For reasons I will explain, I set up a site here on WordPress dot com to sell some greeting cards.
The background to this decision is that from time to time Tamara and I make changes to the greeting card designs on our main site, such as updating the information on the back of a card or changing the font, or changing the image. And sometimes we have an end of line that is taking up space.
So we decided to bundle them into sets of cards at a big discount.
We could have put the cards on the main site at Flying Twigs, but we decided not to because we might end up cutting into sales of the latest cards in the catalogue.
Instead, we decided to make a new site and sell them on Extra Twigs, a site I set up here on WordPress dot com
We chose the new TwentyTwentyOne theme and I wrote separate posts for each set of cards, with a gallery of images to show what was for sale, and a Paypal Pay button.
So far so good.
I created post number one and then used the ‘copy’ feature in the WP Admin panel to create a draft of post number two. Then I replaced the gallery images and the text in the Paypal Pay button.
Following that method I created twelve posts in all and then decided to edit one of the posts.
And then, uh oh….
Somewhere in that process, I noticed that the title of the set of cards – the title that you write in the Paypal button block to say what the name of the product is – renamed itself back to the previous title. For example, ‘Greeting Cards Set 8’ renamed itself to ‘Greeting Cards Set 7’.
At first I thought it was my error, but I checked and it was definitely not. If I was quick I could actually see the text change in front of my disbelieving and depressed eyes.
Why It Is A Problem
I’s a disaster. Someone opts to buy one set and I think they have bought a different set and I put the wrong set in the post.
I raised it as a bug and chatted with Support (one of the perks of having a Premium plan). And because it took a while and I was supposed to be going out, I suggested that Support followed up with an email.
Support did so and said they weren’t able to reproduce the issue. So I checked again and followed up saying I was sure there was a bug. And I then received this reply from someone else at Support who said:
Unfortunately this is a known bug with our Pay with PayPal blocks. Duplicating/copying the blocks can sometimes result in the new duplicated block acting as a copy that is still connected to the original, so when you edit the block that you duplicated, the same changes happen to the original block that you copied it from as well.
Our developers have been looking into the cause of the issue, but I do not have an ETA on how long it may take for them to fix. I will say that unfortunately it has been an issue for a while already, so I would not anticipate the fix being right around the corner.
If copying your posts is an important part of your workflow, and you need the Pay with Paypal blocks to be different in each post, your best bet would be to totally delete that Pay with PayPal block after you’ve created your freshly copied post, then create a new Pay with PayPal block in its place with the correct title/contents. That way, it will be its own independent block that is not linked to the duplicated one.
Oh, I was so pleased. As they say – there is no pleasure like the resolution of a doubt. I told Support that while I was waiting to hear, I had started to hate the block because I knew there was a bug, and if Support continued to say there wasn’t then I felt like dropping the whole project.
So, with an answer that explained how to avoid the issue, I went though each post and deleted the blocks and rebuilt them individually. Thankfully there were only twelve.
Photograph Works 