Thanks for your advice, Joy.
I now see how it works. You have to import plugins to make WordPress do simple things that it already should be able to do, and if that doesn’t work, then you have to manually modify the code, which also might not work until you download another plugin and try again.
For example, I wanted to NOT have the author name and the date of posting appear next to my posts. A reasonable request, I thought, but there’s no option for it in WordPress as it is (which is astounding to me), so I searched the Internet for options and someone recommended a plugin called “WP Meta and Date Remover” which has plenty of good reviews and claims to “remove meta information such as author and date from posts and pages”. I downloaded it, activated it, checked all the right boxes, cleared the cache on my browser and reopened it, tested it from two other browsers, and guess what? It didn’t change anything, so then I had to try to modify the code.
I searched the Internet again for how to manually change the code and found an article that had some html code I copied and pasted into the site editor. But, of course, that didn’t change anything either, even though I tried it in two different style sheets.
The same article gave me another method for accomplishing this seemingly simple task which is deleting a line of code. However, that line of code was nowhere to be found in the body of code that I have.
Then I search again and find a YouTube video that shows me how to modify the code using another plugin and gives me the code that I need to enter. I load the plugin, activate it, and enter the code. This time it works.
Is it typical for one to go through this convoluted, time-consuming process to make what should be simple changes in the appearance of a WordPress site?
