How are you doing with the block editor?

If you use WordPress, you know that a while ago they pushed upon us a new way of viewing and editing our posts, called the “Gutenberg Block Editor.” I always resist changes in my computerized life, having usually just gotten used to the last innovation by the time the next one appears. So I stuck with the “Classic Editor” until changing over to my new blog. At that point I thought I would bow to the inevitable, since even Classic plugins are not going to work forever.

I hated it at first, but now I’ve gotten used to it. I prefer having things like formatting options and general site navigation always visible, as they were with the old editor — with blocks you have to hunt around for these or hover somewhere until they appear. But I’ve figured out how to do the rather basic things I need, and in some ways the “block” system makes things easier when it comes to quickly selecting various formats and moving them around.

One thing that I used to use a LOT, and that I miss, was the capacity to highlight linked text and then select from a list of recent posts, which was super convenient when I wanted to cross-link to my own posts without always copying and pasting the URLs (or even remembering what I had titled them). This functionality has gone away and I don’t understand why they could not have kept it. Maybe I should complain somewhere, if I could figure out how to do that.

How about you? What would you complain about with the block editor? Or are you blissfully happy with it? Or using another blog platform and glad you don’t have to deal with this hassle?

Linked in the Book Blog Discussion Challenge hosted by Feed Your Fiction Addiction and It Starts At Midnight.

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42 thoughts on “How are you doing with the block editor?

  1. I can say I’m getting used to it, but ugh, it’s clunky and just not intuitive at all. Adding images was so much easier with the classic editor and basically everything was easier. Not a fan of the block editor. This change reminds me of the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”

    1. Yes, I feel like they added multiple steps to accomplish most things and although it doesn’t disturb me so much now that I know how to do it, it seems a step in the wrong direction.

  2. Not crazy about it, like you I prefer to keep things the way I learnt to do them. It was much easier to do differently coloured text in the classic editor, for example.

    1. Hm, I have not even tried to do that in this editor. But how annoying that they made it harder. Again, why???

      1. I just tried it out, and it seems you can only change the color of a whole block?!? What’s the use of that? Argh, so frustrating.

  3. I’ve been using it recently so as not to be caught out when the option to use the Classic editor is no longer available, but it is definitely clunky, especially when I swap to the html option to finetune the appearance. It’s a bit like swapping to a transport map (for a metro or rail system) with the orientation turned 90° when you’ve been used to a physical map with north at the top. It’s a nightmare.

    I also work a lot on my Android phone app and that becomes tricky, especially when I swap to editing with WordPress Admin and try to find how to save my work — it’s impossible!

    So, yes, I agree with Laurie — it wasn’t broke so why did they have to tinker so much with it that they’ve built a locomotive out of a family car?

  4. I hate it. I’ve been avoiding it, but suddenly seemed to be forced to use nothing but it recently, and it’s much less intuitive than the old Classic Editor. Definitely agree clunky is the word. Fortunately, I have found a work-around in the form of an old link to the Classic Editor posts page where I can add one in the old format. No idea how long that will hang around but I’ll make use of it while I can! 😀

    1. I could have written this reply myself! Yes, clunky, less intuitive, and yes, I’m also using an old link.
      The dashboard for stats, categories, Tags is also so much more clunky. But again, I found ways to connect in the older way

  5. I’m a total convert to the block editor – every time I do some work for a friend that still uses the Classic editor, I end up gnashing my teeth. The drag and drop functionality, the cleaner layout, it’s *chef’s kiss*. With your internal linking issue, I find WP is pretty good at working out what I’m talking about – when I highlight text and click to add a link, if I type in “blah blah blah” in the box that appears, even if it’s not exactly what I titled the original post, the post I’m thinking of almost always appears as the first option in the drop down menu to link. Keep plugging away, soon you’ll forget that Classic even existed! 😉

    1. That’s a good tip, but I still miss being able to see at a glance the last few posts I’ve made. I don’t see why that could not have been retained. Glad that someone is happy with the new editor anyway.

  6. I hate it, especially with regard to inserting images. My workaround is that I usually write my rough draft of a post in Word and copy it onto the blog and if I remember to click “paste and match style” then it preserves things like line breaks and paragraphing.
    If I don’t remember, to “match style” then I can’t even delete the post. The only way to delete seems to be backspacing.
    (growling noises)

    1. Argh, that is so irritating. Another thing I do not like about the block editor is that you can’t copy more than one block at a time, to transfer to another post.

          1. It’s really easy Lory. Select/highlight the text in the blocks you want to copy. Then in the toolbar change the block from the one called paragraph to one called Group. Finally, click on the three vertical dots in the formatting bar – select copy. Go to your new post and paste. if in the new post you want to separate those two blocks, just change back from group to paragraph

  7. Oh man, I kind of forgot the new editor existed, and I was hoping the comments on this post would indicate that it’s gotten better since it first came out. I installed a plug-in that lets me keep using the old post editor, because honestly the Gutenberg one was so bad and buggy that I couldn’t get a post written for the goddamn life of me. It would glitch, and delete text, and take ages to type, and I just had to give up on it. I dread the day the plug-in stops being updated and I do truly have to switch over to the new guy.

