Fan Interference

As some of you may have heard, WordPress has launched a new editor, called the block editor.  The new editor, in a word, sucks.  Like it’s really, really, really bad.  It’s insanely complicated, there is zero benefit, they crammed everything into pop up windows, and everything the old editor did automatically like converting Youtube and Twitter links into embeds, you now have to jump through multiple menus.  Oh, and the best part?  The new system now no longer automatically saves drafts every few minutes.  Why?  Because F you that’s why!  The lack of auto-saving is really great fun when coupled with an accidental key stroke that will undo/delete EVERYTHING you’ve done since you last manually hit the save button.  It’s already caused both Prof and myself to lose several hours of work.  But what is the point of progress without making literally everything you do 15 times more complicated than it was before?  Thanks for fixing something that wasn’t broken WordPress!  We’ve been able to limp along just fine the past few months because WordPress allowed us to manually switch back to the old editor.  Well, that is now gone.  Our site has been forced into the new editor, whether we like it or not.  (We do not.)

Part of the saving issue, is I believe is in part to a stupid add-on called Jetpack.  Since I’m on the “personal” tiered paid service, I don’t get the ability to disable this add-on, or install any other new add-ons.  I’m personally hoping that WordPress fixes this interaction, but there’s no guarantees on that.

And our final issue/topic of the day comes down to the site theme/layout.  We are currently using the theme “Forever”, support for which was actually stopped several years ago.  I remember the pain of picking a theme the last time, and honestly I don’t have the time to cycle through 500 different themes that both allows the site to flow well, be readable, and most importantly allow comments to remain in a welcome format and not alienate you, our dear readers.  The thing is the theme is starting to cause things to break since the new “features” aren’t really compatible with the old layout.  So as a heads up, I’m going to have to select a new theme at some point.  I’ve been dragging my feet on this for as long as possible and will continue to do so, however at some point, I simply won’t have much of a choice.  I’ll try to remain as true to our current layout as possible, and to find one that won’t also break well, everything.  I have no timetable for this, as it’s really going to come down to whenever I have the time and the desire to mess around with it.  But one day we will have a new look.  For those that hate that thought, I’m sorry, but my hands are being pretty well forced here.  We aren’t going anywhere, so no fear there.  Hopefully our writers will help adjust to the new editors.  WordPress has a bunch of guides online, and if anyone has any issues, they can feel free to contact me directly at ( fan.interference at yahoo dot com)

Hopefully we can all get through this together and in the end it will all work out for the best.

For our writers, here’s some info that hopefully will help you muddle through for now.  (This is from the email WordPress sent me)

If you’d rather stick with the Classic editor experience — the one you used before we introduced the WordPress.com editor a few years ago — no worries. You have two options:

1. You can use the Classic block. Within the new WordPress block editor you’ll find the Classic block, which works just like the editor you used before we introduced the WordPress.com editor several years ago.
   
2. You can opt to use the Classic editor. Not ready to try the new WordPress editor? No worries — you have the option to use the Classic editor in WP Admin.

Learn more about this change or get started with the block editor.