For some time now I have been trying to come to grips with this damned Gutenberg editor.

Why bother, you ask?  Why not just carry on as you are?

Well, those people of infinite wisdom have decreed that I have no choice.  The next release of WordPress is going to force me into using it.  Now I can install software that will supposedly let me use the old editor, but why should I have to?

A reasonable guide to any WordPress addition is its rating.  At the time of writing, Gutenberg has received 217 five star ratings and 487 one stars.  They don’t have a zero star which is probably just as well.  There seems to be issues with Cloudflare, issues with other plugins and issues with themes, and the developers’ response seems to be that these other people should modify their code to suit Gutenberg.  There are over 56.000 plugins out there and God knows how many themes.  How many of those are going to break the system at the next release of WordPress?

I have been having endless problems with the damned thing.  Sometime Preview doesn’t work [which can be sorted by setting Permalinks to Plain – very bad idea on a live site], sometimes it works for no reason, sometimes it just fails to load altogether, sometimes I click on Preview and it throws up a blank tab [but right clicking the Preview button and selecting the “Open link in a new tab” works!].

At present it isn’t working at all.  If I try to edit an existing post, or open a new post I just get the very helpful message saying “The editor has encountered an unexpected error.” which is really fucking setting my world alight.  If anyone from the editing bunch sees this maybe they can explain what this means:

value@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/editor/index.js:12:288831
jc@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/vendor/react-dom.min.82e21c65.js:134:121
gc@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/vendor/react-dom.min.82e21c65.js:127:223
vb@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/vendor/react-dom.min.82e21c65.js:126:230
ub@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/vendor/react-dom.min.82e21c65.js:126:65
zd@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/vendor/react-dom.min.82e21c65.js:124:449
ra@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/vendor/react-dom.min.82e21c65.js:123:319
enqueueSetState@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/vendor/react-dom.min.82e21c65.js:189:231
q.prototype.setState@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/vendor/react.min.ab6b06d4.js:18:428
value/this.unsubscribe<@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/data/index.js:1:61445
r/</<@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/data/index.js:1:57246
r/<@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/data/index.js:1:57217
d@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/data/index.js:1:52537
n/<@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/data/index.js:1:58312
w@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/data/index.js:1:43625
x/i._invoke</<@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/data/index.js:1:43415
S/</t[n]@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/data/index.js:1:43801
o@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/data/index.js:1:46328
c@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/data/index.js:1:46530
u@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/data/index.js:1:36041
M/<@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/data/index.js:1:36186
s@https://headrambles.com/wp-content/plugins/gutenberg/build/data/index.js:1:34455


See what I mean about being helpful?

The really weird thing is that I set up a test site, which I gradually built from scratch.  The first thing I did was to activate Gutenberg, and then added bits from here, one by one.  Gradually I built up an almost precise replica and the fucking thing works.  There are a couple of discrepancies as there are a couple of plugins that could cause problems if duplicated on two installations but I don’t see how they can affect an editor.  Does this mean I have to delete Rambles and rebuild it piece by piece?

Why the fuck can’t they just leave it as a plugin and let us have the choice?