This post here will be a rant. If you don’t want to read that but if you’re looking for ways to avoid the ridiculous Gutenberg Editor. Check out my WordPress workarounds to find ways to still use the Classic Editor. If you’re in here for the rant. Keep reading…
I am not going to put much effort into this post. I don’t give a flying fuck how the post might look like once it is published. It might be as well my last post on this blog. I can’t get used to this crap new editor. Until yesterday it was still possible to use the classic editor script. But it seems they removed the classic editor from all user backends, which is why the script naturally stopped working now (Not entirely true, I discovered you can still use the old editor by clicking on “add new” in the dashboard, for now).
I could now act as a civil person but I prefer to write what I think. And honestly? Matt Mullenweg appears like a little fascist hipster. If you ask me, that’s still polite. His entire team actually appeared like that in the most recent years. But they do have at least an excuse. They are working for a lunatic who doesn’t take his formerly loyal user base seriously. But that’s probably still enough to put them into the same category. I mean, who would like to work for such a person? If I would want to do it, I would show that I have zero integrity.
Let’s talk about my blog now. Maybe it had to come to an end. At this point, I am very unsure if I can continue to work on this blog. It’s sad, not just because blogging was an enrichment but also because I met a lot of interesting people in this community. Some of them became friends. I enjoyed visiting their blogs as much as their comments on mine.
Those who followed me know that I started this blog during my worst times when I suffered from both, depression and anxiety disease. But I gave it a try and realized that it gave me meaning in life again. Sure, not just blogging but it played a big role too. I discovered that it kept me cool and in some cases, it actually helped me to alleviate symptoms. I first thought it was a nice distraction but many years later I realized it was more than that.
But it wasn’t always like that. With a history of depression, there have always been some kind of traps on my way. Being a WordPress user also had its side-effects. It triggered me more than just a single time. I mean, you’re invested. Not much with money but definitely with your time and work. And when I noticed that I put my stuff into a basket that was slowly rotting away, I knew what would come. But there have been workarounds to keep blogging.
But right now, there is no workaround anymore (Well, I found one now, but the direction is clear, we’re going to be forced to adapt to this shit). They attempted several times to make us enjoy all the latest fancy crap they designed. It never worked. Except for a couple of idiots who wrote generic comments on their posts about the latest new features, I haven’t spotted a lot of impressed people. And let’s be honest, when you see comments like “Fantastic news!” followed by tons of emotes on the official site, it’s clear. They’re written by this entitled generations that is now their next customer base. Fucking mobile device users. People who haven’t made it far into the internet, except into the Google Play store maybe, or into their social media apps where they can live their narcissistic lives. People who constantly demand that things need to become more accessible.
Nowadays, you find these degenerated idiots everywhere. Let’s talk about PC gaming for example. The greatest games have been dumped down to cater to a crowd that is not on the brightest side. Money is not made when you cater to a niche, you need to design a product or software on a way that the last idiot in the last corner can grasp what it is about. Once you have all the idiots in the boat, you just introduce some kind of in-game store to get direct access to their wallets. Who would think that is different anywhere else?
If you still think your opinion does matter because you’ve been a loyal customer or something, I am sorry but I need to pop your bubble. Whatever you’re into, it has been designed for you once but now it’s re-designed for the mass. Do you think someone wants to make a profit? You’re wrong. They want more than that! Greed doesn’t know boundaries. They can never get their mouthes full enough. They’re not just catering to complete idiots, they’re also catering to people who are absolutely not interested in the product or activity. You need to get into all the wallets!
If you looked around in the WordPress reader the recent years, that’s exactly what you found, with some exceptions maybe. People who have zero clues why they want to blog, people who barely make it past a month with their blogs (as you find out later after following them), people who upload pictures without words, people who can’t add enough emotes to their posts, people with zero technical knowledge (gosh, ever loaded a blog in your browser where the author added tons of full-size images?). That my friends, that is the future community of WordPress.
So, it kinda makes sense why you would want to introduce a drag-and-drop editor. But it’s kinda ironic that they even failed with this. I tested a lot of tools and games in two decades and I participated in a lot of alphas and betas. But this editor beats it all, it’s the worst usability of all the tools I tested since I use computers. I don’t exaggerate, it’s very top on the list of the worst tools I ever used. And that’s the irony. If I as an experienced user have difficulties adapting to this mess, how can a blogging dayfly work with it?
Have you noticed the image in this post? I should have counted how many clicks I needed to get it into the post. Who the fuck did design this shit? Making certain features accessible only via search bar? Seriously? If I would own the company, you’d get into trouble with me by just suggesting this idea. Man, I could go through every single feature and tell you why it’s crap, really crap but I save my energy for something more entertaining. Let’s just summarize what it is. This Gutenberg editor is bullshit. I am not a masochist.
