.

However, of course I want MORE!

Back, back I say! When you are done editing the Elementor page, there is a “Back to Dashboard” button that does not take me to the Dashboard, it takes me to the Page editor. I don’t want to go to the Page editor, I am done editing that Page. Take me back to the Pages list (if I have been editing Pages, or the Posts list, if I have been editing Posts). Somewhere useful!

Make it easy to edit SEO tags etc. You’re basically overriding the WordPress Editor, but there are some things like the Yoast SEO metaboxes or Custom Fields or the slug or the Excerpt that can only be edited in the WP Post/Page editor. (I suppose, if the Elementor editor wants to kick me back to this editor with the “Back to Dashboard” button, then I could do these things then…)

Duplicating Templates and Header/Footer Elements should not rely on export/import. Just let me click and duplicate it; why bother with export/import? (Keep the import/export feature, but make it a one-click thing to duplicate a Template.)

When I export a Template, suggest a name but let me rename it before it is saved. I hate finding files named elementor-959-2018-08-23.json  What does that even mean? On 8/23/2018 I saved a json file?

When I import a Template, give it a unique slug, named +1. Like, when you create a Post and there is already one of that same name, it is always named my-slug-2, my-slug-3, etc. if I have my-slug already.

Custom CSS and IDs and Classes should be easy to find in the Navigator Palette. How about if I give a Section an ID, then make that show up in the Navigator Palette instead of “Section”? Also could we call the Navigator the Layers Palette? That’s what it would be in Photoshop.

It’s too easy to add custom CSS and lose it. Give us some sort of Search feature to find things that we’ve stupidly buried. Also, is there some guidance on how to use these features? Allowing users to do inline styling is going to produce some horrible, horrible spaghetti code, taking us back to the days of MS Front Page.