Upgrades to software are hard. Super tough. I know this from both the tech support and the user experience side. When we rely on the software for our livelihoods, it can be even tougher. So when the block editing style released with WordPress 5, I immediately installed “Classic Editor” and keep it installed on my client sites “just in case”. It’s so much better to change on our own terms and not have changed forced on us.
Then Divi updated its editor following a “block editor” style. Ugh. Okay, so I set the option to keep the Divi classic editor. No problem, right? WRONG.
Let me preface this by saying I have satellite internet. For most things, other than streaming and video playing, and sometimes downloads, it functions fine. I’m able to update websites, do my work, write, even play around on social media. But anything that has a large load time up front really doesn’t work well. So I was very happy using Divi’s classic editor.
Then they updated. And updated again. And my website started running really really really OMG ARE YOU KIDDING ME slow when I updated it. Like typing a word if I was lucky before Firefox gave me a “This site is slowing down your browser” message.
Fine. Whatever. I did a bit of searching and was told that the way they’d updated Divi meant that it no longer played nicely with its previous, much more resource intensive, classic editor. Can you tell I’m still not enthused about this? So I updated to the “latest” divi editor experience.
And you know what? It makes Gutenberg’s blocks seem so much nicer by comparison. I’ve been using Gutenberg’s blocks (WordPress 5) on my personal author site and writing posts seems like a breeze. It reminds me of the Medium posts I do. So I’m becoming more familiar with the new way of composing posts and the new software. I’m even using the new Divi builder on pages.
I’m not a fan. There are things that cause problems and it really doesn’t play nice with my satellite internet at times. (I go do something else and then try it later, usually.) But I have conquered this change and adapted. And really, as computer and technology users, that’s all we can ask for because change isn’t going to stop. And in some cases, it can even be for the better.