Skip to main content

My understanding of WordPress must be missing something.

There's this default theme 'twenty twenty four'. When you activate it, it inserts various hardcoded texts into your site. Things like "my book Money Studies is out now" and "I'm Leia Acosta, a passionate photographer". You have to use the site editor to find these and remove them. There are about four.

You have to do this on your live site, you can't customise a theme and preview it before activating, like you used to be able to. If you don't find them all, or ever did "Remove Customisations", you're site will say stuff like "A commitment to innovation and sustainability", without you knowing it.

So what if you're not called "Leia Acosta"? Or you don't have a book out called "Money Studies"? How did they think this was going to work?
#WordPress

#wordpress
in reply to Gidi Kroon

Mika E.
Mika E.
• •
It’s always been like that to a degree. It starts with an about page and a tagline that are not you. But the new user experience with guiding people through changing it sucks and needs work and is just … not getting it 🙄
in reply to Mika E.

Gidi Kroon
Gidi Kroon
•
@Mika E. But that's the thing I don't get. It used to do that for new empty sites. I've tried this with two (test) sites, both of which already had content. These new default texts just get inserted into a live site which already has content. And I didn't find a way to change it before activating the theme; you used to be able to do that in the preview before activating.
@Mika E.
in reply to Gidi Kroon

Mika E.
Mika E.
• •
Huh… well that’s some fuckery. I’ve been distant from the default theme drama for a while now.
in reply to Gidi Kroon

Jos Velasco
Jos Velasco
• •
I think it's just the home template. You must manually insert the rest of the templates into the pages.
in reply to Jos Velasco

Gidi Kroon
Gidi Kroon
•
@Jos Velasco In the documentation at wordpress.org/documentation/ar… they list four templates for which you can switch alternative patterns. Especially the blog home and the index templates have patterns with texts you will not want to keep (others are search and archive). I think all these are live before you can change them.
@Jos Velasco
in reply to Gidi Kroon

Jos Velasco
Jos Velasco
• •

I see what you mean. I will see if there is a discussion with the Theme’s team. In the meantime, it is handy to use the “Edit Site” link from the corresponding template you want to edit to access it quickly.

wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-mak…


WordPress 6.3 Makes the “Edit Site” Link Open the Current Template

WordPress 6.3 will make site editing several clicks faster for users who are moving from the frontend to edit the corresponding template. When you click the “Edit Site” link in the admi…
WP Tavern
in reply to Jos Velasco

Jos Velasco
Jos Velasco
• •

there is a ticket to allow the preview of block themes, but it looks inactive.

github.com/WordPress/gutenberg…

I remember there are plugins to switch themes based on the user, so admins can make changes before switching to a theme for the public, but since the templates are essentially content, they don’t seem to work without affecting the active theme.

I suggest hiding blocks or areas you don’t need or need to be updated, using a plugin like Block Visibility, or setting a Staging site to make changes in a safe environment.

blockvisibility.mystagingwebsi…


Site Editor doesn't allow to edit or preview non-active block themes · Issue #37201 · WordPress/gutenberg

What problem does this address? Site Editor only works with an active block theme. It's not possible to edit non-active block themes with it. E.g., it's not possible to Live Preview non-active bloc...
GitHub
in reply to Jos Velasco

Gidi Kroon
Gidi Kroon
•

@Jos Velasco Thanks for looking into it. I think the answer for me is that for my totally unimportant personal site I'm just going to brave it: check on a test site which edits need to be made and what they look like then quickly do them on the real site. Likely nobody will see it in the meantime. For anything even slightly more important organisations are going to need staging sites anyway and mechanisms to deploy changes atomically. Also with Block Visibility I think you're going to have to find the added blocks first to flag them as invisible, which you can only do after switching to the theme.

Or maybe I should just let go of the idea that you can easily switch themes...

@Jos Velasco
in reply to Gidi Kroon

Jos Velasco
Jos Velasco
• •
I agree; checking a test site sounds good! I think every website is important in a way. I love that you care about your visitors; it’s rare nowadays.
⇧