WordPress has been blowing its trumpet regarding the new Full Site Editor. Who knew they were Trumpers!? What? Oh . . . trumpeters. Right.
Readers might remember I gave up my beloved 2010 Theme because of the Block Editor’s (Ptui!) requirements. Actually, I was lied to tricked into switching, but, OK.
I don’t mind the current theme too much, but it has a few things I don’t like. I’m told I could wrestle it into Disperser Compliance by CSSing to death, but whenever I try something, I run up against the limitations of the theme (I had chosen this theme from of the themes that WP said were block-compliant — but that was more Fake News).
The point is, I was curious about this much-vaulted FSE thing, and, as it so happens, I have blogs I had created at a time when I thought I might split the main blog into three separate blogs; a Photography blog, a Writing blog, and a Whatever-else blog.
In case anyone is wondering what happened, I did migrate all the obvious posts into the appropriate blogs, BUT . . . I tend to mix photos with opinions, fiction with reviews, and, to make a short story long, it was a mess. So, I stuck with the one blog . . . this blog.
Anyway, back to FSE . . . I took some hours I didn’t have and invested them in playing with FSE. Once I thought I got the gist of it, I picked the photography blog, changed the layout to the Twenty-Twentytwo Theme, and set about editing it. It’s worth saying that it’s a Beta editor, so don’t expect too much from it, regardless of what WP says.
So, how did I do? Well, read on if you’re interested (99% of the people won’t be, so, once again, this is for my future me to enjoy). To be clear, this won’t be of interest to anyone other than someone who has a blog and is thinking about trying FSE.
The plan was to sort of duplicate the current theme and fix stuff I didn’t like. Stuff like the sidebar menu not appearing on the home page, the width not behaving very well when the window size is changed, the width being too narrow while the sidebar was too wide, the spacing between the blocks being too much, the fonts not having enough control (size, pitch, spacing, etc.), and a few other things.
So, here’s what I got after hours of learning and playing. This is obviously a screen capture and not the actual site:
When I say “the widest”, I mean that is as wide as the two columns below the title will go (I could set them to go wider). If I go wider from there, the header will widen and space out, but the two columns will just stay as their limit.
Next up, is the narrowest width at which you can still see two columns (the posts and the sidebar). Any narrower, and the sidebar drops down to the end of the page.
Note that the Header adjusts to the full width of the window, which I like. By the way, I don’t have an FAQ on that site, so there’s only the About page to the right of the Blog. The plan is to have a vertical column with “Home”, “About”, and “FAQ” pages. I didn’t bother adjusting the fonts of some of the blocks (the categories and tags at the end of each post should be smaller).
Next up is the Home page at the point the two columns transform into a single column, but it makes it as wide as both columns would be. You can go narrower but this is reasonable. I prefer this layout to the tiled view with the current theme.
What about the single post window? Well, this is where I need to do some thinking. I’ve always had the sidebar when looking at a single post, but now I’m leaning toward having a wider content window and no sidebar. Meaning, without a sidebar, the content window can be wider AND the photos can be wider . . .
That’s the widest I can go for the settings I had. Going any wider, and the header keeps growing, but not the content width.
I had two glitches that I tried to resolve and just couldn’t . . . note the size of the title of the post; it’s pretty small. It doesn’t matter if I chose large, small, or extra-large, or if I manually choose a font size; that’s what it looks like. Note that it’s smaller than when it appears on the home page (that’s the size that it should be).
The other glitch is that there is a post after that one, so there should be a “Next →” symbol on the right side, between the header and the post. The weird thing is that it appears for older posts, but not for any of the new ones. I played with recreating the posts, copying older posts, and looking for any settings that were different between old and new posts (none that I could find). I even tried having the two blocks right next to each other in the center. It looks great in the preview, but the “Next →” disappears once I publish the post.
The current theme (this one) does some weird stuff with the sizes of the photos when you resize the browser window, so I wanted to make sure that the photos and text narrow evenly and smoothly, and they do. Note that the title of the post appears larger below, but I think it’s an optical illusion because the window is narrower so all the text appears larger. Or, the title may be a bit larger, but not as large as it should be.
