New Local Blueprint Enables One-Click Setup for Testing Full Site Editing

If you haven’t yet tested the Gutenberg team’s progress on the full site editing (FSE) project, WordPress developer Carrie Dils has created a blueprint for Local that makes it easy to jump right in. Full site editing is phase 2 on the Gutenberg roadmap and is one of the main focuses for WordPress core development in 2021. (Check out What Is Full Site Editing and What Does It Mean for the Future of WordPress for a more in-depth look at why it is critical for end users to provide feedback during its development.)

Local is one of the most popular free development tools for WordPress that allows users to set up new testing sites with one click, along with a host of more advanced features. Blueprints make it possible for users to save any site as a Blueprint so that it can be used as a quick start setup option later. The blueprint includes all files, databases, config files, and Local settings. Dils’ full site editing blueprint includes the following:

• Gutenberg plugin (with “Full Site Editing” experiment enabled)
• WordPress theme experiments (these are themes with support for full site editing) with the Twenty Twenty-One Blocks theme enabled
• Gutenberg test data (demo blog posts that use the most common Gutenberg blocks)

Follow Dils’ instructions for downloading and installing the FSE blueprint on MacOS or Windows. Local does not yet have an easy way for installing and sharing blueprints to other Local users, so you will need to add it to the right place within the application’s files. If you find that you don’t have a Blueprints folder, it may be because it is hidden or because you have never created a blueprint before. Once the zip file is in the right location, you will see the full site editing blueprint among the advanced options when you set up a new site:

Once your site is set up, you can start exploring the brave new world of full site editing. (Be prepared – it is far from production ready but FSE is at a critical time in its development where it needs testing from real users to be a success.) The Gutenberg plugin may need to be updated to the latest. Your new site editing playground can be launched from the Site Editor menu item.

On the frontend you will find the Twenty Twenty Blocks theme activated. You can also test using the Twenty Twenty-One (TT1) Blocks theme, which was added to the WordPress.org Themes directory today, or any of the other experimental block based themes included in the blueprint. Click around, explore the template browser, try editing the template parts, change the global styles, and see how it’s coming along.

The current state of full site editing is rough. It’s hard to tell a feature from a bug at times, but once you get familiar with navigating it you might consider joining the FSE Outreach Experiment. This is an effort to test different aspects of site editing in order to ground the interface in real world feedback as it is developed. For the past few weeks, contributors have been testing the interaction between editing a post versus editing templates.

Anne McCarthy posted the first call for testing to the Make Test blog with instructions for participants.

This call for testing is designed to explore the interaction between the two editing experiences (post vs. template editing) to make sure it’s clear when you’re editing each, granular saving works properly, etc. Ultimately, being able to edit templates like index, single, or archive directly is a huge leap forward compared to what’s been possible in the past! Unlocking this level of customization gives you far more control to build the site you want and this call for testing is to help ensure it’s as intuitive as possible.

The second testing challenge should be published soon. Anyone can contribute by following along with the test script and leaving comments on the post or logging them as issues on GitHub. Participants are also invited to join the #fse-outreach-experiment channel on WordPress Slack for updates or questions regarding testing.