    1. It wasn’t being buggy in that way for me, but now I keep getting an error message when I try to save or add a photo. I thought maybe it was the latest update of WordPress. Oh, technology …

    2. I don’t know how long ago it was that you tried Gutenberg but many of the early bugs have been fixed – worth giving it another go

  8. I still use the plug-in that allows me to have the Classic Editor, and every time I read a post like this, it confirms that I should stick with it as long as I can. I know eventually I’ll have to bite the bullet, but I don’t see any reason to switch before it’s absolutely necessary.

  9. I can’t work out how you are supposed to get to type next to an image or when you’ve changed the text size, it always seems to involve me clicking away and clicking back and clicking here there and everywhere and then suddenly I’m able to type where I want to. I also seem to have to click for left-or right orientation when I want to do an image with text next to it. And when I schedule a post, I can’t see where to accept the schedule and move on, apart from changing AM to PM then going back and changing it back to AM. So not a massive fan but I’m getting by.

    1. Usually I type the text first then put in the images (left or right aligned) afterwards. I guess I try to do as little formatting as possible!

      For scheduling, isn’t there a “Schedule” button at the top of the screen? That works for me. However if you’ve already scheduled the post, the button doesn’t work unless you change something. Maybe that’s what you’re experiencing.

      Anyway, I think most of us have our points of frustration. I hope some of the kinks will get worked out in time.

      1. Oh, no, it’s when you pick the date and time once in schedule. If I put in the text then add an image I can never get the text wrapped …

    2. Liz, the best way I’ve found to get text next to an image is this: 1.Add a paragraph block and insert your text
      2 Add an image block above that paragraph block
      3. Upload your image into this image block and align it right or left, depending on your preference

  10. So, I hate the thing! I still (knock on wood) have a plugin that is working, but I had to use it for Bookish Games, on their site, and that thing is EVIL. I was accidentally messing up formatting, and deleting stuff I didn’t mean to, etc. I just started giving up and not inserting images and such because it was so frustrating. To be fair, I didn’t have any time to really figure it out, maybe I’d not have hated it as much? But no one likes change haha, and maybe I’ll get used to it when I have to, but if so many people hate it, they should really rethink it.

    1. Yeah, my approach is to keep things very basic and not try to do anything I might mess up. I’m hoping that improvements will come but not holding my breath.

  11. I don’t enjoy the new block editor, but it’s what we have so I am used to it, I guess. What really bothers me is that they took away the old scheduling format. The new one makes no sense to me. I look at it and it doesn’t make sense. I have to look at it and compare it to another calendar to visualize where everything is! And I hate that it defaults to only posts I have written, so I have to click around to see the full schedule with what my co-blogger has written.

    1. Other people have said that about the scheduling. I love the Calendar plugin and always use that for scheduling, but it’s only for self-hosted alas. They should really do a better version for such an important function.

  12. I don’t mind it – I swapped over as soon as it was available. I do like the drag and drop. I don’t like not being able to place an image exactly where you want within a block, you can only align with the top of a block and the image and text block is too tricky to bother with. It’s also annoying that you can only change colour of text/shading of a whole block – although I haven’t tried it in code view by using the right html tags you may be able to force it to do just a word of two? Has anyone else tried this?

    1. That makes no sense to me. If you can make a single word or other selection bold, italic, etc. why not change color? This ought to be fixed.

  13. I’ll be in the minority here I know but I much prefer the block editor now I’ve got used to it. I didn’t like it at first and went back to the classic editor but then realised that was going to disappear so I’d better just get on and make the change.

    That doesn’t mean I don’t also get frustrated by certain things – like the fact that changing the colour of heading is hit and miss. Sometimes it works, sometimes there is nothing I can do to get it to change.

    Re some of your frustrations
    – highlight text you want as your anchor text, then when the dialogue box appears, just type a few words of the post you want to link to – you’ll get a list of options.
    – you can change settings so the formatting bar is always visible. Click on the three vertical dots (alongside the cog symbol) – select the option which says “top toolbar”

  14. It took me a while to get used to Gutenberg, but on the whole, I like it. However, I’ve had to add plugins (specifically Gutenbee) to let me do side-by-side image groups (or galleries) the way I want them. And I don’t like that I have to host those images; I can’t pull them from other sites in a gallery. That’s one reason I’ve started making image collages in Canva, for books I buy but may not get around to reading soon.

    1. Arranging images is so important, I wish they would come up with better ways to help us get the arrangements we want. I’ve experimented a little with the image gallery but I keep things very basic usually. I’ll check out Gutenbee to see if it might be helpful.

  15. I had taken a hiatus from my blog when they initially made this change so when I came back to my blog I IMMEDIATELY looked for a way to return to normal. Which I’m glad I found lol I installed a plugin that reverts it back to normal (although I think I saw there might be a setting option to switch it, I’m not sure though). So luckily, I have not had to deal with the block editor at all haha

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