I have no clue how I can continue with this blog and the new editor. I wish I could but this would be very difficult. I first wanted to share a flower photo with you. It was not my plan to write a rant, at least not until this shit editor popped up. I actually just wanted to share a flower photo and after that, I wanted to upload some more like I often do. That’s when I got the shock. But it’s not the first time I tested this editor. I tested it freely before but went back to the classic editor. But now it’s forced on us.
I need to sleep over this. I really have no clue if I can continue with this blog. I really would like to because I told you what I like about blogging. It’s about you, it’s about myself. I had a lot of very good reasons to work on this blog. And there have been some hurdles on the way but this one is such a big one, I have no clue. If you hate the tool that you need to publish your content, how can you get over it? Matt Mullenweg’s hipster team is suggesting to use the classic block wherever someone complains. Don’t get me started talking about this bullshit. It’s no real solution either.
I just have no answer now. I really need to sleep over this. I will also think about alternative solutions. The first thing I will do is researching if I can install classic editor plugins on a self-hosted site because if there are any, that would be the only real solution. In that case, I would move my entire blog to a new hosting provider but that would also mean that I take a long break because I wouldn’t want to stress myself. But as I said, it might also be that I give up entirely but in this case, I would write a final post and tell you.
If I attempt to adapt to this crappy editor, I will probably slow down heavily with my posts. I could imagine that I write maybe once a week. At the moment I can’t believe that I would want to go through the pain of using this editor every day. I won’t decide today.
Damn, is this editor a piece of crap. Stuff keeps popping up, you need to be careful where you click, and so on. What a horrible experience. Just look at the design of the editor. What a design accident. Imagine you’re running a tech company and you come up with this shit? What a crime. Holy crap. I’m done for today. This is just horrible.
Diary of Dennis 
Ditto.
The sad thing is the “new” users won’t know how it was ( neither the original blogging community or the WP editor)
But no doubt it all comes down to money – and WP has really changed over the years from when even authors were scolded if it appeared they were promoting their books too much in posts to today with PayPal and so many actual businesses ( who must be thinking they have to have FB, Twitter, Linked in, tiktok – that they have to have presence on ALL social media)
So many are weighing their options ( and agitation levels). The ones who help WP become what it is today
Yeah. It’s a real pity but no big surprise. I saw these stages everywhere no matter what industry. They want to get into all the wallets… and it’s only possible with completely dumbed down products.
I also noticed that there is a certain anxiety in different industries. It seems like they fear that when they don’t change something, which they usually call “evolving”, that they get overtaken by another brand, niche, product, or whatever. This leads to irrational design decisions. But the irony is, this was often the very reason why several brands failed… they didn’t understand or disregarded their own userbase.
I am not completely against changes… but this new Gutenberg editor is a complete design accident. Unbelievable.
Yes. This is a structural problem all over the world now. Change for change. I wonder if there is a filtering out of the discontent. I sent 3 mails about it and the technical team never answered. If I understand correctly (I think I do), I need to buy a business plan (280$) to go back to the simple editor. This is pure Racketteering. I don’t see this very point that is the real scandal emerging nowhere in the debate. And I fall on these kind of chills that tells us in what way Gutenberg Editor is a great thing, taking for granted our necessary adaptation to the necessarily great things that they provide us. Shame on WordPress. Shame on on for letting us getting trapped in this increasingly monopolistic IT environment.
Some years ago when they got huge backlash from the community for the first attempt to change the editor (beep beep boop drama), they actually closed forum threads with too much critique. But shortly after, new threads popped up with hundreds of replies. At some point, WP did let the critique slide but I will never forget how they attempted to suppress it. I wouldn’t wonder if they do suppress discontent now too. Seen it quite a few times over the years so that I barely still visit their forums. Automattic doesn’t like critique at all.
Talking about the business plan… For now, I can relax you… check this workaround out: https://diaryofdennis.com/2020/09/10/the-last-workaround-to-use-the-classic-editor/
Still works on the free plan too. But nobody knows for how long this workaround will work. The direction is sadly clear. I do agree it’s Racketeering what they are doing.
OK. Thank you a lot. But I had some troubles writing through this dashboard, like a loose automatic saving… but I’ll try, since I have no choice! “…since I have no choice” what a typical phrase of this new normal;)
Dennis, I have read many posts in recent weeks where the site owners have exactly the same perspective on that shitty editor. I certainly will respect you for closing this blog down because of this situation. That Matt guy and the lot just don’t give a rat’s ass about we users. They continue to never listen to us, I’ve been in contact with them several times about this and always without fail, get the same ridiculous corporate bullshit answers.
