The release of WordPress 5.0 was meant to herald the beginning of new things for WordPress. Not that a new beginning was ever needed for the world’s most popular CMS. In any case, the biggest feature for WordPress 5.0 was the introduction of the block editor. That feature, as it turned out, proved to be a major flop. That should not really have been surprising, considering the fact that Gutenberg had been around as a plugin for quite some times. And in that time, it had managed to gather a measly 2 point something rating.
Disabling the WordPress block editor
If you have been trying to find ways to disable the new WordPress block editor, then you are not alone. Just go to Google and you will discover that one of the most popular searches there with regard to the issue is “WordPress Gutenberg sucks.”
The fortunate bit is that it is quite easy for you to disable the WordPress block editor and to revert back to the Classic WordPress editor.
Why you may wish to disable the WordPress block editor
The new block editor is not really conducive for productivity. It’s more of a gimmick that anything else. Reminds one of that time when Windows apparently became convinced that they should adopt a mobile first approach.
As a result, they foisted Windows 8 on people, complete without the start button. As it turned out, people were not really ready to make the switch to poking on their computer screens using their fingers. As a result, Windows was forced to go back to the computing experience that we have gotten used to.
Anyway, WordPress should all be about productivity, which is something that the new block editor does not promote. Indeed, after trying the new WordPress block editor, I gave up after only a few hours of poking around trying to write a single post. The whole thing proved to be rather slow. Even when I tried to paste an article that I had written on Word, I encountered a number of exasperating challenges.
Disable WordPress Block Editor
Anyway, enough of that. To disable the WordPress block editor which, as already noted, sucks big time, all that you need to do is the following;
- Download and install the WordPress Classic Editor plugin
- Activate the WordPress classic editor
That’s it! Once you have activated the classic editor, the new WordPress block editor will be disabled on your computer. If you later change your mind and now wish to re-enable the block editor, all that you need to do is deactivate the classic editor and you should be good to go.
