From Classic Editor To Gutenberg

Hello world. This is a post I am writing using the Classic editor. I haven’t used this editor for a long while, not since I switched to Gutenberg. I am writing it and I cannot see any way to change to Gutenberg while I am in this post. So I am going to save it and then look at the options. First though, a screen grab so that I can illustrate what is happening.

How To Change A Post From the Classic Editor to Gutenberg

Here are my notes and a series of screen grabs showing what I did to convert from Classic editor to Gutenberg.

First I had to save the draft and then go out of the post. When I hovered over the post in the list, I could see the options for Editor and Classic Editor.

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I clicked on ‘Editor’ and that opened the post, it was still in Classic, which I could see from the word ‘Classic’ against a grey background in the little menu bar.

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Know I know where I am, because I have done this many times when I have gone back to old, previously-published posts for whatever reason and changed them to Gutenberg.

Click in the menu bar that has the word ‘Classic’ in it, or click on the paragraph of your text – either place will do it – and you will see that three vertical dots appear along with all the other stuff.

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Click on the three dots and that brings up a vertical menu, and the one I want is the second one down the list – ‘Convert to Blocks’. Click that and everything is converted to blocks and the new Gutenberg editor.

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Done!

OK, now that you are in Gutenberg, how do you use it?

Using Gutenberg

There are a few key things that will make your life easier:

• The reason it is called a block editor is that each paragraph, image, heading, quote, or whatever is in its own block.

• The default block is a paragraph of text.

• You can change a block from one type to another by hovering on it and using the tools in the mini menu bar that opens up over the block.

• All the blocks are listed top left of the page, and you can see them by hovering over the list under the plus sign.

• The plus sign at the left of a new block does the same job and you can add different types of blocks by hovering on that plus sign.

• Finally, look over at the side bar on the right. You use it to change text size, set Drop Caps, and change the colour of the text and the background colour to the text.

Examples

Here are a few variations of this same piece of text using the block tools and the settings in the side bar. (The neat thing is that I didn’t even have to retype the text, I just clicked to duplicate it).

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Here are a few variations of this same piece of text using the block tools and the settings in the side bar.

Here are a few variations of this same piece of text using the block tools and the settings in the side bar.

Here are a few variations of this same piece of text using the block tools and the settings in the side bar.

Here are a few variations of this same piece of text using the block tools and the settings in the side bar.

Here are a few variations of this same piece of text using the block tools and the settings in the side bar.

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And if for whatever reason you want to stay in the same block, and don’t want to start a new block when you start a new line or a new paragraph, just hold down the shift key when you change lines.

That will keep you in the same block. (It’s useful when you want to make a list.)