How long will the Classic Editor be available?
-
My blog posts are text heavy with only an occasional link or image. I find the block editor to be very annoying. Each paragraph is a block! A heading is a block! A bullet list is a block! Fortunately, I can still switch back to the classic editor, which I always found easy to use (though I always write first in a local text editor first and copy and paste because I have lost whole posts on the WP site.)
However, the FAQ says that the classic editor is available “at this time,” which seems to leave open the possibility that at some point it will be gone. I have been using WP for a long time now and I have a lot of content which would have to be moved if I leave, and I am not sure where to go. How long will the classic editor be available?
I am sorry if this has already been discussed to death. I did quite a few searches of various blogs and forums on this site and others and did not find an answer.
For me, the old editor, while not perfect, is a smooth flow and the new one is continuous hurdles and speed bumps. I can learn where things are, but the design truly gets in the way. Instead of one blog post it is like editing a whole host of tiny ones and trying to make them fit together. Not good.
Thanks.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
Hi there,
The classic editor should be available on WordPress.com at least as long as the official Classic Editor Plugin is supported on WordPress.org, which they’ve indicated will be until at least 2022.
-
That is good to hear. By that time there should be other editor plugins and I can migrate to WordPress.org to use them. In the meantime, I have watched some videos on using Gutenberg. I can see that it might be an advantage for some people, especially if you wrote and designed posts in Gutenberg, which is not my workflow. Gutenberg is not conducive to writing in a text editor and pasting stuff in. It adds many formatting steps.
The other concern I have is for new users. I used to have students in writing courses create a WordPress blog as part of the course. The classic editor works pretty much like a wordprocessor, so they already know how to use it. The set up is quick and easy, and they already know how to use the main tool. Gutenberg, however, is a whole new concept, and not a very intuitive one. I think it would take at least a week to teach it to them and even then some would still be struggling. I will have to redesign these courses. No more WordPress, I think.
Anyway, things are ok for now. Thanks.
John
-
Thanks for that feedback, John.
For now, one thing you can do (and which I would guess will always be available) is switch to text mode. That will not create separate blocks. You’ll just be able to type. And you can do it without being prompted to try the new editor.
Right now that converts the text to one classic block. I’m not sure where that will go in the future, but I certainly will give the feedback that folks want to just be able to type and not have to see new blocks all the time.
-
Just noting too, I tried to open a post and just type like I was blogging something more text heavy. Here’s what I did and what I noticed:
I typed several paragraphs. Hitting enter opened a new paragraph. On a new paragraph, if I prepend with a dash, I automatically get a bulleted list. If I hit enter there, a new bullet appears, until I hit enter twice.
If I want to insert an image I can drag and drop or paste one from my clipboard.
The one annoying thing I noticed was if I hit enter too many times in a row, I got a blank block between my text, and it would prompt me to type something in it.
Is that what you’re seeing too, or is there something else specific that’s really annoying?
-
I did also notice, when I pasted an image, I was “stuck” in the caption mode and couldn’t get out without clicking outside the image with my mouse.
If you can send that kind of detail about what’s bothering you, we’ll get it filed for you. I can’t tell you we’ll be able to overhaul the interface over it, but just having the information out there sometimes helps us notice things that are annoying to others, that we’ve missed. Does that make sense?
-
I am not sure how to get into “text” mode. Is that in Gutenberg?
My experience was that I wrote a page long post in Pluma (a text editor in Linux). I use a text editor because then there will be no formatting codes that will cause problems when I paste into WP. I had a lot of parts I intended to turn into bullets. I forgot that I had been playing with Gutenberg, and it was in that mode when I pasted in my text. All the paragraphs got put into separate blocks. If I converted a block to bullets, the lead in to the bullets became a bullet too, so I would have to create a block above it and copy and paste from the block below. All of this seemed unnecessary and frustrating. I kept looking for formatting choices that used to be in the bar above the post. Now they were all in the popup block menus, and each block type had different choices.
I finally gave up and switched back to classic.
I now have a better understanding of how blocks work and I would not be quite so frustrated. I see on twitter that there is already a booming business in designing custom blocks for different purposes. Amazing.
I think what you are suggesting is that I work mostly in a “classic” block that will behave like the old editor. Perhaps that would be a workaround. Write in Pluma and paste it into a classic block. I could probably learn to live with Gutenberg, but I don’t see any advantage for me in it. And as I noted above, trying to use it in a writing class would turn part of the course into a Gutenberg course. Writing courses are short enough as it is.
Thanks,
John -
Totally understood. To clarify my goal: I think we both realize that maintaining two different code bases indefinitely would be difficult and unlikely. If blocks are the future of WordPress — and I think we can both see that they are — I still want to make sure it’s easy for people who, like you, just want to be able to write, or copy and paste easily.
