WordPress Nuked “Classic Editor” (UPDATED)

[See below for update.]

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The long-time WordPress blogging mantra of What-You-See Is-What-You-Get has been officially nuked as of today. Classic Editor is gone for most users of the popular platform.

To get it back, WordPress suggests you pony up $300/year for a “Business Plan” account that allows you to install a plugin for Classic Editor. That’s a non-starter for me. I don’t pay ransoms.

But there’s hope.
Check out this article, dated 2 October 2020:

How to Enable (Get Back) the Classic Editor in WordPress.com

I found a workaround in the comments:

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Bookmark the url below to create a new post with the classic editor:

https://your-site-name.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?action=edit&classic-editor

Replace the text in red with the your blog address.

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I created this post using the method above and it seems to work, at least for editing posts. Note that it doesn’t work for editing saved drafts or published posts. Another possible solution is described in this article from 19 March 2021:

Don’t Get Freaked Out By The Disappearance Of WordPress Classic Editor

Despite being a more recent article, the recommendations don’t work for me as there is no longer a “WP Admin” button and no option to revert to Classic Editor for creating posts. A DuckDuckGo search (you still use Google?) for “WordPress Classic Editor” turns up a lot of articles with different possible remedies, but many appear to be obsolete. Good luck.

The last resort (aside from caving to extortion) is to bite the wax tadpole and use the damn Gutenberg Editor. You can bastardize it by opening a post for editing, open “Blocks” search for and insert “Classic” and it will give you an editing toolbar that will look similar to what you’re used to, but it doesn’t change anything else. In that regard we’re screwed.

The WordPress Gutenberg Editor received bad reviews going back to the beta version release. Why they decided to force it on us anyway is a mystery to me.

Thanks for the aggravation, WordPress. What’s your nearest competitor?

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UPDATE 16 APRIL 2021

I keep these in a .doc file and open the hyperlink from there.

CREATE NEW POST CLASSIC

https://your-site-name.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?action=edit&classic-editor

EDIT DRAFT POST CLASSIC

https://your-site-name.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit.php?post_status=draft&post_type=post

EDIT EXISTING POSTS CLASSIC

https://your-site-name.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=post

MANAGE & EDIT COMMENTS CLASSIC

https://your-site-name.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php

MANAGE & EDIT WIDGETS

https://your-site-name.wordpress.com/wp-admin/widgets.php

Thanks again to Digital Citizen who confirmed the above days before I stumbled upon them myself.