WordPress.com

1. 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom
   Member
   Apr 29, 2011, 10:44 PM

   I have been trying since 11:27 a.m. Eastern Time Monday to resolve a problem on my site http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com and, in that time, WordPress.com support has been worse than useless after four e-mail requests for help. I say "worse" because in several years on WordPress, I've come to see many benefits to the platform. But the slowness -- and, at times, total failure -- of WordPress.com to respond to reasonable requests for help borders on contempt for its users and has gone a long way toward eroding in my mind any other advantages of the platform.

   My problem is that the highlighted numbers "1356" suddenly appeared on my site above the unhighlighted "One-Minute Book Reviews" in the far right column.
   The response from WordPress.com support said in part: "This is part of the default widgets that appear in your theme's sidebar. The text is coming from the link category you have created at [gives link] .... If you change the wording of that category it will change how it appears in your sidebar. Also, you could add different widgets if you want to your sidebar at Appearance > Widgets. Let me know if you have any other questions."

   The problem is that I do not want to *change" the wording of the category. I want to delete the "1356" and the "One-Minute Book Reviews" below it. And I do not want to add widgets. I just want to delete what's there. The link provided by Andrew at WP.com Support took me to a page that showed the link and "Bulk Actions," one of which was "Delete." But when I selected "Delete," the unwanted lines still appear on the page. I wrote back politely to Andrew more than two days ago saying that his advice didn't work and asked for further guidance. He has ignored that and two more requests for help.

   A longtime user shouldn't have to wait four days to resolve such a simple issue. This is much worse support than you get from sites such as Tumblr or Quora, both of which have responded far more promptly and helpfully than WordPress.com. Because WordPress support seems unwilling or unable to help, I would appreciate it greatly if someone in Forums could suggest how to get rid of the unwanted text. Thank you.

   The blog I need help with is oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com.

2. raincoaster
   Member
   Apr 29, 2011, 11:26 PM

   Nobody here in the forums can help you with your issues with WP support.

   Looking at the sidebar, that appears to be a Page: does it appear on your page list on your dashboard? If so, delete the 1345 but not the other.

3. thesacredpath
   Member
   Apr 29, 2011, 11:31 PM

   The numbered category name is probably because somehow you have deleted the default link category that was set at settings > writing. Normally the default category cannot be deleted until you set a different category as the default.

   First off, you are going to have to assign the "One-Minute Book Reviews" to a different category (every link has to be assigned to at least one link category). You can either set it to an existing link category, or you can create a new link category for that link.

   Next go to settings > writing and set a new default link category and then you can delete the 1356 category.

   When you create new links from that point forward, they will be default be assigned to that new default link category unless you change it while making the new link.

   On the support thing, do realize that staff get thousands of support requests each day so they are quite busy and handle the support tickets in the order that they are received. I'm not making excuses for them, just pointing out that with 18,000,000 blogs here, they are kept quite busy.

4. 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom
   Member
   May 2, 2011, 4:04 AM

   raincoaster and the sacredpath: Thank you both for your help. I appreciate your suggestions and finally deleted the rogue text in my sidebar.

5. thesacredpath
   Member
   May 2, 2011, 6:30 AM

   Woohoo! Success!

   You are welcome.

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