Five Things I Loathe About the Block Editor

  1. I hate THE WHOLE DAMNED THING on principle. But, there are also specific things that I hate about it beyond its general suckitude.
  2. The fact that the only way to not start a new block every time I hit return is, apparently, to turn whatever I am trying to do into a list. Sometimes I don’t want bullets or numbers, though, but I still don’t want my post to have a goddamned extra space between lines. There is no way to fix this without getting some sort of a degree in coding.
  3. Working with images and trying to change their alignment. This often does not work. I have been trying to center the image in my last post for thirty minutes. Yeah, not happening. Now it is asymmetrical and it bugs me. With the classic editor, I just changed the HTML. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy.
  4. I like to draft my posts on my google drive because of issues with site crashing. This screws up the formatting when I paste them into a post, and it is completely unfixable. THIS WAS NEVER A PROBLEM WITH THE CLASSIC EDITOR.
  5. In order to get the Classic Editor plugin, I have to upgrade my site. This is bullshit. I already pay for a domain name. I do not make money off of my blogging, nor do I want to. This is a hobby. It should be easy. It used to be easy. Before you assholes made us all accept your lame new editor.

The ONLY reason that I haven’t relocated to Blogger is because I am lazy and I actually hate it more. But dammit, did they bribe you to make your editor suck so that people would leave?

/rant

12 comments

  1. The block editor was the reason why I turned my blog into a self-hosted one. I‘m paying less money than on any of the WP plans for the hosting as such to begin with, AND I get both the classic editor and the plug-in to permanently disable the block editor without paying a cent extra.

    1. PM me your hosting information. I know we are in different parts of the world, so maybe I can’t use it, but it’s potentially worth looking into. The block editor is a mental barrier to my desire to post.

      1. I have the same setup as TA, I believe, and I use dreamhost.com, which is US based. And I don’t use the block editor either because it’s shit – they say you can move stuff around as you want, but I can’t drag blocks anywhere except up or down, and it won’t let me re-size the blocks. It sucks.

        Saying that, have you tried shift+return between paragraphs? I can’t remember if that works to add space within a block or not.

  2. I’ll add two to your list:

    Managing image size is a pain. It looks easy but it doesn’t always do what you expect.

    Copying from WP to paste somewhere else is harder than it needs to because I can’t just use keyboard shortcuts anymore.

    1. If I were a more consistent blogger, I might do that as well. However, I suppose that I might be a more consistent blogger if I didn’t loathe the editor that I am forced to use here. I previously posted more – at this point, every time I go to start a post, I stare at the screen with dread and then say “nah.”

  3. Here are some other things. The editor quite frequently gets stuck into select mode when I am trying to edit. The only way I have figured out to return to edit mode (despite it saying I am in edit mode up top) is to exit out of my page and go back in. Really annoying, and it took me lots of effort to figure that out.

    Also, I have some project pages where I have small book covers, one for each year, decorating the page all the way down. Ever since the advent of the new block editor, I can’t add more pictures to that page, because it wants to put them either at the top of the page or the bottom, not next to the year where I want them. I have tried making sure I didn’t use any soft returns, at least at the year line, but still, for some reason on that page, it won’t let me position the images where I want them. So, the page, looks odd, because it has lots of years with illustrating covers, but for the later years since I was forced to change editors it has none.

    Also, the spacing of between the shortlisted books of the latest entries is different from that for all the other years, but I can’t figure out how to fix it. Using a soft return single spaces the entries, but they seem to be at space-and-a-half for all the other lists. Using a hard return double spaces them. So, the newest additions to that page don’t match the other ones.

  4. I recently revived my blog after a four-year hiatus, a response to Goodreads continuing to chip-chip-chip away at one’a ability to post material in reviews and comments. Thought I would have to use the block editor, but have been able to get by with the “classic” mode so far. However, there are elements of WordPress that hope to use that are nut supported in “Classic,” so I may have to bite the bullet and learn WordPress. I spent over two decades as a computer programmer, so the fact that it is daunting to someone like me speaks to how dreadful it truly is.

  5. >>The ONLY reason that I haven’t relocated to Blogger is because I am lazy and I actually hate it more.

    I have finally moved to Blogger after 14 year of wordpress.com (almost 20 if you count the .org days). Not gonna lie, I used to look down a little on people who would choose Blogger over WP, but right now, Blogger is way less hassle. At least I can do totally manual html without having to look up a damn tutorial on how to post images. It’s not as good as WP at its best, but WPis no longer at its best, and I feel it’s better to quit while I’m.. well, not ahead, but at least not as far behind as I could be. Going back to a .org would be my first choice, but covid induced redundancies etc.

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