I promised Kim at By Hook or by Book Blog, that I would do a quick tutorial on how to access the classic editor in the new block editor, for when or if they finally remove the original classic editor from your choices. I already did one for how to keep the new block editor simple and there’s now a menu option on this blog’s page to access both tutorials, entitled WordPress Tutorials. I know, not very original but I like things plain.

I am not a techy person, and I am a hobby blogger, not using it for commerce or as a business, so these tutorials are for people like me who like to ‘keep things simple stoopid’!

The why’s and wherefore’s of WP decisions regarding the software are being discussed all over the place, and I am sure if enough people are railing against the new editor the classic option will remain, and how to access it is shown in the first part of my tutorial. WordPress is used by nearly 75 million websites and according to WordPress, more than 409 million people view more than 23.6 billion pages each month. Users produce 69.5 million new posts and 46.8 million new comments every month. I think it would need at least 60% of those people writing in and complaining for them to change their minds, but we will see what happens going forward.

I’ve been using the Guttenberg block editor since it’s inception, and it was quite annoying back then and not very intuitive. As time has gone on they’ve improved it and added a lot of features. A lot of features are for those who use their websites for selling and promoting either goods or themselves, and for me as a hobby blogger I am happy to ignore them, but I appreciate that WordPress IS a business, and they need to make money from the majority of their users. There are 5 plans you can choose from Free, Personal, Premium, Business and eCommerce; and I have 3, a free one for Fragglefilm, a personal one for this blog and a premium for the Universe blog, because I wanted extra storage for photographs.

I have used the Free blog for my tutorials, but they work for all the plans. I also appreciate that changing over to a new way of working, especially one that seems so different, can be frustrating (I was at the start!) and seems unneccessary, (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it) but as all businesses must do, they have to cater for those who pay the wages, and have some stiff competition with other blogging platforms such as Squarespace or Wix. Their interfaces are quite similar in practice to the Block Editor, though Squarespace has no free plan option. For those using WP for commercial purposes, the new editor gives a much more professional look to a website than the classic editor was able to do.

examples HERE. and HERE as to how a post can look with the block editor, and they were quick to do.

But for hobby bloggers non of that is necessary, especially if all you want to do is write, and add a picture or video now and then.

The classic editor IS accessible in the Block editor, and it works just the way it always did, I tried it out in practice posts on my free blog, and it works just fine, so that is what I’ve shown on the tutorial. This post is not to argue the toss, it’s just to help out people who want to keep blogging on WordPress whatever happens.

I will add that Google’s ‘Blogger’ blog looks a lot like the classic editor, and so anyone who wants to give up WordPress over the change, would find a new home easy to start up on that platform. Most of the others have modern interfaces similar to the new Block Editor.

I hope the tutorials help.

You can access them HERE