So it’s been a long time since I used WordPress. The last time I used it seriously was back in 2015 when I was first helping to set up a website for a business. Back then, responsive design was very much a new thing as mobile devices became more and more sophisticated following the successful release of the original Apple iPhone back in 2007.

A lot has changed since then. It seems you need less and less understanding of HTML and CSS in order to build a good-looking, functional website. Nothing makes this change more obvious than the introduction of the Gutenberg Block Editor.

Remember the old days where you would create a website using a GUI that looked very similar to Microsoft Word?

A blast from the past? Nah, I remember scratching out bare HTML in Notepad back in the day.

Well it seems that those days are long gone. Now as I’ve not messed around with WordPress for a time, you can imagine my confusion when I fired up a Lightsail instance and installed WordPress only to find out that everything was a weird drag and drop editor that never seemed to select what I wanted to select.

I’ll be honest, I hated the block editor at first. I hated it to the point where I actually disabled the thing just so I could write. But then I realised that Gutenberg isn’t actually too bad.

The hardest thing to do is to stop treating the editor as I would one of the old editors. I was clicking like a madman, trying desperately to get my cursor to where I wanted it. After about half an hour or so, it got slightly easier.

Sure it’s clunky, and it isn’t particularly intuitive, but perhaps this is because I grew up writing my websites manually or using other classic programs such as Microsoft Frontpage or Dreamweaver MX to design and build websites.

These boxes give me nostalgic vibes.

I mean I still think that Block Editing is a bit strange, but either way, I’m giving it a chance.

Who knows, It might grow on me.