Remove Block Editor From Widgets

[MikeB]

I have been using the Block Editor for new websites beginning in 2019. Gutenberg has improved greatly. The sidebars in these sites all have Custom HTML widgets. All my non-Gutenberg sites have many pages of HTML, and the sidebars and other widget areas have lots of Custom HTML widgets. I recently went into a non-Gutenberg site to make some changes in the right sidebar. To my surprise, in WordPress 5.8 Widgets had been taken over by the Block Editor and it was not even displaying the Custom HTML code, just the output. This site has the Disable Gutenberg plugin installed, but that didn't stop the Block editor from taking over Widgets. I was quite sure that many other folks had encountered this issue and someone already had fix.

Add this code to functions.php to restore Widgets to the Classic Editor. I did, and my Custom HTML widgets are back to being displayed as they should be.

function disable_wbe_theme_support() {
remove_theme_support( 'widgets-block-editor' );
}
add_action( 'after_setup_theme', 'disable_wbe_theme_support' );

[Hugh]

What I did on most of my sites was to just update to the latest Disable Gutenberg. Jeff Starr added a setting to disable said Widget Block editor thingy (or whatever they're calling it).

[Benjamin]

Good point Hugh... it seems that as much as Automattic is "trying" to improve the block editor they can't seem to stop 'stepping in it' when it comes to rolling out updates. The widgets area needed to be left alone and if they want FSE (full-site-editing) they wouldn't be using the "widgets / sidebars" anyway, it would just all "be on the page".

It's a good reminder to turn off the block editor for widgets now AND also to be prepared to turn it off for menus that are coming next because the block editor is already screwing up any menu that has any type of addon/mega menu/extensions/hooks etc. Basically if you have a search option in your menu, you add icons to menus, you use custom css classes for menus, use dynamic logic to show/hide menus, have any plugins extending the menu... all of that is borked in the tests of the next block editor invasion of the menu (in the beta versions of Gutenberg).

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