Daniel Richards

And then, the one (from the topic initially mentioned) why he considered that “The WordPress transition to block widgets breaks many custom classic widgets.” ?

Hard to go into specifics, as there was no information provided in the review.

There might be some incompatibilities if a plugin developer hasn’t tested their plugin with WordPress 5.8. There are a couple of known issues in particular, with technical details here:

Block-based Widgets Editor in WordPress 5.8

If there are incompatibilities in WordPress 5.8 that stop you from being able to perform a particular workflow, the classic widgets plugin restores the previous widgets editor screens.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Daniel Richards.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Daniel Richards.

@glsd Thanks for sharing that. There should be a fix for this in the next version of WordPress (5.8.1) – https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/33618.

The classic widgets plugin can be used in the meantime to get your site working again – https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/classic-widgets/.

@bluestews Are you able to share a screenshot? The forum doesn’t support images, but if you can add one to an external service and share a link, that would be great.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Daniel Richards.

@dnacannon It looks like the right-hand site was an existing site that you upgraded, and the left one is a new one?

I think the right hand site is using the Legacy Widget block to display the search and categories widgets.

It looks like you built the left site using WordPress 5.8 though, and in this version the search and categories blocks are being used instead of the widgets.

I think there are two options available to you:
1) You might be able to use blocks to replicate the appearance of the right-hand site. Delete the label on the search block. Switch the search block to using the ‘Button Inside’ appearance (there’s an option on the block toolbar). Add a heading block above the Categories block. After that, things should look pretty similar, with maybe a few minor styling differences.
2) The classic widgets plugin (https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/classic-widgets/) is available, which would allow you to go back to the old widgets editor and use the heading and search widgets.

@monica5 Investigation and diagnosis is the first step, there’s no way to release a fix without knowing what the cause of your problem is. Unfortunately in this case the error message is just a general one.

As this problem isn’t happening for WordPress installs with only Gutenberg installed, it’s most likely to be a result of and incompatibility between the changes in WordPress 5.8 and either your theme or a plugin.

It’d be worth checking to see if your theme has any updates, I saw another user updated their theme and it resolved an issue with the post editor not working.

If that doesn’t work, or the theme doesn’t have updates, please could you try installing the classic widgets plugin:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/classic-widgets/

Let me know whether either of those steps work.

@drtonyb Thanks for pointing this out.

This is the relevant change – https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/31149

I’ve put together a fix – https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/33639.

Feel free to drop into https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg any time to do code reviews ??

@monica5 Could you check which version of WordPress you’re using? It should be in the footer of most dashboard pages, or also on the Site Health page in the Tools menu.

Is there a reason why it needs to be in the title? If not, then you could use a heading block in the post content.

Alternatively, from what I remember, the title field does accept HTML, so you could make your title something like:
‘Title<br>Subtitle’

It works, but it looks a bit ugly in the editor.

@giblues Hmm, weird that the actual error is not included. While on the error message, if you go into the browser developer tools, go to the console tab, are there any red messages there? If there are, please could you copy/paste them here. Thanks.

@glblues I think you’re missing the error message from the bit that you pasted. Would you be able to share that? Thanks.

@glsd @bibblybob It’d be good to try to understand what’s happening.

If you go to your browser developer tools (in chrome that’s under the More Tools menu), select the Console tab, and then look for any errors in red text. Please could you share what you see there?

After that there’s a Classic Widgets plugin that you can install, which will help should hopefully fix any compatibility issues:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/classic-widgets/

I notice there are some similar forum users reporting issues:
https://www.ads-software.com/search/Failed+to+execute+’removeChild’+on+’Node&#8217;

A few with the google site kit plugin, not sure if that’s one you’re using?

While on that blank screen, if you open the browser developer tools and switch to the console tab, are there any errors (in red text)?

It looks like the previous way it worked was considered a bug, and in a lot of themes resulted in the editor not matching the frontend. More details here:
https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/30255

@jilly123 Are there any errors if you open the browser developer tools and look in the console tab while on the customize page? Errors should appear in red text.