Classic Block Phase Out
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I just wrote an article for tomorrow in Classic Editor, tried converting it into blocks, and the images wouldn’t center, which could be my outdated theme but still a problem. So I undid that and went with HTML. I understand wanting to end the classic editor for programming reasons but maybe keep the classic block because the system still has some issues to overcome.
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I could deal with classic block, but they took it away. I would say that “the system still has some issues to overcome” is an understatement. The block editor is simply not suitable for purpose for long form traditional blogging. It’s for web designers. The only thing that was keeping me from moving to Ghost was the ability to host short documents for teachers to download.
It’s not that I am too dumb to use the block editor. I tried to switch to it in 2019. I have written whole posts in it. It just gets in the way of what I want to do. It was actually more usable 7 years ago when I first tried it. And now, it has messed up that basic file linking ability with the “file” block. It is very frustrating when you just want to write a post and the editor gets massively in the way.
I went down the rabbit hole of looking at the GIT site where the programmers were discussing this. The goal is to get rid of all of the TinyMCE code in the code base. They are trying to figure out how to do this without breaking things. The future of this does not look hopeful.
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I know I am becoming annoying in this thread, but I wrote this post in the block editor and put the file block at the end because it displays the whole file instead of just a link. Now, if anyone clicks on it, it takes them to the very end of the post to display the file. They have to scroll up to read the actual post.
Reading Difficult Texts
This is incredibly stupid. If I write in the Classic Block, this would never happen.
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I edited the post I linked to above after installing the Classic Editor plugin and it now behaves as expected. Let’s hope that this plugin continues to be supported. In some ways, however, the Classic Block was a better solution than the Classic Editor because it was possible to mix Classic with other blocks. I sometimes found a use for the Poetry Block for example. The Classic Editor is an all or nothing move. Still, it makes WordPress much more usable for me, and I think for many others.
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I have been using it for archives of my comics and prose stuff, so I’m not against the blocks. It’s just not what I need for the majority of work. Also, I’m on the free side so I can’t use plugins. All I can afford is the URL, and even that’s debatable.
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I’m beyond frustrated that the Classic Block has been removed from the Inserter. The article referred to (https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/05/07/whats-new-in-gutenberg-23-1-07-may/#other-notable-highlights) says it’s an experiment, so maybe they’ll revert back.
The main thing I loved about the Classic Editor was the toolbar–everything I needed was right there. With the Blocks, I can’t find most of those functions.
But I especially miss the indent feature. I do a lot of book reviews and set off quotations by indenting them. But sometimes I indent a paragraph for emphasis. Yes, there’s a Quotation block, but it converts text to a smaller font and italicizes it. I’ve tried removing the italics command in HTML, but it doesn’t work. There’s also a Pull quote block, but I don’t like how it looks.
I wish we had the option to keep the Classic Editor for simple blogs that don’t needs all the bells and whistles of the Blocks.
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You can add the plugin “Classic Editor and Classic Widgets” According to the plugin, this”Disables Gutenberg editor totally everywhere.” This seems to take WordPress back to around 2019 or so. It works, but you lose access to blocks entirely. That is probably fine. No block I have ever used did exactly what I wanted it to and almost always did things I didn’t want.
This link has more about installing the Classic Editor plugin:
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guitarsophist: You can’t add plugins on a free account.
barbarah I use the quote button on the classic editor for my quotes, but otherwise I know what you mean. When you’re used to how you’ve been doing it, a change that doesn’t give you the look you want or are use to messed the whole formatting of what you’ve done for years. Consistency matters.
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On a free site, if you go to “posts” the “add post” button has a drop down that allows you to choose “block editor” or “classic editor.” The classic block was more flexible because you could mix it with other blocks if you wanted to, but it is apparently still possible to choose the classic editor.
I wonder why none of the happiness engineers have joined this thread. We seem to be supporting ourselves here.
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For whatever reason (and people have tried to help but I can’t find the problem) the BW site doesn’t have that option, even though my other site does. I don’t know if it’s because the theme is outdated and another glitch occured (I’ve had a couple, and wrote a different post about changing it, also worrying about block conversion interestingly enough), but I have to use the bookmarked editor post to use the classic editor and then play URL games to eding with it.
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Thank you. An explanation I can actually follow. Still a concern that they’re trying to get rid of the classic editor altogether and yet the blocks won’t format it right now that the classic block was removed. I still feel like I’m delaying the inevitable.
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