I'm completely new to WordPress but have inherited a site that has been built by someone else for the small charity I run. I thought your tutorials would be a good place to learn how I can update the website, and was enjoying them until we got the Block Editor. Then I started to get confused becuiase yours doesn't look like mine!
Looking into it, this may be because I've got the WPBakery plug-in installed (at least I think I do, although there's a message at the top of the screen saying I should activite it).
Near the top, there are two buttons: one has a WPBakery logo on it and says "Classic Mode"; the other has no logo and says "Gutenberg Editor" when I click on it, it still doesn't look like the editor your tutorials show.
I'd include some screenshots to help explain but I can't work out how to do it! Sorry.
Please would you be able to tell me what I've got and how best to proceed? I don't really need to develop the site any further (at least for now), but I do need to do some editing both of the text and the layout.
Thanks very much for any advice!
1 Answers
Shawn Hesketh answered 1 year ago
Hi Jeremy,
Thanks for reaching out. I'm sorry you're having to deal with this confusing situation.
I suspect you're right... if your site was built with the WPBakery plugin, then what you're seeing is actually WPBakery's proprietary editor.
You might check out the video tutorials for WPBakery to see if they match up with what you're seeing: https://wpbakery.com/video-tutorials/
Third-party page builders like WPBakery add another layer of complexity on top of what is an already confusing experience within WordPress itself, now that there are THREE different editors available within WordPress:
- The Classic Editor, which was the default editor in WordPress 4.9 and older. Today, it is still available as a plugin, for those who prefer a more familiar editor.
- The Block Editor, a.k.a., “Gutenberg”. Introduced in WordPress 5.0, the new editor uses content ‘blocks’ you can drag-and-drop into a page or post to create media-rich layouts.
- Full Site Editing was just introduced in WordPress 5.9, and this all-new editing experience not only includes the ability to create page content using blocks, but also edito the header, footer, sidebars, and layouts of the pages that make up your site, essentially eliminating the need for a third-party page builder. Not quite ready for prime time, there are a number of issues with full site editing (FSE), not the least of which is that you need a brand new theme that supports FSE. And when you activate an FSE theme, the editor completely changes from the previous generation Block Editor, which can lead to some confusion.
Thanks Shawn, that’s really helpful.
