The Latest Marketing Buzzword

If the primary goal of the Gutenberg editor aka block editor was to help users create posts and pages with more flexibility, then the WordPress Happiness Engineers failed miserably, and one has to wonder what in the hell was WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg thinking when he went all in on this getting completely behind Gutenberg.  He must have been thinking only about businesses that use the WordPress platform, and not considering the normal everyday writers at all, so marketing wins out over the everyday users.  The goal of the block editor is supposed to make adding rich content to WordPress simple and enjoyable, but for so many users, this turned out to be neither simple or enjoyable.  Rich content consists of different media formats (sound, video and images) used at the same time and place to get more dynamic elements that you can use to engage with your readers, but I don’t think that the normal writer actually needs any of this flashy content, at least I don’t need it, nor do I plan on using it.  This is a marketing ploy to get people to engage with salesmen and since I am not running a business on WordPress, this new stuff is basically useless to me.  This is starting to sound like Paula’s Monday Peeve, so I will start answering Dr. Tanya’s question now, which is “Can you share some tips and tricks for using the new Gutenberg editor on WordPress?”

I am still struggling with this new block editor, but I have composed several posts with it already.  The best trick that I use is to compose all of my posts in Microsoft Word and then I copy that content and paste it into my post.  When I write a new post, I place the title in the top field and then I paste my content below and I don’t have to mess around with the add block black plus button, unless I want to insert a picture.  It should automatically understand that you are using text and it will convert Youtube addresses into videos, so it is not all that much different from the Classic editor that everyone used and loved so much.

One thing that I don’t like about the new block editor is that there are too many blocks and the one that I use most often is the Image block and it takes a bit of work to get to it.  You have to click on the Add block black plus button which brings up the following Add Block Selection.  Since I don’t want the Paragraph, YouTube, Embed, SoundCloud, Twitter, or Spotify blocks, and I don’t want to Browse all, I have to go to the inserter menu on the top where it says “Search for a block” and type in Image and then hit to magnifying glass or search button.

There is a shortcut called the Slash command which you can use to save a few steps.  Here you bypass the Add block black plus button altogether and just type /i and that will bring up this menu where the image block is at the top.  I hope that this trick can help somebody.

Written for Blogging Insights by Dr. Tanya where this week the question was contributed by Jennifer from Paperkutzs.