You might have noticed that I reneged on my vow to switch to ClassicPress as soon as I got my own domain. Actually, that's not entirely true. I did actually install ClassicPress first, but it's not all it's cracked up to be. For one, it doesn't support Jetpack and many other common plugins. So it had to go. It was a nice experiment, but it just wasn't worth the sacrifice for me.

The good news is that the Classic Editor Plugin functions much better on a .org installation than it does on the .com platform. Here, the block editor is disabled completely! No having to look for the classic editor link, no having to manually select the old dashboard and search for your post, remembering to click the classic editor button just to correct a typo. It's classic editing all the way, baby!

Also, now I can install all the plugins I want (Raw HTML ftw!) and I can organise my images in folders and I can now post about boycotting scamazon without angering the g00gle censors!

I'm getting there. I've carried over almost everything worth carrying over. It's been a long journey, but I think it was worth it. Why didn't I just import my WP backup, I hear you ask? Because as I said, my old blog was a hot mess. I had a lot of pointless posts left over from my Sims fansite days. My KI Rabid Fangirl days can be really annoying even to me. Many entries needed cleaning up and updating. I got lazy with my <p> tags from about 2013 onwards. The amount of tags I used was crazy stupid. Plus with all my images being hosted either on WP itself, or even worse, Photobucket, I wanted to get all my images in the one place and in a portable format, because I don't want to be on Blogger forever. Like I said, Blogger is an inferior platform compared to WP at its best.

One thing I will say in WP.com's defence is that they never censored me. I'm pretty sure that back in my Torrent Queen days, T$R made at least one attempt to get my blog closed. Blogger has banned my post on why I Continue reading →

[This post and all prior to this are from my old WordPress blog]

I've been blogging with WP since Jun 2007. That's 14 years (not including the many years I blogged with the .org version). I've always liked how user-friendly the software is, and even though the .com version lacks the flexibility of the .org experience, it was still a solid, easy-to-use piece of software. And despite being annoyed by all the "upgrades", I've stuck with it.

And now it seems WordPress doesn't really want me here anymore.

The changes to the editor were the first push. But so far, I can still get the old editor to work, so I keep on blogging. But it's getting worse.

I tried to make one tweak to bring back the link to the Storytelling page in the sidebar, and my entire sidebar was gone. Despite assurances that my old widgets are safe, none of them were.

Thanks to Margy for the tip.

As long as they work, I shall keep using them. Use these direct links to reach the old post and page dashboards on wordpress.com, and the classic editor for editing. If you're on wordpress.org, install the Classic Editor plugin, it removes the block option completely from the dashboard.

Seriously, it sucks so so much. It's so bad. Why do companies keep doing this? I've given up on Firefox mobile now too, because they downgraded it so much. What even is this new crap, WordPress? Unfortunately, changing blog hosts isn't as easy as switching browsers. Right now I'm using a workaround (you know, like I had to do when they brought in that dumb beep boop crap). Here it is if you want to use it too.

Missing in Action: The WordPress.com Classic Editor

The problem is again, if you go to edit a post, it defaults back to the new block crap. There doesn't seem to be a way to keep Classic as default. I mean, even beep boop was better than this! It makes no sense, it just makes it more difficult and time consuming to post. And instead of hitting one button to access your image gallery, you have to spend ages digging around and then looking on the help pages to even work out how to add an image.

It's.

So.

Crap.

Stop dumbing down stuff. Stop catering to the lowest common denominator, WordPress. Fine, have a dumbed down editor for those who need it. Have an overly complicated editor with pointless gimmicks for those who like shinies, but let those of us who know what we're doing keep the Classic editor. Goddammit, WordPress.