Block Editor – A Barrier to Posting

I know, in my head, that it shouldn’t matter what format type or media or pen I use when I write.  And it shouldn’t have any influence on my writing, or in this case, publishing my writing.  I do know this.  But alas it has.  In this instance, ironically it’s called block editor and it has in fact been one complete block to me wanting to use WordPress.

I understand WordPress is free but that’s the thing with me – I don’t want fancy.  In fact, I want the ability to write and edit in WP to be as easy as possible.  However, what WP thinks is simple isn’t what I’m used to and it’s really upset my flow of writing and publishing on here.

WordPress started mainstreaming its new editor with Gutenburg back in the Summer last year.  I don’t always keep up with WP developments so didn’t realise it was coming.  Instead, it just appeared overnight and when I logged in to create a new post this new blank editor appeared which insisted I added blocks of writing.  Writing suddenly felt quite daunting.

But I tried to preserve with it and stuck it out for a couple of months hoping I’d get used to it.  I’m not averse to new formats or shiny new apps.  I love nothing better than changing the style of my blogs but this was something altogether beyond my comprehension.  It wasn’t that I couldn’t use the new editor.  It was that it was just too off-putting.  When all I wanted to do was type words, the block format was genuinely difficult to get into a simple writing mode.  I didn’t like the fact the block filled the whole page.  It felt almost daunting to begin.  And when I did start typing it never seemed to fill the page.

All this is merely a personal preference of course.  Anyone who was just starting to blog or who likes a wide-open, basic tool approach, wouldn’t bat an eyelid.  Bloggers that like publishing different styles in one post, or who use more interactive or photographic elements would probably find the block editor useful.  But I’m not that kind of blogger.  I am more of a textbase blogger.  I just want one space for writing.  That’s it.

I can’t have been the only one who complained and for a while, I could just go back into the old editor mode by selecting a different web link.  Which was all good until WP ramped it up further last Autumn by insisting that every time you clicked “new post” you’d have to use the new Gutenberg editor.  I then had to mess about creating a blank post to then give me the option to edit them in classic mode.  It was getting clumsy and time-consuming and I didn’t want to have to do it – much less I didn’t want to have to do it either.

In the end, I gave up altogether.  It was all just too much bother.  I seriously looked into alternatives – Blogger, Medium etc but none of them gave me what I’d had using WP previously.  Everything else about WP was great, it was just the main – most important part of it they had messed up.

After Christmas and into Spring blogging just became too much hassle.  I even tried using a simple text-based document editor and then pasting the words into a block post.  But I always felt so dismayed by the look of the block editor and every single time I wanted to edit the said post it automatically launched the block editor again and I’d feel myself getting annoyed.

In the end, I just felt too disheartened by it all.  I was effectively being forced to work in a way that just didn’t fit comfortably with me.

And so that is why I’ve not posted for a while.  I’ve kept the words to myself.

I know, hand on heart all of this shouldn’t have mattered or have had that much influence.  But it has. It really had.

However, a light has been shone down a long tunnel and for now, the classic edit has been saved.  I say for now – WP forums are indicating support will only happen until 2022.

I can now choose from the start how I want to set up a new blog post and I can click on the classic editor when selecting from my list of posts.  It’s not perfect but it’s 100% better than it was.

If you have a paid site with WP then you can install the Classic Editor as a plug-in and disable Gutenberg.  Alas, that isn’t an option for me.

However, it has made me question whether I need to invest more in blogging?  Should I pay for the privilege of having more control over not only my content but how to use the tools to write my content?  Or is it simply a case that text-heavy writing style has had its day and I need to move on?  One thing is for certain – time will certainly tell on this.

Thank you for reading.