The WordPress Evolution Toward Full-Site Editing

WordPress’s block editor revolutionizes the way content is created. It allows us to create content blocks and arrange them in a component way, which makes content creation more flexible and provides more opportunities for developing new modular content.

Since the editor was first introduced, the block ecosystem has undergone earth-shaking changes. Last year, Dmitry Mayorov wrote an article exploring the rise of block variants and how they can create their style variants by extending existing blocks, thus providing greater flexibility.

Then we have block styles , which can combine blocks into reusable styles.

This means we have blocks , block variants , reusable blocks and block styles . These powerful tools can design layouts directly in the editor!

But you may have heard that WordPress plans to extend the functionality of blocks beyond the article editor . They directly target global elements—menu, header, footer, etc.—and strive to implement the site-wide editing (FSE) function in WordPress.

Wow! I certainly can't represent everyone, but I immediately thought of what this means for theme developers. I mean, if the template is designed in the editor rather than in the code, what is the theme? The topic I imagined was more like a set of shells containing very few marks. Perhaps more development efforts will focus on creating blocks, block styles, and block variants to bring everything together.

It's true, you can test it now. Make sure you are using WordPress 5.6 or later, and then install the experimental TT1 Blocks theme and Gutenberg plug-in.

Open the theme and it actually has only two PHP templates—and then—the HTML files for the block template and the block template section .

I personally am very optimistic about this direction. I can even say (sneaking Chris) CSS-Tricks is also very optimistic about this direction. We switched to blocks last year and it rekindled our passion for writing blog posts like this. (Honestly, in the past I might have written something like this in a code editor and then imported it into WordPress with a classic editor. At the time, it was a better writing experience for me.)

While I'm optimistic about blocks, I understand that's not the case for others. In fact, I've worked with many people (I mean well-intentioned) who know nothing about block editors. Developing a block editor requires a huge shift in thinking, and there is currently a lack of relevant documentation. Things are still under active development, and each new WordPress release iterates over the block editor. People can’t be blamed for deciding to wait for the next bus to stabilize things and gradually improve standards.

But at the same time, this is in line with Matt Mullenweg's infamous advice to WordPress developers in 2015: Learn JavaScript deep.

I'm excited about the blocks (and still do). Site-wide editing makes me a little uneasy, but that's mainly because it moves the concept of blocks out of the editor, and I'm just starting to get a little bit about them at the moment.

Whatever this means, what I most look forward to most is the official release of a default theme that supports FSE. Remember how you felt when you first opened a WordPress theme? I was amazed at the marks in it and spent countless hours studying each line of code carefully until I turned it into my own. This is the experience I was looking forward to when I first opened a new theme.

Before that, here are some ways to help you get up to date:

• Make WordPress Design – The manual lists FSE as one of the team’s current priorities and outlines the project. It was last updated in May 2020, so I don't know how new the information is and whether the page is still under maintenance.
• How to Test FSE – Instructions for setting up a FSE site locally and participating in the test.
• TT1 Theme Repository – View the reported content and the status of these issues. This is where the topic development is focused.
• Gutenberg Plugin Repository – Reported plugin issues. This is where you focus on block development.
• Topic Experiment Repository – See more topics that are experimenting with blocks and FSEs.
• #fse-answers – A collection of replies to many questions about FSE.
• #fse-outreach-experiment – ​​Slack channel for discussion of FSE.

The above is the detailed content of The WordPress Evolution Toward Full-Site Editing. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!