An Open Letter to WP.com Staff/Management re: the Classic Editor
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Dear WordPress.com Powers That Be,
This weekend was the second time in less than two months that WP.com users have experienced a ‘red alert’ regarding the availability of the Classic Editor. It seems as if these incidents are coming more frequently than they used to, but of course the real question is why they are happening at all.
Look, I get it: When WP first rolled out the Block Editor in 2019 (or was it 2020? anyway, it was definitely a few years ago), no promises were made regarding the continued availability of the Classic Editor interface. On the contrary: WP has repeatedly stated that “eventually” it would no longer be supported globally, as it has been, and would then only exist as a plug-in afterwards. Which means that any WP.com plan that doesn’t support plug-ins would lose it.
In other words, it’s a matter of WHEN the Classic Editor exists ONLY as a plug-in… not “if”. And as a 10-year user WP.com and the Classic Editor, I appreciate the fact that it’s still around as of this moment, this hour, this day. I do not take it for granted, because I know the thread holding that particular sword of Damocles is probably getting thinner by the week.
I have tried to use the Block and Classic Block. I have tried to give them a fair shake. They are antithetical to the way I write and work and how my site is constructed. Sometimes, coexistence simply isn’t possible; (any divorced couple could tell you that.)
So here’s my request to you, WP. Given that there are MANY users here for whom the loss of the Classic Editor would be a dealbreaker (myself among them), and knowing that it’s probably corporate policy for Staff to NOT make any statements regarding the future availability of the Classic Editor, can we at least get ONE guarantee from you guys? Which is:
When you do decide to pull the plug on the Classic Editor’s life support, will you at least give your customers the bare-minimum respect of some advance notice?
Thirty days would be nice. Sixty, even nicer, but I’m not that naiieve. Give us some time to ‘get our site affairs in order’ and figure out what our options are, and we are going to do next. Because these chronic freak-outs here in the Forum every few weeks or couple of months, for years on end, isn’t good for anyone. Not you (staff) and certainly not us. I realize that management doesn’t care about the end user because all that matters to them is the balance sheet. But you know what? even the soulless corporage foreign entity that owns my ISP has the decency to send an email blast to their customers every time they are going to make a change that affects the cost or service that we get, so that if we want to change our service package or service provider, we have until a specified day by which to do so.
Like I said: A simple request. Can’t WP care enough about its customers to make at least that small commitment?
The ball’s in your court.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hey @thecybisarchive, I just wanted to let you know we’ve heard this and shared it with the product team. The question about giving a “final warning” of sorts is valid, so I’ll see what we can find.
In the meantime you mentioned wanting to figure out what our options are, and what you’ll do next. I’d love to collaborate a bit in hopes of improving the outcome.
What would it take for the block editor to work well for you? Can you share more about the issues you’re running into with it currently? And what features do you currently use Classic that are hard to use in Blocks?
I’d love to share that with our developers as well, in aims of reducing any gaps and hopefully making any transition less painful, whenever that might be. Thanks in advance!
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I sincerely appreciate the response, as I’d assumed that my post would have gotten buried under newer ones by now. :-)
I will try to paint as accurate a picture of my own issues with the Block Editor as I can, while realizing that it is tied to my personal workflow which is not amenable to converting into something else. Other users will have different challenges with the Block Editor depending on what the structure and purpose of their site is.
If you have looked at my site, you’ve seen that it’s heavy on text but the text is closely tied to images of the items that I’m discussing. Both the text and the images are continually subject to revision as new information and/or images are discovered; it’s why I have a ‘what’s new last month’ page so that readers can know where to look for all the changes. My workflow is to initially write my entire text for a new post in Microsoft Word. That Word document goes into a folder for that particular post, along with any images that I plan to include in it; sometimes I have all the images I need, sometimes I don’t. So you can imagine that my main “posts in progress” file can contain quite a few subfolders that are there for quite a while.
(FYI, I never write anything “cold” when logged into WordPress. Even my later changes are done first into my backup/initial Word document and then copy-pasted into the existing WP post wherever they need to be. This also ensures that my backup copy exactly matches what is on the site. I also work exclusively on a desktop computer because due to certain vision issues I need a large screen.)
When I finally have all of the images and my entire text complete exactly as I want them, I log into my WordPress account with the text document open, do a simple CTRL + C, and then paste the entire text into a New Post using the Classic Editor. This gives me my entire document as one unit, just as it was in Microsoft Word. This is where my issue with the Block Editor begins, because I do not want that giant unit of text broken up into any sections, blocks, parts, etc. I need to be able to work with it exactly as I would if it were still a Word document: by the old-school method of selecting, backspacing, altering accidental typos or just plain changing any word(s) that I decide would sound better as something else, wherever and whenever I choose, in a straightforward, DOC/RTF format.
