WordPress.com have added an infinite scroll ‘feature’ to two of their primary themes, including the Twenty Eleven theme I use here.
In the quest to make visitors engage with your content as effortlessly as possible we are rolling out a new feature to your blog home pages—infinite scrolling! Instead of having to scroll and click through older-pages links we are now pulling new content automatically whenever a visitor approaches the bottom of a blog.
Best thing, it should be entirely transparent to you or your readers. The feature is enabled for blogs with the Twenty Ten or Twenty Eleven themes.
We take care of the smaller details, such as removing the older/next links, integrating with your design as smoothly as possible. Having said that, please let us know what you think by posting any feedback you may have. Thanks.
Another way of looking at this is that they have deleted my footer from the main page of my site, and given me no way to return it (short of picking another theme and undoing all the work I’ve put into this one).
I don’t have the will to add my voice to the many, many complaints already being voiced in the forums. Instead I think I’ll be creating my own self hosted WordPress blog.
While WordPress remains a great platform, I don’t rate WordPress.com very highly at all. The restrictions on what you can do are too great and the cost of removing those restrictions is too high in my view ($30/y for CSS access; another $30/y for no-ads; £12-25/y for a custom domain; no way to pay to use JavaScript).
I’m annoyed that I’ve already paid to use my custom domain (and that there will be a 5 month gap in my Google Analytics stats!), but it has become pretty clear to me that WordPress.com is not a good option for more advanced users.
Here’s to hoping I have a smooth migration experience. I remember reading somewhere that you can’t export images from a WP.com blog – I hope that’s not the case!
halfblog.net 
How will you lose analytical data? Can’t you use the same tracking number?
WordPress.com don’t allow Google Analytics, so there will be a 5 month hole in my stats. Tragically, though their own stats tool is pretty useful, there’s no export. And the don’t keep the data beyond a few months, so most of it is already gone.
This Infinite Scrolling Situation is a big mess at this time, good luck with your possible future self-hosted WordPress blog Geoff, I hope that works out for you.
Thanks John Jr! I hope you and others are able to make an impression on the folks at WordPress.com – they don’t seem very willing to listen to valid concerns.
You are welcome, and thank you Geoff. :)
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