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With all the different names and ways to edit a WordPress site I'm a bit lost as how to future proof my theme.

Let me explain a bit...

First off, I use WordPress professionally at my job, I use it as a solution for a CMS and eCom for around 15 websites within my company. Essentially what I've done is create 1 theme that is used as a base theme (or parent theme) for all of my company's websites.

This parent theme includes roughly 30 custom made blocks and 50-60 customizer options. This is enough for me to just install the theme and pass it off to the marketing team, who then can use all these options to create a new unique website.

If there happen to be custom features I create a child theme and develop those features there.

These themes are made strictly for my company and will never be released publicly.

OK, with all that said. This setup of blocks & customizer options seems to work pretty well. But as I read more about WP and recent updates I've been seeing more about Full Site Editing and new ways to edit your site.

I would like to keep my theme (actually my company's theme :) ) updated with the latest technologies, future proof the theme and provide the marketing team with the best site updating experience WP has to offer!

  • What is the best way to update a WP site?
  • Is the customizer going away? Being replaced with FSE?
  • Is Block Theme the same as Full Site Editing?
  • Are there down sides to the customizer?
  • Are there down sides the FSE?
  • Do you know a good theme that is using FSE I can look at?
  • What other thoughts do you have?

Thanks in advance, I'm sure your thoughts will be helpful as I plan my next steps!

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  • are you thinking of block themes? The last few default themes are examples of this, and it does use gutenberg ( aka the site editor )
    – Tom J Nowell ♦
    Commented Aug 20 at 13:46
  • I just remembered, it's call Full Site Editing (FSE). I think block themes is a part of that? IDK, it gets a little confusing and convoluted. I'll restructure my question now to ask questions about FSE I guess.
    – Jon
    Commented Aug 20 at 14:23

2 Answers 2

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Block Themes and Full Site Editing are fairly interchangeable terms. One of the best resources that is kept updated is Carolina's FSE site: https://fullsiteediting.com/courses/full-site-editing-for-theme-developers/

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  • Thank you! Wow, what an amazing resource!
    – Jon
    Commented Aug 22 at 13:42
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The "New" way to build WordPress themes is using blocks (Gutenberg). WordPress has a full guide here: https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/. - but it can be a bit overwhelming.

I wrote an article a couple days ago on the Anatomy of a WordPress Block Theme which may be helpful in showing you the general structure of a block theme in an easy to understand way.

When it comes to block themes you wouldn't have any "options" (like the Customizer) because the end user has access to the WordPress editor where they can modify the theme completely. Of course you can actually still include "options" (in the traditional sense) if you wanted for your block theme, but I wouldn't recommend it.

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  • I'm just learning about block themes. Why wouldn't you have options like the customizer? I thought the point was to allow user to customize those areas but with blocks instead? Why wouldn't you recommend it?
    – Jon
    Commented Aug 22 at 13:44
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    Instead of Customizer, you get a whole new Site Editor area where people can edit templates and template parts using blocks.
    – WebElaine
    Commented Aug 22 at 16:40
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    Exactly like @WebElaine mentioned! Because block themes have a whole site editor you can completely redesign the theme (fonts, spacing, layout, blocks...etc). There is no need for "traditional" settings. If you are going to add theme specific options to a block theme you'll probably want to create a custom admin page instead.
    – WPExplorer
    Commented Aug 27 at 2:17

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