Earlier this month we announced that we were giving some customers early access to Full Site Editing, a new set of powerful tools to give you more control over every aspect of your site's design. Now, we're excited to let you know Full Site Editing will be rolling out to all customers, starting today and continuing over the next few weeks.

Why we're excited (and you should be too!)

With Full Site Editing, controlling the appearance of your website is easier than ever:

  • You can now use the same tools you use to create your content to edit every part of your site. This new release lets you edit your header and footer with blocks and simply by dragging and dropping the different pieces where you want them. No coding required.
  • This release also comes with the ability to edit specific page templates from your home page to a single post, to your 404 page, and even your archive pages. What's even cooler is that you can drill down into specific template parts to edit them with more focus. 

Here's another look at Full Site Editing in action:

  • It's easier than ever to change the entire look and feel of your site with subtle changes in the Styles Editor. Set global colors and fine-tune your typography to give your entire site a consistent look and feel. 

What you need to know:

  • There is no action needed from you. Your current site(s) will not be changed and you can continue managing your site and creating your content in exactly the same way. 
  • We've been rolling this feature out to some new sites and will be switching over to all new sites in the coming days. When you start a new site, you will have a chance to choose a theme that leverages the new Full Site Editing experience. We're actively working to put together resources to help make learning those new features easier, and maybe even fun. 
  • Over the next few weeks we will be rolling out the ability to switch your existing site over to a theme that will give you access to these features. It will not be something that we do for you so watch out for that announcement and the details on how to access these new tools. 

Again, we want to make sure you know that there's no action needed from you. That's one of the major benefits of WordPress.com managed hosting after all 😉 

What you need to know about versioning and WordPress

All changes to WordPress come in what is called a release. We keep track of these changes with a numbering system called versioning. These new tools were released in the WordPress 5.9 release, which went out on January 25th. 

As with all major releases, the WordPress.com team takes a little extra time to integrate them into our platform to help ensure that all of our users have a great first experience with these exciting new features. We're excited to share these details of our rollout plan with you today so you know what to expect in the coming weeks. As always, please reach out if you have any questions!

Hungry for more?

  • Check out some of the full feature demos in the official WordPress 5.9 intro video 
  • Check out some of the detailed deep-dive content in our support docs.
  • Looking for more help with the new Full Site Editor (FSE)? Join our WordPress experts for a webinar and be among the first to learn how to use the new tools, which allow you to edit all parts of your site without the need for code! Register for free today!