Using the WordPress Site Editor

What the site editor is: the screen under Appearance → Editor where a block theme's templates, template parts, global styles and patterns are all edited from one interface, using the same block-based editing you already know from posts and pages. It only appears, in this form, when the active theme is a block theme.

The four things it edits

Everything the site editor touches falls into one of four categories, and knowing which one you're in stops most of the early confusion:

1. Templates — the layout for a type of page: single post, page, archive, search results, 404. A template controls structure, not one piece of content.
2. Template parts — reusable chunks a template pulls in, most often the header and footer.
3. Styles — sitewide typography, colour and spacing overrides, layered on top of the theme's own theme.json. This is the global styles panel.
4. Patterns — pre-built block arrangements available to insert into templates or content; save one as a synced pattern and every inserted copy updates together.

The sidebar navigation groups these more or less as listed, and each has its own listing screen showing everything the theme ships plus anything you've added or customised.

Browse mode versus edit mode

Opening a template first shows it in browse mode: a read-only preview with a limited set of controls, meant for looking at what a template contains and confirming it's the right one before committing to changes. Clicking into a specific area — or choosing an explicit edit action — switches to edit mode, which is the full block editor, with the inserter, block toolbar and settings sidebar all active.

This two-step approach exists because a template can look like ordinary content but actually control every page of that type. Browse mode's friction is deliberate, not a UI oversight — it is there so a global change is something you opt into, not something a stray click causes.

Editing a page versus editing its template

This is the distinction that trips up more beginners than anything else in the site editor.

• Editing a page (through the regular post editor, or from the site editor's Pages listing) changes what appears in that page's own content area — the text, images and blocks specific to that one page.
• Editing the page template changes the frame around that content — where the title sits, whether there's a sidebar, what the footer looks like — for every page using that template, not just the one you were looking at.

A useful mental model: the template is the picture frame, the page content is the picture. Swap the picture and the frame stays the same; change the frame and every picture in it changes with it. If you only want to change one page's text or images, edit the page. If you want every page of a given type to look different, edit the template — but be aware doing so affects every other page sharing it, which is usually the entire site's pages, or the entire site's posts.

Saving

The Save action in the site editor is deliberately different from saving a single post. Clicking it opens a review panel listing every change across templates, template parts, styles and content that is pending — because a single editing session can touch several of those categories at once, and WordPress wants you to see the full list before committing. You can typically deselect individual items to save some changes now and leave others pending. Nothing is written to the database until you confirm from that panel.

Reverting

Most editable items — templates, template parts, styles — carry a way to discard customisations and fall back to what the theme itself defines, usually from an options menu on the item (worded along the lines of "Clear customisations" for templates and parts, "Reset to defaults" for styles). These are full reverts of that item, not selective undo. For smaller, in-progress mistakes, the editor's regular undo, available while the session is still open, is the better tool — revert only when you want to throw away everything and start over from the theme's version.

What to do if the screen is blank

A blank site editor screen, with no visible error, is usually one of these:

• A fatal PHP error during render, most often from a plugin or custom code hooking into block or template rendering. Enabling WordPress debug mode surfaces the underlying error instead of a blank page.
• A JavaScript error blocking the editor's own scripts. Check the browser console; a script conflict here behaves the same way script conflicts do anywhere else in the admin, and the general approach in fixing plugin conflicts in WordPress applies.
• The active theme is not actually a block theme, or is a block theme with a broken or missing theme.json, so the editor has nothing valid to load.

Deactivating plugins one at a time, then switching to a default block theme temporarily, isolates which of the three you're dealing with.

Common mistakes

• Editing the template when you meant to edit the page. Always check the top of the editor for which one is currently open before making changes.
• Assuming Save applies everything you touched. Review the panel's list — an unchecked item stays pending, unsaved.
• Reaching for Clear customisations to undo one small change. It discards everything on that item, not just the last edit; regular undo is usually what you want.
• Trying to use the site editor with a classic theme. Appearance shows the Customizer instead, and no amount of searching finds site-editor menus that a classic theme never exposes. Changing a WordPress theme to a block theme is the prerequisite.
• Confusing blank-screen debugging with content-editing problems. A blank editor is almost always a PHP or JS error, not a content issue — check debug output first rather than second-guessing the content.

Verify

Open Appearance → Editor, browse to the front page template, and confirm it matches what actually loads on the live site. Make a small, reversible change — adjust a heading colour through global styles, for instance — save it, and check the front end in a private browser window, logged out, to confirm the change is really live and not just visible in the editor's own preview.