WordPress Full Site Editing: what it means for your business

WordPress 5.8, released in July 2021, shipped the first pieces of Full Site Editing (FSE). If you use WordPress for your business website, this is worth paying attention to, even if you shouldn't rush to adopt it.

What Full Site Editing is

Traditionally, WordPress has had a clear divide. Your content, posts and pages, gets edited in the block editor (Gutenberg). But the structural parts of your site, the header, footer, sidebar, archive pages, are controlled by your theme's PHP template files. If you want to change how your header looks, you either need a developer to edit the theme code or a page builder plugin.

Full Site Editing changes this. It extends the block editor to cover everything, not just the content area, but the header, footer, templates, and everything in between. In theory, you can design your entire site using blocks, without touching code.

What this means in practice

What does this actually mean for you? For someone running a business website, FSE promises more control. Want to add your phone number to the header? Move the logo? Change how your blog archive looks? With FSE, you can do this yourself through the editor, without calling your developer.

That's the promise. The reality, right now, is more nuanced.

The current state

FSE is still early. WordPress 5.8 introduced template editing and some block-based theme features, but the full vision is still being built. The editing experience can be confusing, there are now multiple places where you might edit things, and it's not always obvious which editor you should be in. The block library for site-wide elements (navigation, site title, query loops) is functional but limited compared to what page builders like Elementor or Oxygen offer.

Theme support is patchy too. FSE requires a "block theme", a theme built specifically for the new system. The default Twenty Twenty-One theme supports it, and there are a growing number of block themes in the WordPress directory, but most existing themes don't support FSE and won't unless they're rewritten.

Should you switch?

If your site is currently working well on a traditional WordPress theme, there's no urgency to switch. FSE is a multi-year project, and WordPress has been clear that classic themes will continue to work. Switching now means adopting a system that's still being refined, with fewer themes, fewer patterns, and a less polished editing experience.

If you're building a new site, it's worth considering. A block theme with FSE gives you a future-proof foundation and avoids the dependency on a page builder plugin. But you'll need a developer to set it up properly, creating custom block patterns, styling things correctly, and making sure the editing experience is intuitive for whoever will be managing the content.

Where this leaves page builders

This is the interesting question. Elementor, Oxygen, Beaver Builder, and others have thrived because WordPress's native editing experience was limited. FSE is WordPress's attempt to make those tools unnecessary. Whether it succeeds depends on how quickly the editing experience matures.

I think page builders will be around for a long time yet. They have years of development, huge ecosystems, and millions of users. But the long-term direction is clear, WordPress wants its native editor to handle everything. If you're starting a new project and trying to decide between a page builder and FSE, it's worth having that conversation with your developer.

If you want to discuss what FSE means for your WordPress site or whether it's time for an upgrade, give me a shout at [email protected].