Problem:
This week I was reviewing a blog I have published in the past. I noticed that all the line breaks (white lines) between paragraphs had disappeared.
I checked a few more blogs and noticed this problem more and more often. Strangely, again, not every time.
When I opened the blog in the wp-admin environment to edit, the line breaks was shown. Both in the visual editor and in the code editor.
Is WP-Rocket the problem?
My first thought was problems with my website’s cache files. To make my website load quickly, I use WP-Rocket. But after clearing the cache, the problem was still there.
Even with WP-Rocket temporarily disabled, the line breaks did not return.
A plugin update maybe?
Then I thought it could be due to a plugin. Since I install updates for my plug-ins a few times a week, I thought maybe it was a faulty update. First, I installed all the updates that were there. But the problem was still there.
Then I disabled all the plug-ins, but still no line breaks was showing. So I enabled the plug-ins again.
Solution:
I was getting more and more the idea that it was specific to the blog so I opened one in the wp-admin environment. I then checked all the settings but didn’t see anything strange. I also compared it to a blog that was showing correctly but saw no differences.
Then in the editor, where the content is in, I clicked the “Code” tab in the top right corner so you see the HTML version of the content. At first, nothing strange. Except that at the end I saw the below code read “/wp:paragraph”.
Redundant Gutenberg HTML code:
After I removed this line with “/wp:paragraph” the line breaks lines were displayed again. This was also unnecessary HTML formatting that is only understood by Gutenberg. I am still using the classic editor in WordPress.
The reason “/wp:paragraph” was in the content was because I once created this blog post as a draft via the Jetpack app on my iPhone. This uses Gutenberg in the background. So somehow this Gutenberg code had not been cleaned completely.
Line breaks are also known as white space or white lines.