Quick question: if you type like this in your text editor then paste into Gutenberg, do the bullets convert for you?
A paragraph about something (or in this case just a line)
A list heading
– one point
— a subpoint
— another
– point two
– point threeAnother line that isn’t a bullet
Would that work well for you?
-
I pasted what you have above into a classic block. The classic block behaves pretty much like the classic editor. The bullets aren’t converted, because text editors don’t create bullets or other formatting. They are pretty much just ascii. I always have to format bullets in WP. I didn’t have the problem you had with multiple blank lines creating a blank block, but maybe this is not the “text” mode you were talking about.
As I said, I can learn to live with this, but it is not at all ideal for newbies. One of the big advantages of WP is that one could have a blog up in five minutes. That is why I used it with my students. And even so, some of them struggled. Gutenberg will be a big obstacle for non-techie newbies. If this is really where WP is going, I think you will please part of your professional audience, but turn away the ordinary user.
-
When I closed and then reopened the test post I had written in a classic block, Gutenberg asked if I wanted to convert this “old format” post to blocks. That will be a problem if it does that every single time you reopen a post written in a classic block.
-
That will likely be the experience going forward, since the point of the new editor is to not use the old editor, even in block form.
I can’t guarantee that though, it could change.
Just make sure you answer correctly each time for now. :)
If you want to give the new editor a try occasionally, we have some extensive documentation starting at https://en.support.wordpress.com/wordpress-editor/
-
Yeah, I’m getting the message. Learn to love Gutenberg or leave. All the alternatives have expire by dates on them. Resistance is futile. Oh well. It’s been nice for about 10 years. Time flies. Time to move on, one way or another, Gutenberg or not. There are alternatives out there, and I am sure more will spring up. This must be giving you support guys fits.
Thanks,
John -
I tried writing a post in Gutenberg. A couple of things:
Preview did not work until after I had published the post.
More importantly, I included a gallery block with three screenshots of student blogs. I tried to link the images to the blog sites, but the urls appear in front of the images instead of being hidden. The links work, but it looks really ugly. How do you link images to urls without this ugly presentation?
You can see the post here:
Thanks,
John -
Preview did not work until after I had published the post.
If your preview doesn’t load, try saving a draft first, then preview.
I tried to link the images to the blog sites, but the urls appear in front of the images instead of being hidden.
What you’re seeing in front of the images are their captions.
Currently, gallery images cannot be linked anywhere besides their attachment pages or the files themselves. This was true in the Classic editor too.
To link images elsewhere, you’ll have to use an Image Block for each: https://en.support.wordpress.com/wordpress-editor/blocks/image-block/ (which was also true of the Classic Editor, only it was individually using Add Media)
-
Actually, I did try saving a draft, but the preview gave an error message and showed a blank post until I published it. That could be a theme/Gutenberg incompatibility though, I imagine.
Shouldn’t a caption go below the image? Or is this just a feature of the gallery block? I inserted the urls after clicking on the link icon, and it was definitely asking for a url, not a caption.
I’ll try them in separate image blocks and see how that works.
Thanks,
John -
preview gave an error message
What was the error message?
Shouldn’t a caption go below the image?
It depends on the theme, sometimes they’re below, sometimes they’re on top, sometimes they only appear on hover.
-
When I hit preview it shows the blog header and then
OOPS THAT PAGE CAN’T BE FOUND
It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search?It doesn’t matter if a draft has been saved. It only works if it is published.
Why is it treating a link as a caption, even if it asks for a url? That seems like a bug. The link works, it’s just ugly.
Thanks,
John -
OOPS THAT PAGE CAN’T BE FOUND
Hm, yeah that should definitely be solved by saving the draft first. Is it a consistent problem, or random?
Why is it treating a link as a caption, even if it asks for a url? That seems like a bug.
Hm, good question, I’ll look into that.
-
I think what you’re doing is setting the URL for the media file’s meta data, but yeah galleries can only link to the image file or the attachment page: https://en.support.wordpress.com/wordpress-editor/blocks/gallery-block/#linking
-
The preview failure has happened with one actual post and one test post. Beyond that I don’t know if it is consistent. I only started playing around in Gutenberg a couple of days ago. I have only published one post in it.
I am trying to keep an open mind about Gutenberg. But, one thing that actually bugs me a lot is that there is already a really cool project Gutenberg that digitizes public domain books and distributes them for free. They have been around since the early days of the web. If you do a search on “Gutenberg” you get stuff on both projects. I think the earlier project has a better claim to the name, both because they were earlier and because they are transferring hard copy printed stuff to a new digital medium, just as Johannes Gutenberg transferred handwritten manuscripts into an easily replicated format. This new Gutenberg that WordPress has developed is not anywhere near as revolutionary as that.
Thanks for the help.
John
- The topic ‘How long will the Classic Editor be available?’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 