Will Block Pattern edits be applied site wide?

  • Hello,

    I’m an experienced website owner but very new to WordPress. I’m trying to find out which WordPress features help to manage a large website (thousands of pages). Without coding.

    Block Patterns seem to be a very useful feature, and I’m aware it’s still in development. It’s great that there are plugins that allow you to create a pattern, save it, and paste it over and over again. But I found that there is no relationship between the saved pattern and the pasted blocks.

    Say, I have a Block Pattern of an image, header and text and I have pasted it in various pages and posts across the website. Now I decide that the margin between the header and image needs to be larger. I would like to change that in one place, to have it automatically applied site wide, while preserving the content (e.g. header text).

    Is it realistic to expect that this will be possible in the future?

    So far, only the generic settings of a theme seem to allow site wide changes. Reusable Blocks allow site wide changes too, but they can only be used for blocks that are 100% identical everywhere, like a side wide message. I’m a bit worried that WordPress allows me to build beautiful pages very quickly, but when changes are needed, I would need to edit all pages manually.

    How do others do this?

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • We are in a transition phase. Before the block editor, the theme was the main way to make sitewide changes, but themes don’t affect actual content, just styles.
    The new editor has many different “things” and the naming is confusing.
    blocks
    reusable blocks
    global styles
    style variations
    block styles
    template parts
    block patterns
    dynamic blocks versus static blocks

    Some of these are working, and some are still being developed. The definition of what a theme does with all these new things is still being worked out.

    For changing content across the site, use a dynamic “thing”.
    For changing styles across the site, use the theme options or your own custom CSS. (don’t put styles on individual “things”)

    Thread Starter pete3

    (@pete3)

    Thanks Joy. Yes, for a beginner it’s a bit confusing, but I can see the potential of all of this. For now, I guess your last sentence is an important one: do not use styles on any individual things, so changes can always be done through the theme or custom global CSS. I think the latter, in many cases ??

    I will follow this with interest. I think that if Block Patterns allow site wide layout/style changes in the future, this will be a huge improvement for website management in WordPress.

    Yes, sticking to global styling is optimal, but the way the editor has so many styling features, it’s likely not what most people will do. There is a detriment to giving the user too many options. Making changes later becomes a real problem.

    I don’t think that block patterns are going to be the way you are thinking. Right now, they are part of core, and they actually insert the pattern content into the post. My personal opinion is that this should be done with placeholders and in a dynamic way, but it is done with static content provided by the theme or plugin, so I doubt they will change how it works later.

    Thread Starter pete3

    (@pete3)

    Ok, I see what you mean. In that case it indeed seems to be a “simple” one directional copy paste with no centralized management options afterwards. That’s too bad. I hope they will give that a second thought.

    From a beginners’ perspective WordPress offers a wealth of options to create beautiful pages very quickly. Very attractive! Now my concern is what happens after creating 5000 pages if changes are needed that go beyond headers/footers and plugins with placeholders. The second word in Content Management System is crucial. It’s not just about creating, it’s about management too ??

    Perhaps I should look into the Kadence theme, which seems to offer more site wide settings than Neve (currently testing that) but still minimalistic.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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