WordPress 5 and the New Editor on Your Site

What changed in December

WordPress 5.0 was released on December 6, and the biggest change in it is the screen you write on.

The old editor was a single box, much like a word processor. The new one, known during its development as Gutenberg, treats every paragraph, heading, image and list as a separate block.

A security release and a maintenance release followed before Christmas, which is normal after a major version.

Many small business sites have none of it yet.

WordPress installs minor updates by itself, but a major version waits for somebody to press the button. Plenty of sites are still on 4.9, with a notice at the top of the dashboard.

What changes for whoever edits the site

If nobody at your business ever logs in, the editor matters less than the update itself. If somebody does, their screen is about to look quite different.

Existing pages are not converted. Open one in the new editor and the old content sits inside a single block called Classic, which behaves much like the editor it replaced.

New pages are written block by block. The toolbar appears on whichever block you are in, images arrive as blocks of their own, and publishing asks you to confirm.

None of this is difficult. It is different, and somebody updating the hours between customers will not enjoy meeting it unannounced.

Where it clashes

• Older themes that never styled blocks, so the editor and the live page disagree.
• Page builders that have not been updated since the release.
• Builders bundled with a theme, which update only when the theme does.
• Custom fields from older plugins, sitting awkwardly beneath the new editor.
• Toolbar buttons added by plugins, now found only inside a Classic block.

The third catches people. A theme bought from a marketplace years ago often came with its own copy of a page builder, updated only when the theme's author issues a new version, if the author still does.

Page builders and blocks

Many small business sites built in the last few years use a page builder, a plugin that replaces the editor with its own drag-and-drop screen.

On those sites, the block editor matters less for the pages already built, because the builder handles them. What matters is whether your copy of the builder knows WordPress 5 exists.

The major builders released updates for 5.0. An out-of-date copy can leave you with an editing screen that will not load or will not save.

Keep builder pages in the builder for now. Rebuilding them in blocks is a job for a redesign, not a side effect of an update.

The Classic Editor plugin

The WordPress team publishes an official plugin called Classic Editor, which restores the old screen. It is supported until at least the end of 2021.

A setting decides whether everybody gets the old editor or each person can choose, which suits an office where one person is curious and another just wants Monday's job done.

Treat it as a holding pattern rather than a destination. For most businesses that edit their own sites, installing it before the update is the calm way through this winter.

Why the update belongs on a copy

The update itself is one click, which is the difficulty. On the live site, any clash appears in front of customers, and the first person to find it may be one of them.

A copy of the site at a private address, often called staging, lets you press the same button where breaking things costs nothing.

On the copy, run the update, then open the editing screens your staff actually use. That is where clashes show, far more often than on the public pages.

If nothing breaks there, the live update becomes routine.

A worked example

A physiotherapy clinic in a suburban plaza has its front desk keep the site current: the hours, holiday closures, a short news item each month.

In mid-December, somebody saw the update notice and pressed it on a Tuesday afternoon. The public pages looked fine.

The next morning, the receptionist opened the hours page and the editing screen would not load. The theme had been bought in 2015 with a page builder bundled inside, and that copy had not been updated since 2017.

Nobody could change anything, with the holiday hours due to go up that week.

Restoring the backup from the night before the update put the old version back within the hour.

On a copy, the theme and its builder were then updated from the author's site, WordPress was updated, and Classic Editor was installed for the front desk. Only once the copy worked was the live site touched again.

Learning it before you have to

The block editor is where WordPress is heading, and the Classic Editor plugin has an end date. Somebody at the business will need to learn it.

A draft page is the place. Add a heading, an image and a list, move them around, and preview the result on a phone.

Typing a forward slash in an empty block brings up a list of block types to choose from.

And if a new site is planned this year, ask whoever builds it how your staff will edit pages, and what happens to the content if a page builder is ever removed.

The counter-case

Not every site needs the cautious route.

A simple site on a current, well-maintained theme with no page builder will often take the update without trouble, and its editors may be comfortable with blocks within a week.

A site nobody at the business edits does not need the Classic Editor at all. For that business, the update is a maintenance job for whoever looks after the site.

And holding off indefinitely is not caution. Plugins and themes will increasingly be written for WordPress 5, and a site parked on 4.9 will find its updates assuming a version it does not have.

Test on a copy, keep the old screen where people need it, and update.

Before you press update

1. Take a full backup you know how to restore.
2. Make a copy of the site to test on.
3. Check your theme and builder for recent updates.
4. Run the update on the copy first.
5. Open and save the pages your staff edit most.
6. Install Classic Editor if anyone needs the old screen.
7. Update the live site outside business hours.

Step five is the one most tests skip. Public pages usually look fine after the update; the clashes appear in the editing screens, which nobody opens until the morning something needs changing.

The smaller upkeep a site needs at the turn of the year is covered in your footer still says 2018.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.