A Quick Note About Converting Posts To Block Editor From Classic Editor

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5 years ago

Something pretty minor but still worth taking note of regarding 'converting posts to Block Editor from Classic Editor'.

If you have images in a post (or page) that was created with Classic Editor that you have a given 'caption' (descriptive title) to, when you want to convert from Classic Editor to Block Editor there are two ways to do it. One method is to do a simple copy-and-paste and create a new post in Block Editor and the second is to use the 'Switch to Block Editor' option. Because I wanted to play safe and preserve my Classic Editor version of my posts which were already on my website, I did my first couple of 'conversions' using the copy-and-paste method, and discovered that the captions had become text tacked onto the right-hand end of a line of text on the page, something I didn't notice until after I had published the updated post.

The 'before and after' screen captures show what happened, and have, of course, had to be corrected.

However, if you use the 'Switch to Block Editor' option (shown in the 3rd screen capture), you won't have this problem.

This little discovery proved two things: First that I am not smarter than the software, and second that the WordPress developers think of everything, and check everything thoroughly.

The lesson learned here for me is "Learn the tools: Use the tools".

This is another control that you will find useful:

Click on the 'Classic' button and it will switch to the 'Convert to blocks' button. Click and you're on your way...

And a fnal addition to this post, "What to do when you see HTML":

Instead of your text you see HTML; don't panic. Click on the 'Preview' button that's right alongside the HTML (that's in reversed white on black) and, voila, your text reappears. The only downside is that you do have to do this for each block individually, unless anyone else knows how to do multiple blocks in a single action... (In my post, the one these two screen shots on, most of the document was in preview mode, just a few appeared in HTML.