Inline image vs image/gallery block
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Recently I’ve switched my personal blog to use block-based editor, but realised that many free/paid themes are not fully compatible with the new editor, with issues particularly related to image/gallery/caption. Those fully compatible themes in “recommended” list are mainly designed for business page, do not meet my needs. As temporary workaround, I use table with inline image to mimic image/gallery as much as possible.
I would like to know, is there any difference between inline image and image/gallery block, in terms of data size, loading speed and SEO?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
I would like to know, is there any difference between inline image and image/gallery block, in terms of data size, loading speed and SEO?
This depends on a lot of factors. Will you have the same number of inline images as in the gallery? What will be the embed size of those images? There are so many variables.
However, all your images will be served by our global CDN and this will ensure that your site’s content will load fast for anyone all around the world.
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Thanks @fstat for your reply.
Allow me to elaborate the scenario, hope this clarifies the question. Assume that we have a post “Test Post”, which contains 4 images along with other content such as text. There are two versions for this post, they are exactly the same except how the images are inserted into the post:
1. v1 using 4 image blocks, while v2 using 4 tables with inline image.
2. both v1 and v2 using the same images from media library as image source.
3. image width settings in editor are the same.In above scenario, can we conclude that performance (loading time, SEO) for v1 and v2 should be similar? Client factors (such as device performance, Internet connection, location relative from server) are not within our control so let’s exclude them from consideration.
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I don’t think you’ll notice any difference in the SEO there.
I’m wondering, however, why exactly are you not happy with the Gallery Block? Maybe there’s an alternative to what you’re trying to achieve without the need for using tables. -
I’m ok with image block and gallery block. However they are broken in those free/paid themes that I would like to use. In most observed cases, the broken part is caption, there are already few user reports related to caption issue with the new block-based editor.
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Can you explain what you mean by broken? I interpret that to mean captions don’t work/don’t appear, and I’m not aware of issues with that in the image block.
A known issue that is present with some older themes is that the caption for image blocks is styled differently than the caption for images added in the classic editor. That is because captions in blocks are created using different HTML than captions in the classic editor, and if the theme doesn’t specify styling for the new HTML used in block captions, it will fall back to the default styling built into your browser instead.
It is unlikely that any of our older themes will be updated in this regard, so the options are to stay with the classic editor, switch to a newer theme that has styling support for all blocks, or get used to the way block captions are styled in your theme.
Captions not appearing in the gallery block has nothing to do with your theme, but is an issue with the block itself, and is one the developers on WordPress.org who make the block editor are actively working on at the moment.
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The last I heard, the themes in recommended theme list have been tested fully compatible with the new editor. Unfortunately they are mostly for business site and don’t meet my blog’s need.
I went ahead and tried few other themes that are not in recommended list but design looks good to me (both free and paid themes) – however they either display/format caption as normal paragraph text (same issue as my current theme), or image was displayed oddly. Among these, they were mostly about caption.
So, instead of continue spending time to test themes one by one, I came to this workaround of using table+inline image – first row with inline image, second row with text formatted as caption. It looks good, but I’m not sure if there’s any unexpected effect, hence posting this question. Drawbacks? More manual steps, and can’t have gallery slide show.
For the given suggestion, I’m not aware of option for going back to classic editor. Could you please share the steps? I vaguely remember there’s a communication that, support for classic editor will be gone after a specific cut off date around mid-year. That was the reason why I switched to block-based editor, I might have read it wrongly.
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You can still use Classic Editor from WP-admin, here are full instructions:
https://wordpress.com/support/editors/#classic-editor
The new themes can be used for any type of website – they may have the demo page created for a business in mind but it’s up to you to use that demo layout or create a new page from scratch.
If there’s any particular theme you want to use, activate it, and publish a test page so we can see better what exactly do you mean byimage was displayed oddly. -
staff-mckluskey
Thanks a lot for your pointer. It helps me to realise the confusion I fell into during my last effort in searching alternate theme.The new themes can be used for any type of website – they may have the demo page created for a business in mind but it’s up to you to use that demo layout or create a new page from scratch.
1. My blog looks like a blog while other themes look like biz page – Now I suspect, there used to be other pages not related to blog but possibly deleted by me during initial setup, and changed the front page to display blog page. I believe I’d done these steps before but total forgot them previously.
2. My blog page load much faster by showing only list of post summaries/excerpts, while blog page for those alternate themes that I tried load really slow, displaying full blog content for all posts – Looks like this is an optional feature, which only certain themes have it.
You can still use Classic Editor from WP-admin, here are full instructions:
I’ll keep this as an option :)
By the way, for the caption styling issue, is it supposed to be fixed by theme creator or WordPress.com? I just came across a premium theme that looks really nice but having the same problem. I should contact the creator if it’s the former.
Again, thanks for the help.
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