Adventures

Giving the Gutenberg Gatekeeper Editor another try

Shelley

Here I go…off on another adventure of trying to write a blog post in Gutenberg Editor.

Yesterday, and this morning, I re-read Hugh’s post about it, and…I must admit to all of you my dearest fans of the Classic Editor, I’m warming up to the idea of using Gutenberg – thanks to Hugh.

And, of course, thanks to my willingness to keep trying. Last time I tried it, I was frustrated with the block thing. It’s easier to use than I thought it was.

You can just type away and every time you hit return, a new block automatically pops up and you can change it on the fly. It is just like Hugh said it would do! He’s one smart blogger, that’s for sure!

Since I have this insatiable desire to learn new things about blogging as I go. The more I play with post formats, just like I play with my camera for my photography, the less I hold on to my perfectionist nature.

Dare to open the gate to new ideas!

I love it when I feel inspired to try something new in the blogging world.
From what I can tell so far, Gutenberg is going to give me some great options to try.

Today, I wanted to make sure that I could still do my favorite way of sharing photos.

Imagine a drum roll…

The Slideshow.

Here I go. I’m scared…

I don’t think it’s going to work. We’ll see…

  • This is me, early last summer, admiring my flowers.
  • I captured the sun coming through the gate
  • I love walking in the morning dew
  • Footprints in the grass…yeah, that’s what GREEN grass looks like!

As I suspected, and you can see from above, I couldn’t figure it out. Even by using the Gallery option for my post style. When I use the WordPress.com editor, I can easily do the slideshow. Now, I’m tad bit bummed.

I’m going to submit this as a question to Hugh. I wanna know…what am I doing wrong, how come there isn’t an option to do a slideshow with the photos? Is it because I chose the Gallery option for the format of the post? Or is it something else? Help Hugh…I can’t figure it out.

Imagination is the gatekeeper of the human soul.

Alister E McGrath

I must say, I do like how easy it is to add captions on the photos. I like how they look too. So that worked. I enjoyed how I could easily reorder the photos in the edit mode.

And YES the drag and drop option is a huge time saver!

The drag and drop functionality is a WIN!
Now I'm going to try the colored background on my text like Hugh said could be done.  Just because, we need some more color - all I've been seeing lately is white (literally...snowy, white, crap...sorry, I'm tired of winter!)  I accidentally clicked the preformatted button and couldn't reverse it.  Nice...oh, well.

As you can see above, I couldn’t figure the color behind the text option on my first attempt. And I clicked a button I couldn’t figure out how to reverse, didn’t notice the undo button at the time before I had moved on to something else. Don’t do that, I don’t recommend it at all!

Obviously, I eventually found the text background and coloring options!

Whew, I don’t know about you, but that’s enough Gutenberg for me in one day. It sure does take a long time to write a post while I’m learning how to format it at the same time.

Always a dreamer…never give up trying new things…

Post Inspiration – Sunday Stills – Gates and the motivation to try to learn something new, with encouragement by my dear blogging friend, Linda. And I was super excited that Donna who asked the original questions on Hugh’s post stopped by to say “Hi” to me here on my blog. Do check out her blog as well!

PS – Now it’s my turn to ask you a question. What do you think about the formatting of the photos? Do you like my posts when I do the slideshows or are you more of a fan of the style above? How about you are you writing in Gutenberg yet? What is your favorite part?

Published by Shelley

Letting my quirk out one post at a time.

35 thoughts on “Giving the Gutenberg Gatekeeper Editor another try”

  2. The little yin-Yan style series at the upper left of your gallery block will let you choose the gallery style. I’d share a photo but reading on my phone.

  3. During a recent chat with those so called happiness engineers, I mentioned to them that the new editor is one I’ll never use. That’s being polite. WP needs to fix the Legacy editor. It’s still not right.