They just don’t care. My site continues to have the old editor, however, when it is no longer accessible in the future, I will be leaving WordPress for good. There is a chat service available where you can chat with one of their stupid happiness engineers. I always get the same basic response: my comments will be forwarded to the appropriate people.
Bull! I feel your anger. I have been with WP for several years now, and now it appears that the time for a change is upon many of us because of a major fail at the corporate and design levels. Be well, Dennis.
I didn’t decide yet if I have to stop. But looking at how horrible the new editor is, I just can’t exclude this option anymore. 😦
WordPress of Automatic definitely mastered corporate speech. No matter if direct contact or through forum posts…. they’re completely in denial. Like you implied, it makes no sense anymore to communicate with them. I always thought it was ironic that they’re called happiness engineers.
It seems, by accident, after publishing the post… I found a workaround. When I click on “add new” in the dashboard instead of “write” at the top, I am directed to the classic editor too. Who knows for how long that works. I assume they will switch users in groups or phases. Maybe they got to me now.
I do agree with you, it might be yet again, another time for a change. Isn’t the first product or service that forced me to move on and look for alternatives. It’s the corporate bullshit you mentioned…. happens everywhere. They fear that when they don’t change something, that they get overtaken by something else. Ironically, these changes often kill the userbase, and then the brand gets overtaken because of that (laugh).
Thanks, John. I’m still here. If I decide to abandon the blog, there will be a final “Farewell” post to my blogging friends here. Anyway, be well too!
Thanks for the great reply, Dennis. Stay safe.
You too, John! 🙂
You have got it exactly right Dennis. All WordPress want to do is get new business, they won’t care if people sign up and then, after the initial novelty wears off ,they rarely if ever post. As long as they make more money that’s all that matters. I get so tired of being told by millennials that everything I’ve ever done is bad and that their way is better.If I let myself I’d be ranting about it every time I post but I never set out to be a grumpy blogger.
Regarding the block editor, I started using it some time ago. Not when it first appeared, but after it became apparent that WordPress was going to force it on us. Lately they have added a lot more blocks which makes it slower to find the ones I want but I’ve learned how to do it quickly. I get more annoyed that they sometimes make it impossible to search for pictures in the media library. It only works properly if I go in from WP Admin. Fortunately that is what I do nine times out of ten and always have.
I’m coping but what upsets me most is that many of the bloggers I’ve become friends with over the years are not and like you, are talking about leaving. I’ll miss my friends although I hope that we may keep in touch in some other way. I’m too invested in my two blogs to leave unless there was a viable and cheap alternative.
Like you I thought that these changes were supposed to make blogging easier for the mobile phone bloggers but apparently that is not so. I don’t know if you read “This, That and The Other” by Fandango. He always blogs on his iPhone and he is finding it almost impossible to work on it in the block editor. Fandango is an older blogger like me. Another blogger, commented that a blogging friend of hers contacted the so called “Happiness Engineers” and was told that he/she was “asking for old people things” . What a horrible ageist attitude from the HE.
I don’t know what to suggest to you. A few people are trying the “classic block” that has been created. Others are doing their writing on a Word document and pasting it in or double handling on multiple devices. Everyone says it is a lot more work. Quite a few are contemplating giving up. As I said, that will be sad for me because I enjoy reading other people’s posts and the comment threads as much as I enjoy writing.
I tried looking for some kind of WordPress forum where people were discussing this like there used to be. If there still is one I could not find it. Just one piece by Matt Mullenweg which had comments closed after about nine positive comments. They don’t seem to have the guts for a public fight.
Same here. Even in my most depressive phases, where I usually have a lot of justified negative thoughts about things in this world, I tried to keep it for myself. My goal was always to have more than 90% happy stuff on my blog. But there is a point where you think “Who cares, it’s annoying, I must get it off my finger”. Automatic or WordPress got the bonus several times that I ignored whatever they’ve done wrong… having direct contact with them or looking through their forums and noticing the replies of happiness engineers, triggered me quite a few times, but yet I still kept cool.
First of all, if I decide to abandon my blog, we can stay in contact. My issue right now is too that I am very invested in my blog, with time and work. That makes it even more upsetting. But I am at a point where I can’t entirely exclude the option of either giving up or moving my site. It’s getting tiresome to constantly adapt to the corporate insanity, their fear of getting overtaken, their compulsion to change things… seen it so often, experienced it so often elsewhere.