Note: it would be really useful to add a border around the image block, and you can do that using HTML . . . but it’s a pain. They should make it easier, but they haven’t. I could have used a Classic Block and easily added a border … but didn’t.
I then checked to see what happens if I make the window as narrow as possible . . .
Overall, it does OK. The menu collapses into a two lines symbol (which maybe some people won’t recognize as something they can click), and the photo resizes nicely.
I don’t like that the wolf-head and Blog Name are separated into two lines. I’ll have to see if I can get them to stay together and just get smaller. Or, just have the wolf-head disappear and just leave the name. Or, I might move the wolf-head to the right of the name so that it drops below and on the same line as the “About”.
Again, all-in-all, it’s not bad. There are many quirks that one has to learn, and I had hoped for more font choices (two). They also claim “drag-and-drop” which some might interpret as being able to drag and drop the actual blocks.
Nope!
You can drag-and-drop the descriptions and settings which appear to the left side when you’re editing. Each block is a line and they are arranged in a hierarchical order and indented depending on how they are grouped.
The problem is that when you drag and drop, it does weird stuff. Things can disappear, they can be merged with other stuff even if you don’t want them to, and some positions are closed out, forcing you to circumvent the limitation by moving a block somewhere else, and then rearrange the blocks around it so that the block you moved appears where you want it relative to the others.
Again, there’s potential here, but this is a BETA release (ain’t they all), and I don’t think it will be ready for prime time anytime soon. By the way, the help desk, as usual, was awesome. I was on a chat with them for about an hour, and while they couldn’t answer all the questions, and while sometimes what worked for them didn’t work for me, they were a great help.
I also suspect that, as in the past, things might work better in Chrome than Firefox because more people use Chrome and it gets more attention.
Still, all in all, despite it being clumsier than I would like, and with fewer options than I would like, and not as intuitive as they make it sound, I had fun learning. Hopefully, in a few months — when I look at it again — it will have more options and be more robust. I now know what to quickly look for, and if I don’t find it, I won’t have to waste my time on it.
That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.
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Disperser Tracks 
Yeah, I’m not feeling the love yet.
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And here I thought you were enthused about it.
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It’s OK, but like I said on my blog back in October, “Give me the hanger to support my funky designer shirt, but don’t make me design and make the hanger, too.” I still feel that way.
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Actually, I don’t mind designing and making the hanger (it’s the sort of thing I might enjoy doing) . . . I just don’t want to do it with a broken pencil and a dull knife.
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There’s a lot in this article that I heartily agree with https://wptavern.com/does-wordpress-need-1000s-of-block-themes-in-the-era-of-full-site-editing
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I could land on both sides of the argument. If I’m given something that looks and works the way I want, I’m done (it need not be 100%, but pretty close).
Alternatively, I would like a generic template that I could truly control: two header blocks, two footer blocks, three columns.
Given that, and the ability to delete extras, I’m happy.
Within those, existing blocks need additional controls. Specifically, size, spacing and layering (overlaps) within headers, footers, and columns.
Beyond that, I want control of fonts (real control; style, size, color), and backgrounds.
I’m leaving out a few ancillary controls, but that’s it.
Here’s the annoying thing. I could do all that I want using Word Perfect back in the late1980s and 1990 (it was easier and more intuitive to use than Microsoft Word).
Heck, I can (not as easily but easily enough) do that with Word right now (the 2007 version is the one I use).
The difference is that WP wants to have true cross-platform functionality (even as platforms keep changing) . . . meaning, tablets, phones, PC, and whatever else comes up next.
And here’s the final irony … I had more control over components with the Twenty-Ten theme than I do with the block-friendly/compliant Twenty-Twentytwo theme. That also happened with Word Perfect and Word — in an effort to make it chock-full of features, they removed and/or limited some functionality.
Progress is often anything but.
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I’ve noticed also, that what appears in the preview may not always appear in the published page. It’s happened on my latest post with a new slideshow block showing the last three posts. In preview it says “by Ggreybeard” yet when posted it only says “by”.
🙃
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As I’ve stated often and shrilly, WP seems more enamored with putting out new stuff than making sure what they put out is robust.
I regularly work around annoyances that should really be fixed, but that don’t seem to be a priority for WP’s management and developers.
