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I’m only now looking into the brand new WP versions, that I guess have been around for a couple years and I find the FSE to be a mess. However, I can’t tell who the intended audience is. My goal is to provide a solution for my client who wants to be able to customize more than I think they should.
There are aspects of it I believe provide a reasonable UX for people unfamiliar with web site building. Then there’s everything else.
Does anyone know if the intended audience is for developers or someone else? I’m trying to figure out if I need to teach my client how to use this in order to customize a block theme.
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I can’t imagine it’s serving anyone’s needs in its current state
Webmaster, not client – FSE requires a higher degree of skill than the average user has.
Depends how you set up your theme.
While u/therealstabitha has the short answer. Here’s why.
I was dinking around with FSE yet again yesterday, assessing its “drop in” compatibility on pre-existing WordPress sites built with classic themes.
The short answer is it works with painfully simple sites with a single menu site but (based on a “six intelligent tries” search of Google) it screws the pooch if there’s more than one “classic” menu.
Bottom line: if something takes more than six intelligent tries (i.e. searches by a well-informed, varied, uses appropriate keywords and keyphrases, from an experienced WordPress tech) then it’s not for clients. And possibly not for webmasters either.
Extra credit: By default the Site Editor hides the template/block sidebar, with the result that
* Even if you knew you could edit blocks, and
* Even if you knew you had to “tunnel” down to the actual navigation block and not one of the container groups, and
* Even if you knew you could show alternate navigation by clicking the “vertical elipsis” icon to the right of the word “menu” in the “navigation” block…
=> You’d *still* also need to know to unhide the sidebar in the first place.
Note that last part is true even if you use the block editor on pages and posts, because by default the block editor (unlike the site editor) displays the sidebar. Leaving ordinary users (including experienced WordPress devs who aren’t familiar with FSE) to assume it’s simply not available in the site editor.
None of this is a problem after you’ve built your 10th or 20th site with blocks and FSE. But that rules out 90% of all WordPress users.
This is why u/therealstabitha has the correct answer. Whether through core team incompetence or indifference, or the fact that blocks in general are at best in beta and FSE is still in alpha, FSE has an absolutely vertical learning curve that’s not worth wasting time on if, like virtually all WordPress users, you’ll only ever work on a single site for your business, group, or hobby.