Panel Discussion with Michelle Schulp Hunt and Tom Finley: Hero's Journey to FSE

You may have heard of the Full-Site Editor or Block Themes but haven't had a chance to learn how to work with or aren't certain if it's right for your website or new project.

Please join is for a discussion with Michelle Schulp Hunt (https://twitter.com/marktimemedia) and Tom Finley (https://twitter.com/tomfinley) to explore the ins and outs of the new way of WordPress. We are called to a new adventure with this new paradigm in WordPress. It is very much like the hero's journey to get out of our comfort zone and explore a new interface and ways of building sites.

In this session, Angela Bowman will moderate a conversation with Michelle and Tom on what you need to know to engage with Full Site Editing as both an end user and a developer.

The WordPress Full Site Editor takes the place of the Page Builders like Divi, WP Bakery, Elementor, and others that we have been using to customize our sites.

You may not be ready to take this journey and have a lot of resistance. It's scary. The interface is not perfect. It's glitchy and buggy. There are features that are missing. The Navigation blocks is, well, let's say, not great. Responsive styles aren't necessarily happening. It still feels like beta software.

For the developer, documentation is not all there. New functionality is obscured. It feels like it's constantly changing and not as mature.

As a person who builds sites for clients or has your own current site to maintain, you may not have time to learn, but this is why we have these Meetups. We need mentors and guides. You may not take on Full Site Ediitng right away, but this product will mature over time, and it's good to learn now so you can ease into it over time.

And with that:

WordPress 6.3 brings your content, templates, and patterns together in the Site Editor for the first time. Add pages, browse style variations, create synced patterns, and enjoy fine-tuned control over navigation menus. Spend less time switching across different site areas—so you can focus on what matters most. Creation to completion, all in one place.

Let's take a quick look at these new features out together and see what we can do. Getting into Full Site Editing and themes that support it is slow to be adopted, but groups like ours help to bridge the gap and keep us all educated about these new possibilities that have never been available in the WordPress core application.

Here's more info about the release:

https://wordpress.org/news/2023/08/lionel/ - announcement

https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/18/wordpress-6-3-field-guide/ - field guide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUGLNVSd2q0&t - intro to FSE by Michelle Schulp Hunt - technical presentation.

What do you want to know? Please comment on the event, and I'll answer as many questions as I can. Have you built a site with FSE theme yet?