  4. I like how you put caption right on the photos, but I miss the slideshow. Hope you can figure it out.
    Now for some reason I keep getting a bar thing on the left of all your posts…what used to be at the end..showing the emblems for facebook, pinterest, twitter, etc. Anyway it covers up part of your posts making it hard to even read. I don’t know why it’s happening, but I’ve not seen it on anyone elses. Not sure if it’s because of the new editor you’re using, or something to do with me?
    Good for you for trying out new things!
    Wishing you a wonderful Sunday! 🙂

    1. Thank you for sharing your thoughts! I’m going to keep with the traditional editor until they figure out how to do slideshow. Or I’m forced to go with the Gutenberg editor. I’ll fix that button thing…I think I know why that is happening. Do share if you notice it has been fixed! I so appreciate hearing if there are issues so I can fix them!

    2. Oh, so sorry…I think it was my problem…I tried something here…I had your site zoomed in to make the type larger so I could read it better…so I adjusted that, and it worked fine…the bar isn’t covering up anything now. You can delete the first message if you want to. It was my problem!

          1. Aw, thank you, I appreciate you sharing your feedback and that you like my posts! I’m glad the button thing is better now. So many settings to play with, I can’t always know how they will affect someone else’s computer!

  5. Well done for giving Gutenberg a try, Shelley. And thank you for the mention and for the link back to my post.

    With regards your question about the format of photos, I’m not a fan of anything that moves in a blog post. For me, it can distract me while reading a post and spoil my reading experience. After some feedback from some of my readers, I disabled the WordPress ads from my blog posts because some of my readers were finding the moving images distractive. The ads were only bringing me in the price of a cup of coffee every month anyway, and I much rather my readers have an enjoyable reading experience.

    As for using Gutenberg – well you know how I feel about the new editor. I hated it at first, but going back to the classic editor would now be like me moving back to a black and white TV. I’m still learning a lot about Gutenberg and am now really enjoying using it.

    1. Thank you, Hugh. I’m with your fans on the ads – I don’t dig those. I do adore my slideshows, though. I do get how they could be distracting though. It’s going to take a while for me to love Gutenberg. But, I shall keep giving it a try periodically! Thank you for your helpful tips, you’re so kind to share your words of wisdom with all of us!!

  6. It sounds interesting….I may give it a try if only for the font option, as the font in my theme is so thin and narrow I have to bold it to be able to read it. But my question is, does it change the format of previous posts, or will they still be in the classic editor style? Or is it only affecting the post you are drafting? (I know I can change the font in the classic editor, but then it changes all the previous posts, most of which I have bolded.)

  7. Brave soul that you are, I am impressed! I am not familiar with Gutenberg. I am assuming it is a plug in. Or would I have to change my theme? and upgrade the site? I like captions on the photos. They really look nice.

    1. Thank you! It’s not a plug-in that I’m aware of. I don’t believe you have to change your theme either? It just showed up in my editor one day. I believe you can opt out of it. But I can post via my .com account and my .org account. The .org account is where I can use Gutenburg editor. Glad you liked the photos – they do look nice with the captions.

  8. Good for you for trying new things! Once the A to Z has settled down I’m thinking I may experiment with some things too. Can’t try too much at one time and I’m still integrating things into the new studio so the mind is elsewhere!

    1. Thanks, Janet. Yes, you’ve got plenty on your plate, I wouldn’t jump into anything about blogging that you don’t have to or don’t want to consume too much time. LOL!

  9. You do know that you’re only encouraging WP by trying their new stuff. It’s a slippery slope you’re sliding down here. I’m holding firm in my resolve to ignore all this Guttenberg nonsense. Laggards unite!