Yep, I do agree with you, they probably attempted to make it more accessible with the drag-and-drop concept. But they failed. It’s indeed a lot harder to use. I read Fandango’s blog too. The “Happiness Engineer” reply you mentioned is no isolated case. That’s why I have chosen to use the term “fascist” in my post. Because I must admit, whenever I got a reply from them or when I saw their replies in the forums, it had the “dictate” flavor. We know what’s right… you’re just old, you can’t adapt, and so on. I remember this forum thread with thousands of posts against the first stage of change (beep beep boop)… it was huge quantities of negative feedback. Their solution? They kept suppressing the thread by just closing it. Ironically, that’s not how the internet works. People kept creating new ones, they closed a second one, a third one. And then they gave up and faced the community, not without telling every one of us how incapable of adapting we are. I probably still have a draft about this in my dashboard, but like you, I keep the grumpy level at a minimum, thus it got never published. I shouldn’t have given them this bonus. The forum riots at least gave us a little bit of time. Their version in their Gutenberg FAQ is the following: “We pushed that back a bit to make time for more changes that ease the transition to the Block editor”. That’s corporate-speak for “We got huge backlash, doing it slowly and in phases prevents that public criticism is concentrated in a short period of time”.
I could adapt to the strange new layout. But it’s harder to adapt to what you said, that everything takes more time with the new editor or alternative solutions like Word documents.
Talking about a recent forum thread… I’ve seen some but I guess most people gave up after the fiasco back then. People just learned it, thus there are no mass protests in the forum anymore. I gave up too. Like the case in the past, and like you said at the end too… they’re probably also suppressing feedback again by closing threads that get traction too fast. That’s why I allow myself to use authoritarian terms for them. I mean, suppression of opposition is nothing else than that… fascism. So, it’s not up to me to change my choice of words but up to them to change their behavior and how they interact with their users. If it would be my product, I wouldn’t want my customers to feel suppressed.
Vanda, I attempt to find a way that works for me. This time it’ll be difficult but I will hopefully find something that works for me. If I decide to abandon the blog instead, I am going to stay in contact with you, for example via Email.
I know I will be able to keep in contact with you, with Marilyn and probably others so we’ll still be able to share our thoughts. I think that WordPress will be a duller place if all those people decide to leave. I haven’t added many new bloggers to my follow list in the last year or two and most of the ones I have are older bloggers.
I do remember that whole beep, bop, boop fiasco. In fact I found one of my old ranty posts about it the other day. We had a comment thread going about that issue too. Sad that things have got worse, not better.
That’s what corporations really don’t understand. If you scare, what me and my friends often called “the core of the community” away, people who have been very supportive, people who networked, and people who wrote guides about the product or service (game, software, whatever)… what is left is a very weak community, and the whole card house falls apart slowly. The worst case I’ve ever seen was a game, you have heard about World of Warcraft. It peaked somewhere at 14 million subscriptions, the number alone made the game appear unbeatable. It took them just some major changes to destroy the game so that the subscriptions went down to like 3 million, and a few more until they decided to never publish the subscription number openly again. Everyone knew why. People knew it now had less than 1 million users. It must have been too embarrassing to continue to talk about the subscription numbers. It was a slow but sure death spanning over several years. But most people know exactly when the ship started sinking. Back then the web was full of guides about the game, and I myself wrote them too. I left, most of the core left the game… nobody wrote guides anymore, nobody told their friends “seriously, you must play this game” anymore, nobody talked about the game at all anymore. That’s why they released a classic version, to get people back. This is the worst example, but there are many more also outside of the gaming niche. But it’s a great example of why corporations shouldn’t be too brave, millions of subscriptions look great but they can decline massively too
Sometimes, a few people of the core stay, like you and me because we feel like being too invested. But there is a point where we would abandon the ship too. And if the last core member has left, it’s like you said, a duller place is what remains. I followed some new people but unfollowed many of them quickly. I can just think of one new person I followed recently who has an interesting blog with both, short and long articles. It’s Jeremy who often comments here too. That’s it. All other blogs I found recently either died after a month, or they appeared like typed with a phone, without passion, without effort, just to promote their Instagram or TikTok where the young folks have their focus now. I’m not interested in that. It’s dull.
I published some stuff too about the beep, bop, boop fiasco but if I would have published all my thoughts, there would have been many more. I still have the drafts of unreleased posts. It’s just that I attempt to keep the rant level low too. 😀
Now tell us what you really feel! Yeah I noticed the editor has deteriorated recently and got less intuitive to use — but looking on the bright side, perhaps the next overhaul will better?>
I don’t believe in this. They have shown that it’s only getting worse whenever they touch something. 😦
Yeah, I guess. Certainly the iOS version has been an ongoing car crash…but I find the desktop version decent enough on the whole.