The Block Editor is not friendly to this type of editing. A simple cursor placement becomes a frustrating exercise in trying to figure out WTH the Block Editor is trying to tell me to do differently. I do not want to have to interact with anything that I would not be using in a Word document, i.e. all controls easily visible and accessible without extra mouse clicks and selections.
Working with images is much more complicated in the Block Editor also. In the Classic Editor, all I need to do is position my cursor where I want the image to be inserted, click on the Media Library tab, and either upload a new image from my post’s folder or select an existing image from the Media Library, and click Insert into Post. The image always ends up exactly where I had positioned the cursor. This does not usually happen in the Block Editor because it seems to want to put the image somewhere else according to its own unfathomable logic.
Whenever a word, sentence, part of a paragraph, or entire paragraph needs to be either removed or relocated in the Classic Editor, it is very easy: Highlight the word/sentence/section/paragraph and either hit Backspace or hit CTRL-C followed by CTRL-X to remove, or CTRL-V to insert at the desired cursor-indicated location. This is the way most people have learned to edit documents; and when it comes to a text-heavy site, what it is IS a document. Yes it’s (in most cases) an illustrated document but it’s still a document. That is why the Block Editor is so counter-intuitive for so many users.
That, I think, is the crux of the problem. The Block Editor is probably fine for people whose sites are image-heavy and with not all that much text. I know a people whose sites are like that and have no problem with this kind of editor because for the most part, they are uploading images with a fairly small amount of commentary, and they never alter those posts other than perhaps to respond to comments. For them, the Block Editor plays well with this object-oriented, once-and-done workflow. But for users who either have to regularly edit their existing text and/or replace existing images with new ones, the Block Editor’s penchant for treating each post as a collection of objects, rather than an illustrated document, is a usability nightmare. It makes what is (in the Classic Editor) a document-based format into something else entirely. To twist an old saying: It makes a sow’s ear out of a silk purse.
I realize that WP now has a semi-hybrid option called the Classic Block, and I tried that with a throwaway post as a test (created out of the same Word document text + images that I later uploaded as usual using the CE). I deliberately tried the same kinds of later edits and changes that I normally do on my existing posts, to compare the CB to the CE. In all attempts the CB interface was clumsier, less intuitive (because there was no indication of where the controls were or how to use them, and the Help section isn’t helpful), and took much longer to accomplish than using the CE to do the exact same thing. In the BE and CB it is also much easier to accidentally delete things that one does NOT want to change, than happens in the CE.
A huge problem for those who have constructed their posts and pages using the Classic Editor is that the two editors are (not unsurprisingly) incompatible. This means that, should the Classic Editor be withdrawn from the Premium, Personal, and Free plans entirely, any attempts to edit any of the legacy (‘created in Classic Editor’) will be a hot mess and those posts will probably need a ton of repairs from having been shoehorned into a Block format. This may not be a big deal for some, but I am currently closing in on my 275th new post, any of which may need editing at any time. That’s not a scenario that I want to deal with in anything other than the Classic Editor.
I do appreciate hearing that the product team may at least consider giving an advance notice if/when the Classic Editor either becomes “plug-in only” or is eliminated entirely. In another classic-editor-topic thread, I pointed out that there is a huge annual-cost gap between the Personal (no plug-ins) and Business (plug-ins available) plans. The reason that I have a Personal plan is because there is nothing in the Premium (but also no plug-ins) plan that I need. However, if the Classic Editor plug-in were to be made available for the Premium ($96/yr) plan but not for the Personal level, I would definitely upgrade to Premium. Unfortunately a $300/yr Business plan will never be do-able. In other words, I would pay double my current annual cost if that meant being able to keep using the Classic Editor, but I cannot pay 4x my current cost in order to do that.
Sorry for the novel. ;-)
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Thank you. My blog also consists primarily of documents, and I have run into similar problems, although I am not in the habit of writing my blog in Word first because I went from using a desktop at home to using hardware that wasn’t mine, adding a lot of extra steps. I do find it extremely counterintuitive, and a lot of my posts consist of personal inventories and reading lists that are consistently updated.
I would love to make a page out of an old FrontPage document and keep it updated, but I have been unable to do so.
