I’m sure this sub doesn’t need any more Gutenberg rants, but I still don’t understand how to use it at all. Any time I edit the html of any individual block it breaks and shuts me out of it until I’ve ‘restored’ or ‘recovered’ it (ie. it demands to be reverted back to the original layout, which in 99% of cases looks like ass). Nothing is broken — if I ignore the message the site works fine. But if I want to go back and edit anything in that block I have to start all over.
I literally cannot understand how this is a system anyone at any point thought would be intuitive or flexible. Every time I hover over a block it seems like it’s a roll of the dice what menu will come up and what options will be on it. Sometimes I can make a block reuseable or turn it into a template part, sometimes not. Sometimes I can see the HTML, sometimes I can’t. Sometimes when I add a new block it adds it at the bottom of the page, at other times in the middle, at other times in the effing centre of another block.
I’ve made entire websites using it and I’ve had to fight it every step of the way. Then I forget how awful it is until I decide to make another site.
Anyway, if anyone can point me to a simple guide as to how I can edit the blocks to my heart’s content without them immediately ‘breaking’, I’d be grateful.
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I am not sure If I understand you correctly, but if you are editing the html of Gutenberg block, than that is a big no no.
This is because Gutenberg blocks are designed to be editable using the block editor’s visual interface, and editing the HTML directly MOST OFTEN will give you problems and have issues with the block’s functionality and compatibility with other plugins and themes.
>Any time I edit the html of any individual block
Yeah, don’t do that.
A block is in a small interface to let you create HTML code in a simpler way. A graphical way.
But the block is a simple method of doing this, and it only understands its own HTML. It cannot convert your arbitrary HTML changes back into the block.
Now, if you want to use a block to start with, then any block can be converted to a “custom HTML” block. And then you can edit all you want and not affect anything else. But this is a one way conversion. You can’t go backwards.
If you are switching into HTML mode for the entire post, then when you convert backwards, and try to view the post in the visual block mode again, it can’t understand the changes you made. But if you use the custom HTML block instead, then you are only changing that specific block into HTML, and can then edit it as you like.
Basically, if you want to use HTML directly, then that’s fine, but don’t try to switch it back to blocks afterwards. It won’t work. That’s where the custom HTML block comes in handy. When you know the HTML you want, but still want the rest of the post to remain blocks.