What is a Full-Site Editor in WordPress?
The Full-Site Editor, officially called the Site Editor in current WordPress, is a built-in tool for designing your entire site with blocks, including headers, footers, templates, navigation, and site-wide styles. It requires a block theme, and for those themes it takes over the design role the Customizer used to fill.
More About Full-Site Editors
The Full-Site Editor is the WordPress tool for designing every part of your site with blocks, from the header and navigation menus down to the footer. WordPress now officially calls it the Site Editor, and it appears simply as "Editor" under Appearance in your dashboard. Full-site editing arrived in WordPress 5.9 "Joséphine", released January 25, 2022, and for block themes it replaces the Customizer.
Despite the similar name, it isn't the Theme Editor, the screen for editing a theme's code files. That's a separate tool, and it still exists in current WordPress. From the Site Editor's one interface, you can edit:
- Templates, including page templates, and template parts such as your site's header and footer
- Navigation menus
- Site-wide styles: colors, typography, and layout, applied across every page
- Block patterns, including synced patterns
- The content of individual pages
Those map to the editor's five menu sections: Navigation, Styles, Pages, Templates, and Patterns.
The one requirement: a block theme
To use the Full-Site Editor, you need a block theme: a theme that uses blocks for all parts of the site, including the navigation menus, header, content, and footer. To find one, go to Appearance → Themes → Add New and select the "Block Themes" filter in the WordPress theme directory. Twenty Twenty-Two, bundled with WordPress 5.9, was the first default block theme. For a current shortlist, see our roundup of WordPress block themes.
When you activate a block theme, WordPress hides the Customizer and Widgets sections in the dashboard, since blocks now handle those jobs. There's one exception: if a plugin you're running requires the Customizer, that screen stays available.
Block themes are configured with a theme.json file. Introduced in WordPress 5.8, before block themes existed, the file works in classic themes too. Theme developers use it to set a theme's default styles, including background colors, content width, and fonts.
Opening the Site Editor
Activate a block theme, then go to Appearance → Editor in your dashboard. The menu item is labeled "Editor" rather than "Full-Site Editor" because Site Editor is the feature's current official name. If there's no Editor item under Appearance, a classic theme is active. Classic themes don't work with the Site Editor, so switch to a block theme first.
Full-Site Editor vs. the Customizer
Both are built-in design tools, but they serve different theme generations:
- The Customizer works with classic themes and changes only the options the theme's developer chose to expose, such as colors or a logo.
- The Site Editor works with block themes and edits every template and template part directly, using the same blocks as the post editor.
Classic themes still ship and still use the Customizer today, so "replaces the Customizer" only holds once a block theme is active.
To try it, activate a block theme, open Appearance → Editor, and edit a template part such as your header. For a full walkthrough of editing templates, styles, and navigation, see our complete guide to WordPress full-site editing.
Frequently Asked Questions
- No. It's built into WordPress core; the only requirement is an active block theme. It handles layout and site-wide styling on its own. A page builder plugin still makes sense if your site already depends on its templates, and classic-theme users keep the Customizer.
- No, but they share the same block system. The block editor (Gutenberg) edits the content of individual posts and pages. The Site Editor applies those same blocks to templates, template parts, navigation menus, and site-wide styles, changing how your whole site looks.
- No. Site Editor customizations apply to the theme that was active when you made them, so a different theme starts from its own templates and styles. Before switching, use the Site Editor's export tool to download your templates and styles.
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