Using the classic editor in WordPress 5.0

Well today WordPress on my blog site went up to version 5.0. I knew a new editor (Gutenberg) had been coming to replace the classic editor but I hadn’t had time to try it. So when it did the upgrade, I happily let it go and install the new editor.

Then I tried to write a post.

Oh my goodness, that was just a horrid, horrid experience. I can see what they’ve tried to do but it literally took me about five times longer than normal to write a single post.

I actually like change. In fact I tend to thrive on it. I can even imagine how this might help build certain types of pages better. But for someone writing blog posts with a heading, a bunch of text and images, etc. I can’t imagine what they were thinking.

Each paragraph has become a “block” and I kept finding the pop-up block headers getting in the way the whole time I’m editing. Perhaps the people who love this don’t touch type, or they always write pages in order and don’t jump around but I can’t tell you how annoying it was.

Worse, it kept deciding that I needed new lines when I didn’t ask for them. I’d put the cursor beside an open bracket on a line, click Control-V, and then find it had inserted a newline before the pasted data. I was endlessly editing out things that it pushed in.

And so on and so on.

I kept looking for the “how to get rid of the new editor” posts but the best option now seems to be to use the Classic Editor plugin. Let’s just say that’s been a godsend. And given the number of installs it already has, I don’t think I’m alone on this one.

Recommended !

2018-12-07