Full Site Editing – FSE – is coming soon to WordPress. It is a radical departure from the current user experience of customising a template, which some users find hard. We thought we would give it a try out before the official release, slated for late January 2022.

FSE won’t work on any old template though. There are however a handful of experimental template themes that support full site editing. The one you are looking at above in the featured image slot is called Twenty Twenty Two and will be released into the wild at the same time as FSE. On this site we are using Quadrat, a child theme of Blockbase, another official template. TT1 Blocks is another experimental block-based theme, a version of the now familiar Twenty Twenty-One theme.

These themes are not meant for use on a so-called production site, so we’ve taken great care not to break anything.

Still, all these experimental themes can be used reasonably safely at home, with parental supervision. Yes you can easily experiment without endangering yourself, the internet or anyone else on an entirely local system. This way you can run what is known as a bleeding edge version of the software. In this case it is WordPress 5.9, the current version we are on is 5.8. Make sure the Gutenberg plugin is installed and activated, as some of the customiser options are still available through the familiar interface.

If you fancy giving full site editing a try, you can download a natty application called Local, a product that has been acquired by WPEngine, the world-class managed hosting company.

It is a quick process from download to install to running your very own local WordPress. Moreover you can spin up multiple sites on your desktop in minutes or so. Install your first WordPress site with the default options. Login and install the WordPress Beta Tester.

The Beta Tester tool allows you to upgrade to 5.9, before the official release. Moreover, you’ll find that the new Twenty Twenty Two template is installed with it.

More themes are only a few clicks away. (Note also that some themes may require installing php 7.4. This is a simple click of the button on local.) The link below offers a crash course in “NO CODE” theme building and highlights more themes that support FSE. See how you get on.