Frank, aka PCGuy, has published another one of his Truthful Tuesday posts, and this week Frank wants to know if we enjoy playing with blocks. He wants to know…
How have you adapted to the complete removal of the classic editor from WordPress.com? Are you managing to get by with the block editor, or are you finding it difficult to want to blog now that your trusted tool is no longer available?
Oh man, don’t get me started on the block editor. I have been very vocal about how much I hate it. The classic editor was fine. It was unobtrusive and it enabled writers to focus on writing, not on mechanics. But, for whatever reason, the folks at WordPress decided to put all of their money (and our money, for those of us who have upgraded) into the block editor.
The good news is that several bloggers have posted a way to continue to access the classic editor on wordpress.com. And that’s great for those who use their desktops or laptops to blog.
Unfortunately, most of my blogging is done from my iPhone. As of now, the option to use the classic editor is still available on the WordPress iOS app for the iPhone, although WordPress is threatening to take that option away at some point in the near future. So I may have to try to embrace the iOS version of the block editor.
Preparing for that day, I’ve been using the block editor on my iPhone for about a quarter of my posts. It’s okay, but I feel like I have way less control. And then, when I look at the HTML code, there is so much more of it with the block editor than there is with the classic editor.
In order to get the final post to look the way I want it to, I often give up on the block editor and revert back to the classic editor. And then I have to go into the HTML editor and strip away a lot of that weird code. As a result, it has taken me two to three times longer to publish a post using the block editor than using the classic editor.
So, bottom line, I have mostly stuck with the classic editor mode on the iOS app.
Now to answer Frank’s question, if WordPress dumps the classic editor in the iOS app, I’ll either have to abandon blogging from my iPhone and blog exclusively from my laptop, try to make do with the block editor on my iPhone, or maybe just call it a day and stop blogging.
I guess I’ll make that decision when the time comes.
This, That, and the Other 
i gave up. back at wix.com no community but the editor is wonderful.
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I don’t write any of my posts inside the WordPress platform. I write everything in MS Word and then I copy and paste it into WordPress.
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That is what I do also, and it’s much less stressful!
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I have Word on my iPhone, so maybe I’ll give that a try.
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I hope you’ll continue blogging.
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Me too!
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👍👍👍
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I’m in the process of composing an email to WordPress … having just paid my annual $300 fee for … WHAT??? For not much of anything today! Their latest change is with inserting images and it now takes me twice as long to find an image I have previously used, or to upload one from a file on my hard drive. PLUS … they effed around with the “Preview” function and it is now a double-step process rather than a single ‘click’ on the preview button. All minor issues, but time consuming and frustrating as hell. And, as you say, the block editor sucks. I always use the ‘Classic’ block, but occasionally it changes to regular block without warning and I have to removed the entire text and start over. I’m fed up, but … they have us by the short hairs, because to switch to another site would be a pain, plus we would likely never regain all of our followers. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
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I have written so many emails to WordPress about the block editor and other issues and basically the response I always get is a combination of “too bad, so sad” and “get with the program.” They really don’t seem to care what we think.
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Sigh. Remember back in the ‘old’ days when the motto of businesses was “the customer is always right”? I got my first job at age 13 and my father’s advice then was just that … don’t argue with the customer, but bend over backward to please them, for they pay your salary. WordPress obviously did NOT get that memo!
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I have never emailed them and probably never will unless something breaks that I can’t work around. I think their attitude is appalling though. They just took $A125 out of my bank account for the next year’s sub. I had meant to turn off automatic payment but I wasn’t quick enough. I probably would have paid it but I didn’t really want to do it this week due to some unexpected expenses. The exchange rate makes it more for us in Australia.
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I have auto renewal turned off, as I don’t know how much longer I will be willing to put up with WordPress’ shenanigans.
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Have you ever tried the post via email option? You can even tag your posts iin the email, its pretty easy!
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No, I haven’t. I’ll have to look into it.
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It’s pretty easy you just have to create an email address which is done on the site and then you post to that email address and there is instructions on how to post tags you have to put them in quotes and a comma between each one but it’s very simple to do
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The struggle continues. I am so glad you are getting different options to try since WP doesn’t seem to care what we prefer.
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