At one point I made a post of it, but it was a wreck that ran off the right side, so I never made a page out of it.
https://scottandrewhutchins.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/405/ -
Hi @thecybisarchive, thanks for all of that.
My understanding is that we’re allowing the classic editor for existing classic-editor users for now, and we’ll give you a heads up when that won’t be possible anymore, but that doesn’t seem to be anytime soon.
The image issue sounds like something we could troubleshoot separately, but I want to see if I can understand more about this right now:
I need to be able to work with it exactly as I would if it were still a Word document […] I do not want to have to interact with anything that I would not be using in a Word document, i.e. all controls easily visible and accessible without extra mouse clicks and selections.
It sounds like the “Distraction Free” mode would almost work, but you still want to be able to see your toolbar for text formatting. Have I understood that correctly?
Also, what has happened when you use the classic block?
If you want to share a draft post with what you’re seeing/screenshots, etc, that would be helpful. We really do want to solve any friction that’s left if we can!
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And @scottandrewhutchins thank you for your feedback, too.
I took a look at what you have; I’d bet that table would work well on a block theme, ironically enough, where you’d have the option to make that table extra wide. If you’re interested in setting that up (perhaps on a test site so you won’t tinker with this one) let us know and we can reach out for steps.
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@supernovia , Many thanks for your continued responses. As for the Distraction Free setting, I did try that in the Block Editor, and found it incredibly frustrating for these reasons:
- The formatting toolbar is not continually visible; in order to do anything, I need to hover the mouse around to find the correct area at the top of the workspace that makes it appear. Once it was finally accessible, I ran into the following problems.
- Whenever I need to place a link at a section of text, I ALWAYS want it to open in a new tab. With the Classic Editor, all I need to do is to select the ‘gear’ icon at the end of the pop-up that appears whenever I click the Chain icon after highlighting the text; the gear icon generates a dialog box where I can either paste the external URL that I want to insert, or do a quick search to find the specific internal site post that I want to link to. However, in the Block Editor there is no visible way to get to that point; one has to highlight the new link that was just created, and then click EDIT, and then check the box that says ‘Open In New Tab’ which is generated by that. And by the way, the pop up box that is generated at first by clicking the Link icon in the Toolbar is ridiculously small compared to the one that the Classic Editor generates! I can instantly see the entire title of my previous 10 posts in the Link box generated by the CE; what the Block editor shows me is only the previoius 3. With the CE it is much faster and easier to generate a link ‘once and done’ than have to go back and edit it afterward simply in order to have it open in a new tab.
- There is no Quote format function/icon in the Toolbar that the Distraction Free setting shows, or at least I could not find it. Is it somewhere else? and if so, how does one access it? I did check the three-dots area in the toolbar but Quote formatting is not one of the things that is available there.
- Part of the test draft that I made to check out Distraction mode contained a section of text that was types within quotation marks but that I did not want to format as a Quote in the editor because it was too long. It was written in Word as a paragraph of text with a quotation mark as the first and last character. But for some reason, when copy-pasted from Word into the Distraction Free mode of the Block Editor, that entire paragraph was entirely missing. No quotes, no text. It was as if the quotes made that paragraph invisible to the editor.
- There is apparently no toolbar or other command in the Distraction Free Mode that allows insertion of an image. Or if there is, I could not find it anywhere.
There needs to be a middle ground between hiding too many controls (in Distraction Free) and having too many intrusive controls (without Distraction Free). Oh wait, there is: It’s called the Classic Editor. ;-)
(sorry, couldn’t resis)
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As for the Classic Block, I first used it when you initially introduced it and there as a pop-up box at log-in inviting me to try it. Since then, I actually have no idea which editor (Block or Classic Block) launches if I simply click New Post, or choose Block from the dropdown menu. There is no indication which flavor of the Block Editor one is using. One can choose the ‘view’ but there is no way to select ‘block’ vs ‘classic block’.
Eventually I noticed that in population of Blocks on the left for TEXT, there is one that says Classic. Is that the “classic block”? Who knows?
Okay, so if the Classic Text is selected, the first thing of course is the same problem with having to go back and Edit any inserted links in order to make them open in a new tab. That’s actually the least annoying feature of the Block Editor.
Block Hell really begins when one wants to convert text that is already there (because it’s been pasted into the workspace) into a Quote or a Pull Quote. I have never been able to get the “quote block” or “pull quote block” that selecting either of those generates, into the space where I want them to be, because the Editor insists on putting them at the BOTTOM of whatever text is already in the workspace. That is when my language gets really colorful. The same thing happens when I want to place an image at a particular place within text that is already there. Maybe other people do their post/page composing in a linear fashion by writing something and then sticking an image in afterward and then writing more text (or vice versa). I don’t, and I suspect that many other people who hate the Block Editor don’t either.
