WordPress Roadmap Update: Full-Site Editing Targeted for 5.8 Release in June 2021

WordPress core contributors are pushing forward on an ambitious plan to land full-site editing in core before the end of the year. Josepha Haden Chomphosy, the open source project’s executive director, published an updated roadmap for 2021 that aims to get an MVP of full-site editing (FSE) in the Gutenberg plugin by April, 2021. FSE v1 would then be on track for shipping with WordPress 5.8, which is anticipated in June, 2021.

5.7 | April 2021 – MVP for FSE in Gutenberg plugin
5.8 | June 2021 – v1 in Core

Chomphosy defined the scope of FSE as “the ability to edit all elements of a site using Gutenberg blocks” and said it will include “all in-progress features designed to help existing users transition to Gutenberg as well.”

When asked what would be considered an MVP of full-site editing, Chomphosy pointed to a GitHub issue that contributors are using for tracking all the milestones associated with the project. Part of the infrastructure and UI is marked as complete, as well as browsing between pages, templates, and template parts. Styling, theme blocks, the query block, and the navigation block still need more work. More progress may have been made but the tracking issue has not been updated since December 19, 2020.

Dipping into the notes from the recent editor meetings shows a steady stream of FSE improvements, which presumably will coalesce into an MVP in approximately five weeks. Chomphosy’s announcement avoided explicit promises regarding what features are expected at that time.

Related projects like the widgets and navigation block editors have new dedicated Slack channels for those interested in following and contributing:

#feature-widgets-block-editor

#feature-navigation-block-editor

If you have questions about where FSE is headed, an upcoming Gutenberg Times Live Q&A episode titled “Updates on WordPress Site-Editor (FSE) and Themes” will feature a panel of people who are actively contributing in these areas. It includes Carolina Nymark, author of a course on full site editing and block based themes, Ari Stathopoulos, core contributor and author of the first block-based theme in the repository, and Anne McCarthy, who is managing the FSE outreach experiment.

The episode will air live on Friday, January 29th, 2021, at 11AM EST, hosted by Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator of the Gutenberg Times. Registration for the event is free. Pauli-Haack plans to cover all the latest updates on full-site editing, block-based themes, and global styles. The panel will also touch on the navigation and widget screens, as well as what features will most likely land in WordPress 5.7. Viewers can bring questions and participate via Zoom and YouTube live. The episode will be recorded and shared afterwards with a transcript and resources.