Any tips on how to activate Site Editor while continuing to use existing, very complicated PHP templates for WooCommerce?
I am working on a site that uses a fully custom theme that relies a lot on PHP templates. This is a problem because there is only one person who knows how to edit the PHP files. I think this is a block theme, because 1. I can build new "Pages" and "Posts" using blocks, and 2. On a staging site, I was able to activate the WordPress site editor by adding a empty folder templates to the theme and adding a single file index.html in that folder.
Now the site editor is available under appearance, but the WooCommerce pages that are built with custom .php templates don't work.
PHP templates that work: the homepage, blog pages, and some custom post type pages which use php templates work
Pages that don't work: WooCommerce shop page, WooCommerce product pages, WooCommerce category archive pages. The WooCommerce shop page is built using JavaScript.
I have tried researching this but I probably just don't know enough to understand if I have seen the solution somewhere. I have seen mentions that you need to create blocks and use shortcodes to pull in php files to a site editor template, but it doesn't seem like that's the problem, because the non woocommerce php templates seem to be working just fine.
The php developer is not familiar with the site editor and likes building things in PHP, so I'm the one who needs to find the solution.
Over time we can maybe gradually replace these with templates built using the site editor.