I just can’t work with the desktop version. It’s such a mess in my opinion. Hiding stuff behind search bars, super annoying pop up wherever you click, the content based on blocks where you need to be careful that you don’t leave a block. For example, editing the last word of a paragraph block is a hurdle if you have an image block or any kind of block below it…. because you need to aim for an invisible border and hope you hit it right. The whole leave and enter a block stuff is just insane. I’d rather write in a 30 years old DOS text tool than with this editor.
Have you tried one of those third party apps that uploads to wordpress?
I think I’m going to give up at the end of the year. 8 years is enough.
I do understand that. This option isn’t from the table here too. I am getting tired of constantly adapting to things that previously worked just fine.
I’ve been really trying hard to make it work, but it’s an AWFUL piece of software. Everything is hidden under something else and there’s nothing intuitive about where they’ve hidden the information. It took me a couple of days trying to figure out how to exit the application and I still can’t save it. And I’m REALLY good with applications!
As badly written software goes, this one takes the cake. It’s really BAD.
Unless you are paying for a business plan, you can’t install a plugin.
I can’t do anything on the new editor. I still can’t find a save button and no matter how many times you schedule something, it changes when you next look at it — and/or the graphics vanish. It’s really bad. it’s like Word when it first came out more than 20 years ago. Aren’t we past that phase of development? I worked 40 years in high tech — and I wind up with something that isn’t as good as “wordstar” was in 1982?
No, I never heard of any, and if there are some, I wouldn’t type my username and password into those tools. And I don’t think any of them have a 100% accurate classic editor. Also, I don’t want to switch between software and browser constantly. I will only blog via CMS. I think the only option for the future is to self-host with ClassicPress. For now, I use the last workaround in the dashboard.
Well at least you’ve got a workaround mate!
Dennis, just entered my first post yesterday under the new editor, and I agree with your comments. I lost the same post twice before I was able to get it onto the platform. I’ve been on for 3+ years and for much of that time, it was a secondary outlet since my posts were also on Writerbeat. But that forum died in May of 2019 and this has been the only place I’ve been posting. I’ll try to add the old editor back into my options. What is really annoying is that I haven’t found a way to embed a link to another web page (even back to an old post).
Lots of people complained. No wonder, the new editor is miserable. I really can adapt to a lot of stuff, I think many people can… but this is a though nut to crack.
Sorry for your troubles Dennis. I agree with everything you wrote. I have the Classic Editor plug-in installed on my self hosted WordPress. Just in case Automattic decide to kill the plugin or make worse changes, a group of developers have forked WordPress.
https://www.classicpress.net/
I forgot to add, this year marks 17 years on WordPress for me.
17 years! Wow! And I thought I had a long run with 10 years 😀
I think I can add 2 years to my 10 years because I self-hosted a small project before this one with the WP CMS. Before that I had a pure HTML website 😀 So, I’ve been present for a while too, just not entirely with the WordPress CMS. I even hosted own forums back then, that was fun too.
I sold my first HTML website. It was a German website filled with tons of guides. But I needed money at that time 😀 I think that was around 2003 or so.
Looks like it’s time again to go self-hosting because the future here doesn’t look bright. Apart from the work with the redirection and content move, it wouldn’t be bad as I still have experience with self-hosting. And well, I’d get pure freedom again. I will think about this.
Fantastic that there is a fork. I didn’t know that. In case I decide to host myself, this would be a perfect solution right away!
I can’t use it either. It won’t let me work the way I work and I hate this editor. I really really hate it. And they are making it harder and harder to find a function version of an earlier editor. i have to decide if I want to continue blogging at all. I know I won’t stay with WordPress. They’ve lied to me too often and cheated me too often. I’m looking at WIX. Take a look and tell me what YOU think. We can name link back to our original blogs. I’m not sure how the money thing would work, though. I might just give it up. I’ve been doing this for 8 years and nothing lasts forever. But right now, I simply don’t know.
Yep, the new editor is one of those tools where you need to be careful where to click because things pop up you don’t want to pop up or you leave one of the blocks out of a sudden. Super hard to work with. I had a paragraph block and an image block, I wanted to get back to the last line of the paragraph block and clicked somewhere at the last word but instead, I opened the image block because there are some magical invisible borders. So, basically, we must aim for something invisible. It’s a horrible design. Or hiding stuff behind a search bar… that is an insane design decision. There is so much wrong with this editor that you could write a book about it.
I heard about Wix but if I decide to pull the plug, I am more likely to go self-hosting, most likely with the Classic WP fork Khürt mentioned in the comments. For now, I use the last workaround here.
I don’t think I’m up to the requirements of self-hosting. Also, I’m not sure you can use the classic editor on the self-hosting version, either. It looks like I’m being put out of the blogging business. Maybe it’s time to go anyway.
I got told you can use the classic editor… there is a fork called ClassicPress: https://www.classicpress.net/ So, you would install that instead of WordPress.