  10. Nice way to tie in the gate theme for Sunday Stills, Shelley, you clever lady! I haven’t tried the slide show yet, but I blog on WordPress dot come and it seems like you are self hosted? Self hosted sites have various plug-ins for Gutenberg and all its minions. Perhaps you need a plug in for the photo side show (and that’s why I quit self hosting. You can read an older post of my issues https://secondwindleisure.com/2016/11/03/blogging-break-or-broken-blog-the-transmogrification/ I decided to try it out and get it over with and I am mostly pleased with it, but I am keeping it simple until I have more time this summer when I am on my summer teaching break! I guess practice makes perfect!

    1. Thank you, Terri! Glad you enjoyed it. I’m going to research the issues I had with the feature photo. I’m sad it didn’t show up where it was supposed to, I have it set for feature photo. I think I’ll rant about the experience, and reuse the photo! Thank you for sharing your link, I’ll read your insights. Yes, I am self-hosted (if you can call it that, through BlueHost). Thank you for your feedback, I adore hearing comments and concerns, so I can make my reader’s experience better!!

    2. I’ll have to research the plugins – or widgets or whatever they are that are supposed to make blogging experience better. LOL! Yes, I am self-hosted through Bluehost and that apparently isn’t working well right now either. Thank you for sharing your link, I look forward to reading the post!!

  11. Hey Shelley, as I went to share your post as I do for Sunday Stills bloggers, I clicked on the Facebook icon on the floating share bar on your page. It linked to a whole other post I didn’t recognize. I would recommend you disable that floating bar because it seems to cause problems (I read a comment) and you already have share buttons.

    The other thing is your featured image (when sharing to Facebook) showed a hilarious pic of a turkey or duck sitting on a gate, but I don’t see it in your post. With everything you wrote I felt that image had funny irony!
    Just feedback…if something wasn’t working fine on my blog, I would want to know. Have a great rest of your day!

    1. Thank you for the heads up on the sharing errors. I use the WP Socializer widget and apparently it has issues! I tried disabling it and that made things worse. Yes, the feature image doesn’t work in Gutenberg yet – or maybe with my theme and Gutenberg? It’s so darn frustrating. I reused the photo for today’s post, since I’m still on the fence. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and advice.

  12. I am finally wading through Reader and just now see your post … your post with multiple enhancements makes mine look like child’s play. Thank you for the shoutout Shelley (great alliteration there) and I see Hugh already acknowledged your shout out to him. I did not try the color background in the text that Hugh suggested – that is my next attempt and I will kick it up a notch, or two. I think I’ll follow Donna – I read a couple of her posts – this is why I linger at WP so long. I meander here, there and everywhere. I do like your slideshows and as I scrolled down to get to post my comment I see Hugh was not in favor of moving pictures. After the next version of WordPress rolls out the end of April perhaps it will include the ability to create slideshows. I don’t use them as much as you, but I do sometimes, so I hope they keep this feature. Right now, as I’m typing, a bar appears featuring connecting you in various social media platforms and it is inhibiting me seeing what I am typing. If I click the horizontal line to the right of it, I can click the bar away but the share button comes up. The pictures matched your story to a “T”.

  13. I should have commented here rather than directly on your site as I don’t see my comment and it was lengthy – if it didn’t go to SPAM (two of yours went to SPAM that you posted on my site today), please let me know and I’ll comment again. I should save my comment in a Word document so I have it handy to try again.

      1. No problem Shelley – I came here to see if I should do another one. It seems if I comment on the first part of the post, it is fine – when I click to finish reading and comment there, it seems to be a problem, but at least it went to spam. After I submit the comment, I remember “oh ya, do it in the beginning part or save it in Word in case it goes to cyberspace” – I am sure WP has tweaked it filtering process because I was getting about 20 junk spams per day and now it is down to 1 or two. They all originated from a site called “proxies____”. We have the same thing at work. The computer guy is intimidated by my boss. He set the spam filter high to catch spam – we were getting 50-75 or more a day but legit messages got caught there and Robb missed messages, so he wanted it fixed. Other than get the Symantec proper licensed spam filter, Ron lowered the spam filter – all day long I clear spam – SMH.

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