The Test Team helps manage testing and triage across the WordPress ecosystem. They focus on user testing of the editing experience and WordPress dashboard, replicating and documenting bug reports, and supporting a culture of review and triage across the project.
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This post is a summary of the Momery Makeover call for testing for the FSE outreach program, the twenty-fourth effort. As always, I want to highlight those who helped to bring others along with them in this latest effort:
InstaWP for allowing the outreach program to use their tooling for free, enabling more folks to jump into this call for testing and for more creativity in what we are able to test.
Thank you to @bph and @ndiego for covering for two weeks of this call for testing when I was out on vacation. Your coverage made my break possible!
High level summary
Since this call for testing took place during the early stages of an iterative process, several aspects of the feedback provided have already been swiftly addressed, thanks to ongoing development for WordPress 6.3. The relatively limited amount of bugs received and feedback aligning with feature development reflects a level of solidness in the direction of recent improvements. These improvements encompassed a range of features, such as the ability to rename menus in Site View, add template parts directly from the Site View, publish pages, and introduce additional interface enhancements to improve the template vs content editing experience. Notably, Style RevisionsRevisionsThe WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. proved to be significantly more intuitive compared to the code view available for Templates and Template Parts.
@paaljoachim shared a video of his experience going through the call for testing if you’re looking to get a sense of a test contributor’s experience in more detail:
Bugs
The following bugs were all reported before this call for testing, reflecting known issues and showing a level of stability in the breadth of new features added to the Site Editor experience:
Right now we can use a Post ExcerptExcerptAn excerpt is the description of the blog post or page that will by default show on the blog archive page, in search results (SERPs), and on social media. With an SEO plugin, the excerpt may also be in that plugin’s metabox. or Post Content. Post Content is the whole entire post in the Editor, but the post up to the “More BlockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.” on the front end. This is the behavior that I expect on the front end. But I would really like the Editor to not show the entire post! It just makes the Queries too long.
When I created a new page by way of creating a draft page. I found that a draft page creation option was missing if I tried to create it under the Menu sidebarSidebarA sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme.https://s.id/1Nh2y. However, it showed up if I tried to add a non-existent page link via the Navigation block https://s.id/1NgZg.
Many of the feature requests tie in nicely with work either completed or currently underway (marked as “In the 6.3 board”). Across most of the following issues, the ability to access exactly what one wants in the Site Editor as a whole acts as a through point, whether when clicking “Edit Site” from the admin bar or trying to search for specific things with the Command Palette. Building into phase 3, the Template Part and Template revisions were seen as subpar in comparison to the new experience offered by Style revisions.
I went out of the site editor and found the blog page in the Pages screen. Viewed it. Then clicked Edit Site. I expected to have the Home template open up but instead clicking Edit Site on the frontend will only open the Front Page template, and not the template related to the specific page I am on.
I feel uncomfortable to roll-back template changes using the provided revision states located at the bottom of a particular template tab. The reason for this discomfort is that the revision states appear to be too raw. Since we rarely used the Code editor in building a site/pages in the Site Editor, seeing loads of HTMLHTMLHTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. block codes as reference points to roll back to feels unfamiliar within our current workflow.
I had to go to the side menu to change the Page template why from the About page I didn’t see the option to Edit the template page. I found the option when I changed to Contact page by chance. The solution? I don’t know which is the better option. Maybe that open right side bar by default when we change a page or template. Or open and close to see that this appears here. Or in the wizard (I don’t saw the wizard).
When typing in ‘page’ into the command centre – I didn’t expect ‘add new page’ to be the first item – rather than the ‘page’ template. Is this weighted in some way? It may just be me.
Part of the call for testing instructions included replacing a template part and creating a new menu, both of which caused some confusion. Each experience has improved with additional functionality added to the Site View for each respective section (Patterns, Menus). Outside of that, it’s worth noting that with Reusable blocks being consolidated into Patterns overall, a bug with Reusable blocks now has a wider spread impact. Currently, if you convert a set of blocks into a Pattern, the align full or align wide options are removed, leading to what feels like a broken experience by design since the alignment/flex position depends on the container. This is likely to come up as a broader piece of feedback. The Navigation block continues to receive feedback around the desire to have an easier and more consistent way to rename, regardless of where you are editing a menu (sidebar, in editor, in Site View).
Desire for simplified dimension controls for Columns block.
Finally, a few folks mentioned issues with the Post Content block that wasn’t replicable in later versions released after the call for testing.
I think creating a reusable block or a template part from the Site editor should be possible. People using the Site editor probably will know the difference. I like the idea of making things clear, but I’m not 100% convinced. I prefer to have a place to be able to edit everything, including content, and the other just for content.
I first tried to “Replace the Footer”, and while it added a new footer in the Home Template, it had a different name in the Library > Manage All Template Parts. It didn’t change the existing Footer into the new one which was what I expected from “Replace Footer”. Later I realized that this did exactly what it was supposed to do – create a new Footer to use.
Create a reusable block. NB! Before creating a Reusable block I had a full width block. After the conversion to a Reusable block the alignment controls went away and it seems that the block went to a no alignment. How do I have the Reusable block in full width alignment?
When I go to add three columns with the Columns block, I have the option to give the gap space between columns and I have the padding default left and right padding in each column. I am confused. I think that if I have gap option, should not have padding or reverse.
When searching for pages in the command centre – there was a slight delay before they showed as results – but there was no visual indicator that anything was happening.