Someone would have to walk me through self hosting. I’m not unwilling, I’m just not sure I know what I’m supposed to do … or weather any of my “followers” would follow me there. IF the Classic Editor works there, I would be more than willing to try it. As far as WP.com goes, you can’t use plug-ins unless you pay them a boatload of money — which I’m unwilling to do. I don’t HAVE a business and I see no reason to pay for something I don’t have and won’t ever need. I know the self-hosting blogs are supposed to be free — but does it include all the functions I use or is that a matter of what you choose to present? I’m only concerned because I know several people who tried the swtich and wound up with NO followers and finally had to start again on a different platform. Their experiences were so bad, I’m a little hesitant. But I can’t go on this way. I get the “classic” editor maybe half the time and the rest of the time, I get tossed into the block editor which is a terrible piece of software from every point of view — from its basic design and assumption to it’s inability to output the results without a battle. I’m truly hating it. I would like to keep writing, but not like this. So I’m ready for advice. I’m a good listener and I have a lot of basic skills, many of which I haven’t used in the past 10 or 15 years, but I’m pretty sure they will reappear if I go looking in the big attic of my brain.
The sad truth is, going self-hosting, especially when you have to move an entire site with domain redirections and all kinds of stuff, won’t be an easy step. It’s going to be a hell of work and research. I fear, it can’t be explained in steps. The last time I set up a self-hosted site was 4 years ago, for someone in my family and his business. But moving an entire site without losing all the domain power (301 redirect) is many more years ago since I’ve done it the last time. So, I will have to do my research again too. This is why I said in this post, if I pull the plug, I will probably take a very long break to do my research, and then I do it all right. There are step by step guides out there but the issue is, this is a move where it’s much better to entirely understand what you’re doing.
I do agree with everything you said. I wouldn’t pay more just for the ability to install plugins. Especially not if I don’t know for how long classic editor plugins will work (they could just kill the entire classic editor and as it seems they will do so, and those plugins are just like the redirection script… they redirect you to the old editor but that’s not possible anymore if it is killed). In my case, it’s either that I somehow manage to find a way to adapt, or I go self-hosting, or I give up. I have no idea at this moment… the issue is that we’re invested into our sites, with time and work. Makes the whole Automattic move even eviler… because they know it.
It’s looking more and more likely that I’m going to pull the plug before my renewal comes up. I have to remind myself that I’ve been doing this a long time and everything ends at some point, whether we like it or not. I would have preferred to make my own choices, but WordPress made it for me. I can struggle along with the remnants of the classic editor for a few months, but they are going to pull that plug too and probably sooner than they’ve promised. I’m still bewildered by WHY they have done this. It isn’t improving the quality of the work people are doing and WP is going to lose a lot of bloggers. Real blogger. The people who built them up from nothing much to their current “powerhouse” status. I don’t think they realize that is isn’t business that draws people in. It’s writers and photographers. They will find out. Once they pull that plug, they are just one of many commercial sites. And now tht they have this awful software, it’s going to make starting anew on WP much harder for a lot of people. I think they will see far fewer newbies … and when businesses realize what a pain it is to use that software, they will be looking for a new home too. There are plenty of commercial sites to choose from.
Same here. I can just assume that it’s corporate fear again. The fear of becoming dated, and overtaken by another brand or a complete niche (social media apps). I’ve seen it elsewhere, very often during my life. Even in companies, I worked for… there isn’t always a rational reason behind something and often companies don’t even understand their own target group. I think it’s often really irrational fear of “if we don’t do something at all, we will be overtaken”. Ironically, the changes then become the reason why a product or service fails. It’s really ironic. Ironic is too… just because someone is higher in the hierarchy within a company than you, doesn’t always mean they’re smarter than you. I’ve seen complete idiots at the top.
I think they WILL faii. They are pushing out the people who made them important to become just another commercial website. There are plenty of commercial websites and WordPress with its new format, it not one of the best. AWS is pushing hard too, but that’s all self hosting and pretty complicated, even from a quick look WIX is the best of the pack and relatively simple. But also, pretty expensive. I didn’t mind paying the $100/year to customize, but they have stripped out most of the good parts of customization. Now what you get is very minimal. Everything I used to have is in higher priced formats and I resent it. I’ve been paying them for eight years and they have essentially pushed me out as if I don’t even matter. I don’t matter to them. That has become very clear. I’ve looked at Medium, but they have too many rules and regulations for me. And anyway, other than Medium, these are ALL commercial sites and I’m not commercial. I ran a commercial site for five years and made some decent money doing it, but I retired in 2008 when the economy fell apart. And here we are again. I’m 73 and I don’t WANT to start a business. I’m retired and I LIKE being retired. Many of my followers are also retired because who else has the time to blog every day? Retired people — or disabled people. Everyone else has to spend some time at work. Or used to work.
