STEM / STEAM: Learning WordPress Full Site Editing (FSE)

UPDATE August 25, 2022: All three of my blogs (TechyMike.com, ForCarol.org (this site), and TracyReaderDad.com) have been set-up with Full Site Editing (FSE) and have been working well for the past several months.

Feel free to read on, however, for some interesting recent history about learning Full Site Editing (meaning you can now design your own themes).

Full Site Editing (FSE) is going to change how I use themes on WordPress. In addition, it will allow me to return ForCarol.org / ForCarol.com to WordPress.com, since I will have a….self-designed….”theme” that does everything I need it to do……and more.

Returning to WordPress.com is VERY good thing since, well……dot com rocks. It is stable, safe…… and I have 13 or more years invested there.

Motivation for Learning FSE

In the summer of 2021, I learned that “Premium” themes would no longer be supported on WordPress.com. 😦

For two of my blogs, TechyMike.com and TracyReaderDad.com that was not a problem since simpler themes would do just fine.

However, ForCarol.com (ForCarol.org) has more stringent theme requirements:

On ForCarol, I need (want), at least:

Room for our own header
A slider for the lastest Scholarship Winners
Featured posts for STEM / STEAM
A nice area where readers can easily find: Movie Reviews, Trailers, Scholarship Winners, Fun, etc
A nicely located, and large enuf to read….Menu
A Search capability on the top for mobile users to access easily.

The non-premium themes left on WordPress.com did not do what I needed, so I moved ForCarol.com to Bluehost where I could purchase (again!!!) the Broadsheet / Chronicle themes I was using on dot com.

Fast forward…….Six or so months later…..along comes the ability for me to design my own “theme” using Full Site Editing on WordPress 5.9 in conjunction with the new block oriented Twenty Twenty Two theme.

As such…..starting on Jan 28, 2022…..

I signed up for a NEW WordPress.com free site and selected the block theme Twenty Twenty Two so I could practice Full Site Editing. All this is BETA, so it will change as I learn, but, hey…..thats the fun of technology!

See the site below, but, note that within the first hour WordPress spam sofware mistakenly took it down, so if it is not there, wait a day while I get the WordPress Security Team to get the site working again.

UPDATE: Excited about implementing FSE…..I moved ForCarol.com back to WordPress.com on Feb 6, 2022. As soon as FSE gets out of Beta, I will update ForCarol.com to the new design (See the link below) 🙂

TechyMikeTestsStuff.wordpress.com

Again…..everything (FSE and the theme) are still in beta so everything you see on my new test site is fluid as I learn and test and adapt to changes.

The web site pretty rough right now, so be kind. I turned off comments anyway.

Here are some screenshots of this afternoons site. It has changed, and will change regularly until I figure out how to use Full Site Editing. But at least you can get an idea of where I am headed (the list above is my guide). Read the pics left to right….

Here are a few screenshots of my latest design….