But seriously, the MOST maddening feature about the Block Editor is those *(*&$3)**$!!!!! blocks and toolbars and pop ups that it insists on displaying inside my text workspace. I do not want to see a window pop up, covering ANY part of my in-progress post, EVER, whenever I want to access my Media Library to insert an image! If I am importing the image from a file on my computer, I do NOT want the Block Editor to just stick it into my workspace at the end of my document instead of at the start of the second paragraph which is where I last positioned my cursor. I want to see it in a full screen look at my Media Library, to make sure that it is indeed the image that I intended to click on, and then decide Yes, I want to insert it into my document exactly where I last positioned my cursor in my workspace. The Classic Editor does all of this flawlessly. The Block Editor/Classic Block Editor does not. It has a mind of its own, it seems, and the two of us will never be thinking the same thing.
Another thing I noticed with the Block editor is that one cannot simply highlight a large or medium-sized section of text and backspace in order to delete it. I have tried it. Nothing happens. It is highlighted but backspacing has no effect. Works fine in Classic Editor, just like it works fine in Word.
I have noticed that since the most recent Windows 11 update, formatting in a Microsoft Word document as far as spacing, etc., no longer transfers exactly into the Classic Editor as it always used to do. It does a better job in the Block format but everything else is such a nightmare to work with in that Editor, that I’d rather spend the extra minutes adjusting paragraph spacing in the Classic Editor than deal with any form of Block.
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The formatting toolbar is not continually visible; in order to do anything, I need to hover the mouse around to find the correct area at the top of the workspace that makes it appear.
Would you find the block editor more “bearable” with a fixed top toolbar? I’m not a fan of “distraction mode” either, for the same reason as you do as it hides too much, and found the block toolbars cluttering my writing canvas. So I keep my block editor settings default, but pin the block toolbar to the top. You just need to tap the three vertical dots in the upper right, then choose the Top toolbar view to set it.
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Super feedback, thank you. Honestly if you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to take time to do a zoom with you and record some of this to share with developers, @thecybisarchive .
And thank you @franzaurus, I also pin the top toolbar.
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@supernovia , the Zoom is an interesting idea. What I’d like to do in that is to first create a test/draft post as I normally do it in the Classic Editor, so that you can see the workflow and what results from each step; and then do the exact same thing, with the same content, in a separate test/draft post using the Block Editor and following the same workflow for comparison.
If you want to reach out to me through my account email, we can try to figure out a mutually workable day and time for that. I already know that the only time that will work this week is tomorrow afternoon (Wednesday, March 4th.) At this point I don’t know my schedule for next week but will have a better idea when we get to Thursday or Friday.
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@thecybisarchive Will do! My week is a bit wild as well, but we’ll figure something out. This level of detail should be helpful by video. Cheers, and thank you.
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That’s a good idea! A top fixed toolbar would be a good compromise, particularly if you like having the workspace clear but still being able to easily access the block tools. I do think distraction mode can feel overwhelming when it conceals too much of the content. Pinning the block toolbar to the top seems like a practical solution to reduce clutter while still being able to access everything easily. I’ll give that a try!
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Thanks @tusharkapoorflymediatechnology! Let us know what you think / whether you run into any issues still with that method.
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I made an honest try with the Block Editor, but sorry, Word Press has made me “old school” because I’ve been using Classic Editor since 2012. In the Block Editor, I can’t find how to change the color of fonts. I can’t find how to insert pictures. I can’t copy and paste from Word without getting symbols in Block Editor rather than text.
Sudden changes do not work for us old-timers. It’s not as if we’re writing a book that can wait for months before its sent to the publisher. Most things we blog about are current news. Taking time trying to figure out the Block Editor means its simply not worth publishing — so we wasted our time.
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You may have sent an email to my email address, but 10mins later nothing… I’m struggling with a new installation of 6.7.2. I’ve got 2 other older WP sites working perfectly well for many years & this one is problem, problem, problem.
The previous post (Blackbutterfly 768) describes my feelings entirely. I’ve got 10 ‘published’ pages right now but when I try to add a couple of them to my menu, nix/nothing. If all this is ‘progress’ I beg to differ. WP is supposed to be ‘easy’? Not for me as a long standing ‘silver surfer’.
You’ve still not sent me an email… Does not inspire confidence in the operation, even for leaving a message here.
John F.
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