I need to find some place to write and post pictures. I won’t write on Facebook, but I might use Blogger (I have an account there I never use) and bounce that off of Twitter. But I’m not going to keep paying WP for this crap they are pulling. They’ve had plenty of time to retract some of these changes and give us a fair shot at continuing to do what we have always done. But I’ve had a long run. Eight good years and I certainly don’t regret it. I just regret not being able to continue. I love the friends I’ve made and I will miss them a lot.
Mainly, they make it nearly impossible for me to write the way I normally write: lay down the text, then add the graphics. Apparently WP feels we should know what we want to do before we start writing because otherwise, they dump the graphics at the bottom of the page and you have to copy and paste them into place. It’s a mess. Half the time I haven’t even taken the pictures I’m going to use when I write the text. I have ALWAYS work this way — like as long as I’ve been a professional writer. I can’t work this way. And it’s no fun for me at all. I think you have my web address. I’d really like to hear your thoughts — https://teepee12.com/
I completely understand what you mean. I can’t even create my short-form content (a picture plus a little bit of text) with the new editor because it keeps annoying me. I don’t even want to begin to write long-form content with it. It’s not just bad, it’s unusable.
This isn’t free, but it’s not expensive, either. What do you think?
https://www.bluehost.com/special/wordpress/
I am not at a point yet where I researched which host I’d use in the worst case. It’s been some time since I did rent webspace. So, it’ll take weeks of research once I pull the plug.
The only thing that is blatant right away is that this product will install WordPress for you right away. And this is a problem because once they kill the classic plugin, you have the same problem again. Which is why it’s a much better idea to rent hosting without any automatic installs… so that you can install the classic fork on your own.
Yeah, I doped that out already.
One of the major issues is that wordpress hasn’t explained the benefits of the gutenberg editor from an seo perspective. I suspect they think most users are too stupid to understand, I say this as I have reported numerous faults over the last couple of months and the go to reply is always that it’s my fault somehow. I now have it in writing that in fact I revealed some major flaws. On which note, the customer service has an appalling attitude and is either trained to take customers where they want in condescending fashion (instead of engage the customer) or have had no training at all.
The problem is, regardless of understanding it, most users are unlikely to care about those benefits as they don’t really apply to the average blogger.
There are numerous errors now in all aspects of the editor. My last two posts both have tight text in the subhead when posted to s/media. One was made using the classic option, the other Gutenberg. When I post to social media this is the first thing potential readers see, and I’m left looking a bit clueless thanks to the preview option showing everything as fine.
The product is now broken and even some of the faults reported have been replied to as ‘beyond our expertise’ by *leads*.
Everything happening reminds me of a company about to go down under its own sense of importance. Frankly, that would be deserved. But who’ll suffer – bloggers like you and me plus any decent staff that might have worked for Automattic.
The inconvenience to move hosts would be immense, and I’ve already lost a ton of time going back and forth with them, but I have looked at alternatives. Unfortunately they all cost more. Get what you pay for, I suppose. The lesson I’ve learned is that I should’ve gone with a free option from the word go (I’m using a free template after all), then this wouldn’t sting so much.
I’ve also thought of chucking it in, so totally get where you’re coming from.
The irony is that they don’t have SEO’s in their team, or only a few of them themselves and if so, not very well informed ones, I assume. There have been numerous times where I told them about essential Google changes in the past and they basically thanked me for the information and applied changes but pretty late. I’m talking about major changes that were affecting a million WordPress blogs, not just mine. So, I am not surprised that you made the same experience. You’re right. The average Joey won’t complain or find the issues. Only, those who are nerdy about it… so, when you only have a few who point at the issues, it might seem to them as a non-issue, but it isn’t.
Right. Corporations with a high user base often think they’re untouchable. The reality is, even the biggest userbase can shrink in no time when you don’t take them seriously. Seen it with Digg, seen it with the World of Warcraft game that went down from like 13 million subs to a number that made the developer stop publish the official user stats (like every sane company would do if they lose 80% of subscribers). I’ve seen it happen so often, it’s not unrealistic to think that wp.com will lose importance as well. That’s just something that will happen in the long run when their own customers are not taken seriously.
Fortunately, at the moment, we still have some time before we need to decide how our blogging future looks like. The classic editor redirect script was updated and is working again: https://diaryofdennis.com/2015/03/24/how-to-force-a-redirect-to-the-classic-wordpress-com-editor-interface/
But even if the classic editor is entirely removed and everything stops working, I might still have a workaround for the future. I found it after I wrote this post. So, I’m a little bit more optimistic now. But it’s too early to talk about it, as we still have easier to set up workarounds at the moment, as the classic script that works again for now.