I would think that at some point, it might come back to bite them in the gluteus maximus, but only if people complain, get tired of glitches, and if someone offers a more stable product.
The way things are, they don’t care about complaints because half-assery is the way most tech companies operate . . . and that’s because people are enamored with “improvements” and “bells-and-whistles” regardless if they actually are improvements or whether the bells ring and the whistles blow. it just has to look new and come with a side promise of future greatness.
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I don’t want to make excuses for them but I guess it’s not easy to check the changes work properly with every variation of every theme template.
I use a free theme, so not everything works the way I would like but if you pay an annual fee it’s reasonable to expect something that works the way it ought to.
🙃
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From what I understand, many themes are designed by people either because they love doing it, or because they want to make money by selling them.
When they design them, they’re using the tools provided by WP in an environment designed by WP. This includes WP themselves, for they too make templates.
The problem is that the environment keeps changing.
It’s a bit like Windows . . . I have (had) older programs that worked well in Windows 7, and either stopped working or worked less well in Windows 10. The program hasn’t changed, but the environment did.
And, even those that got upgraded or were tweaked to work with Win10, suffer limitations because Window either changed or got rid of some stuff . . . all for the better, they say, but, not that I can see. And, all the while, Windows still suffers from basic issues that cause problems with peripherals, WiFi, USB ports, mice and keyboards.
One approach would be to completely rewrite the code, and get rid of inherited issues. There are business reasons why Windows doesn’t do that (although they kind of do that with each new major release, but still maintain some backward compatibility), as well as practical reasons (most people hate change).
To be clear, I’m not one of those people . . . I love new stuff, and I would enthusiastically embrace blocks (and FSE) IF STUFF WORKED.
What pisses me off is when something is foisted on me as an improvement when it isn’t. Or when something changes, and it causes frustration and a loss of productivity.
That’s where WP is now . . . they want to transition to something improved and better, but they’ve achieved neither. In part, it’s because they cater to “creators” instead of their users, providing tools that the majority of users don’t use (and when they try using them, don’t work as described).
Same for Windows . . . each update has “exciting new and powerful tools” but I don’t have a need for them, and the programs I use don’t have a need for them. PLUS . . . the upgraded utilities Windows provides? they don’t seem to work as well as the originals because they are purposefully degraded so that software companies can write programs that replace the lost capabilities . . . for a price.
I’m pretty sure WP has embraced that same business model as I often get offers for services (not free services) and plans . . . where, apparently, stuff works better. Honestly, I would do it if I could believe them.
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New stuff usually means (a) they’ve added stuff you won’t ever need and (b) they’ve moved the buttons and menus around so it’s harder to find them.
It’s like John Cleese inventing new ways to annoy the customers. I guess that (c) making stuff that doesn’t work; is a new method of doing just that.
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And reminding you that FSE is still opt-in. You HAVE to enable an FSE theme to use it (and it looks like all new sites created are FSE by default; no surprise there). If you are using a regular block theme or an older classic theme, you can just carry on as before. Here’s another article you might be interested in https://wptavern.com/should-wordpress-6-0-remove-the-beta-label-from-the-site-editor
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I assume Ggreybeard was speaking of the block editor, and not FSE, but I could be wrong (I’ll let him answer if he sees the comment).
However, my point is that at every step, what is promised (as intent or fact) differs from what is delivered, and this points to a fundamental difference between the platform and its users (and, from the comments in that article, some developers) . . . namely, you want stability and consistency. Most of all, when something is working, what’s offered as a replacement needs to work much better to overcome the inertia and comfort of familiarity.
WP’s motto appears to be “let’s throw shit against the wall and use what sticks . . . until it falls off, and then we’ll throw more shit and play with that”.
I stopped buying on1 Photo Suite because of exactly what WP is doing. I’ve adopted Luminar products because they do what they say they would do (except Neo, but, you know, being under attack by Russia, that’s understandable).
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Good to read you found some positive aspects after all that work.
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The positive is that I exercised my brain and confirmed what WP doesn’t worry about quality. But, also, that someday, forse, I’ll have a blog that looks and operates the way that I want it to look and operate.
When that day comes, my first photo will be of the flying porcine I’ll see in the sky above a frozen Hades.
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Speriamo bene.
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