If you aren’t getting on with the new Gutenberg editor in WordPress, or you’re unable to properly edit your old posts / pages – you can re-enable the Classic Editor within WordPress.

Our guide below will show you how to quickly and easily set this up.

Note: By default WordPress uses the new Gutenberg editor, which is intended to be the standard for WordPress going forward. The Classic Editor plugin that we will be installing however is an official WordPress plugin and will currently be supported and maintained until at least 2022

Installing the Classic Editor plugin in WordPress

Firstly you will need to log in your WordPress admin area / dashboard – This will normally be at a url such as mydomain.com/wp-admin  (replacing mydomain.com with your own domain name)

Once logged in, hover over Plugins on the left menu, then click on the Add New option.

Next, In the Search box in the top left of the screen, enter Classic Editor then press enter. This will search for the plugin from the WordPress plugin repository, and also show related plugins in the search result.

You should see Classic Editor appear as the first result. Click on the Install Now button to install the plugin on WordPress

Once installed, the button will change to a blue Activate button. Click this to activate the plugin.

This will then take you back to the Installed Plugins page, where you will see the Classic Editor highlighted blue, to denote that it is currently activated.

If you need to edit the plugin settings, you can do this using one of two methods:

• Click on Settings underneath the plugin, as marked on the image below

  Or

• Hover over the Settings link on the left hand menu of the WordPress dashboard, then click on Writing.

The WordPress writing settings page contains two options you can adjust relating to the Classic Editor, Which have been marked in red on the image below.

• Default editor for all users: Here you can select Classic Editor (this is the default setting), or Block Editor, if you’d prefer to have the new Gutenberg editor be the default still.
• Allow users to switch editors: Here you can select Yes or No (No is the default setting) which will determine if a user can switch editors whilst creating, or editing a page / post.

Finally to check that the Classic Editor is working, either create a new post / page, or edit an existing one.

You should then see the Classic Editor instead of the Gutenberg editor.

As an example for this guide we’ve also switched on ‘Allow users to switch editors’ – The option to change editors is now shown on the right hand side of the page in the Editor block.