It’s sad to see how many posts there are like this! I was the same at first…but I got used to it. Hope you did too 🙂 (And I’ve been on wordpress for nearly 12 years so I didn’t like the change either!)
I couldn’t get used to it but at the moment I can continue to use the classic editor with the help of a script.
I can manage text, but it doesn’t work for graphics at all. There’s barely any functionality. You can’t resize anything and their “fancy” mosaics simply don’t work. They won’t LOAD. I sometimes use it for something that’s going to be just text with maybe a picture in it but otherwise, i kind of hate it.
I do completely refuse to use the new editor. I can’t stand it at all. Neither text nor graphics. It has some nice features that I would like to use but as long as they don’t design it for the PC experience… I’m not in there. It has the worst usability from a PC user perspective and the UI design is just horrible, still today. And since this won’t change anytime soon as it seems, I just take a look once in a while (hopium) and then continue to refuse to touch the new editor.
It drives me crazy that it won’t let you edit the image after it’s posted, but you can edit/crop individual files before posting if you go right to the media section.
After posting. the resize options are on the right and it will resize by percentage. (25, 50, 75)
But overall, it’s definitely not as easy as the old way of just resizing and plopping the images anywhere you want on the page.
I get why many people (including me) don’t like it as much.
Their text management needed some work, but they seem to have forgotten that they have at least as many photographers as writers. The graphics are AWFUL and the “not loading” issue means if I’m using photographs, I won’t use the block editor. I sure hope they fix it properly — like SOON. And put a proper menu on it so you don’t have to wonder where your options went!
Unrelated to the Gutenberg editor but related to what you said about “forgetting the photographers in the community”… the first time I noticed that they don’t spend many thoughts on us photographers or graphic editors was when they changed the images in the WordPress reader from box size or standard photo format to horizontal banner size. Do you remember that? One day I was logging in and browsed the reader and out of a sudden, you couldn’t enjoy people’s photographs in the reader anymore. Basically, because these photographs were shown in a strange leaderboard/billboard banner format lol. Fortunately, that is no longer the case today. I just want to say that sometimes, when they change things, they indeed forget photo and image tinkerers like us.
So I’ve been trying the block editor. Again. They have simplified it, so it’s easier to deal with text. HOWEVER, it is HORRIBLE dealing with graphics. it is unstable, you can’t size pictures except by dragging them, which is not a good way to manage them. For anything with graphics, I simply CAN’T use the block editor unless you’re using a single picture at a time and even then, it’s unstable and often doesn’t recognize photographic parameters. It decides there’s no “size specification” — except of course, there is. I’m finding myself very uninspired. Actually, anti-inspired. Sad, but true. After 9 years, when they take away the “classic” editor, I don’t know if I’m going to be willing to keep trying.
I can only agree. Once in a while, I checked back to take a look but it’s just not worth it. Still horrible usability. I keep using the classic editor.
I wonder what I’ll do when they remove the classic. I can’t make pictures work in that editor. Half the time, they don’t even LOAD. It’s a bit of a nightmare.
I do know what I will do in that case and in case I am still in the mood to update my blog. I believe I said it a few times in the comments. I’d install ClassicPress locally on my machine and prepare posts there, and then paste the HTML code into my live blog and upload the images.
That’s probably too ambitious for me.
It’s not as complicated as it sounds. You’d basically just install XAMPP as a local webserver. That could be explained with around 10-15 simple steps in a guide. After that, it’s just about moving the WordPress files into a local folder. And then you set up a MySQL database locally and run the WordPress installer from said localhost folder (no more than putting a local URL into the browser and hit enter, things happen locally not online). After that, it’s just filling out a few things during the installation, entering the MySQL database you just created, creating a user and password. Basically another 10-15 steps in a guide. If you can pick up 30 products in a large local store from a shopping card someone else wrote, you can for sure install WP locally too 🙂 It’s as difficult.
If the time has come, and if this is my personal workaround and there is no better one, and if I haven’t left the blogosphere… I’d write a guide. As said, probably like 20-30 steps. You’d only need to go through them once unless you format your hard drive or install Windows freshly because then you’d need to do it again of course. It’s not rocket science.
Anyway, by that time it could be likely that other workarounds came up. So, probably makes no sense yet to spend detailed thoughts on it yet. And since classic is still working at the moment, we don’t have to stress ourselves. I just wanted to point that there is always a workaround. Especially with open-source software.
That gives me some hope because it’s really bad for graphics — and at least 2/3 of my material are photographs. I love writing, but it takes me a long time to write something that I feel is good enough. On the other hand, I don’t know how to take fewer than 50 pictures.