I’m a bit late to getting this blog ready for the next era. But there is no time like now to get started.
First, and frankly forced by Google for reasons I am not clear, this site is no longer insecure. That’s right, CogDogBlog is fully safe, even for cockroach spammers like Glen to have an encrypted experience.
This step was easy; I had already used Reclaim Hosting’s Let’s Encrypt service for create a certificate for cogdogblog.com (another subdomain required it), and a test of loading this blog as https://cogdogblog.com
worked.
To make all URLs redirect from http://cogdoblog.com to https://cogdogblog.com and fix any internal references to content loaded over http:// (e.g. embedded images), I installed and activated the Force HTTPS (SSL Redirect & Fix Insecure Content) plugin.
Easy Peazy.
Now, on to this Gutenberg thing.
Note: I wrote this in the week-long stint where I tried to be Good and Go Gutenberg. It was a bad scene. Then they flicked the switch on everybody. I went back to sanity via the Classic Editor plugin. but this post is a bit of a mess. I’m too tired to clean it up.
I’ve been a bit heads in the sand, deal with this later, but it seems relevant to try it out first here, do I can start to figure out the implications for my other sites and themes. In theory, all old content should work. And it should be an opportunity for sites, to have a different editing capability.
I gotta get my Gutenberg Block thinking hat on.

I quote, therefore I am. Okay, this is a new block. And it’s cool you get a citation entry below. But how will my theme deal with it?
— some dude no one knows.
Look!
Go to 20
20 code
Maybe this will be okay. It’s different for sure. But there’s no use being nostalgic for the old editor.
Will I come to love this Gutenberg thing? I’m lost in block landia!
@cogdog
Really? I found Gutenberg really stunted my writing as I had to keep formatting and clicking rather than writing. It gets in my way.
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) November 16, 2018
I just wasted 20 minutes of my life in the highly polished and world ready WordPress Gutenburg editor failing to get an image to align to the center of the page (it only centered the caption in a narrow left side column). There will be much cussing at Gutenberg.
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) December 10, 2018
Classic 900k 5 stars vs Gutenberg 500k 2 stars. And I am spending time answering client emails of "WTF happened to my editor?" pic.twitter.com/9dkJMTtZAK
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) December 11, 2018
Hang on, we are going for a ride!
Featured Image:
Thanks for the tip on the Force HTTPS plugin. I wasn’t aware of it and immediately installed it on a couple domains. Much faster than messing with htaccess.
Here was the htaccess method I used from the Reclaim Hosting community as reference: https://community.reclaimhosting.com/t/force-https-for-your-site/239
Thanks keegan, that was my first approach and what I have done on static sites. But the plugin I mention saves you the htaccess editing.
Ya man, I love that there are multiple solutions. Just wanted to further connect all the web pages across domains. 🙂
I am not a fan of the Gutenberg but I tend to just write in the HTML view. I can see how it helps certain patterns. It’d be way better than shortcode plugins where I forget the parameters every time. It’d also open up some structure patterns for authoring that would be neat but I hate it for every day writing. It seems to hit that middle ground between being a Beaver Builder-like thing and a regular post editor. That’s not a good middle ground and the mess with accessibility doesn’t help either.
I’m in the frequent cussing stage, a long ways through anger and resentment with little chance seen for acceptance. Everything takes me longer, I keep having to fix my style sheet because of the havoc it causes.
But keeping on.
Hi Alan,
I’ve been testing Gutenberg occasionally for a while. It doesn’t suit me all that well, but like Tom I tend to write in text, in my case in a text editor or drafts on iOS.
I’ve raised a couple of issues on github as the iOS, in particular, iPad editing is not great. My class use iPads for blogging. I expect we will not use Gutenberg until it has been out for a while. This might affect the Agora folk (I think they used iPads).
I’m very tempted to boot it for now, but I can’t fight in, and need to figure out how to make it not so much get in my way, especially for things I can do almost w/o thinking in the HTML editor.
Yes the Agora participants have iPads but blogging was not a core part of the experience. I hate to see what it looks like there.