With the release of WordPress 5.7 and the updates 5.71 and 5.7.2, the move towards what wordpress.org calls The Big Picture is getting closer.
WordPress 5.7 is now available for download and updating your WordPress website.
According to wordpress.org the most prestigious project right now for WordPress is the development of the so called Full Site Editing capabilities in WordPress.
Some beta features of Full Site Editing capabilities should have been included in WordPres 5.6.
But the WordPress core team decided to postpone this for the release of WordPress 5.7.
WordPress 5.7 – Full Site Editing?
There is no Full Site Editing capabilities in the version 5.7 release.
But the groundwork for preparing both the WordPress core and especially the Gutenberg plugin has been laid with this release.
Full Site Editing means editing ALL elements of a WordPress website.
Elements like the header, the footer, the content (including sidebars) and more using Gutenberg Blocks.
Before the concept of Full Site Editing was developed the only way to influence elements outside the content regions of a WordPress website, was by either coding it yourself or later (from mid-2010s) by using a Page Builder.
WordPress shortcomings and the challenge of Page Builders
The concept of Full Site Editing has been developed out of necessity.
WordPress has always been and to this day still is a bit awkward to use.
Widgets, shortcodes, meta boxes and settings were not always easy nor logical to set up and there were many shortcomings.
This forced developers to either rely on non-core frameworks or reinvent the wheel.
The wast number of third-party add-ons (especially plugins) for WordPress is at the same time the strength and the curse of WordPress.
The updating nightmare of WordPress is a direct result of this.
Being a somewhat aging ecosystem WordPress found itself in the mid-2010s under severe influence of third-party solutions.
Users in increasing numbers turned away from native WordPress frontend design and began a massive move towards the increasingly popular Page Builders for WordPress frontend design.
Theme developers followed along and started developing themes based on Page Builders.
By 2017-2018 WordPress had become more of a platform based on Page Builders than on any native principle.
… and that was the state of the Word… untill Matt Mullenweg and his disciples decided to do something about it.
Gutenberg and Blocks!
In 2018 WordPress 5.0 that included the then new block-based editor called Gutenberg saw the day of light.
Since then the Gutenberg plugin has been developed as a native plugin for WordPress and WordPress core includes a block based editor.
At first the entire WordPress community went ballistic and divided the community into Block-believers and Block-haters.
Matt Mulleweg and the Core Team stood their ground firmly strongly believing in the new concept.
Today (without knowing it for sure) it seems that WordPress has re-taken some of the ground lost to Page Builders.
Although Matt Mullenweg has been quite clear that the Gutenberg/Block editor project never was meant to be against the Page Builders.
He still sees a role for Page Builders to play in the new Block based WordPress reality.
Blocks can be used for everything
Although users will still be able to customize many things using the Customizer, the Big Picture is about using Blocks for everything.
The Gutenberg project is not just about the development of Blocks for content creation and editing – or for laying out pages andf posts.
Gutenberg and the Block Editor is part of the move towards Full Site Editing.
The Big Picture is about creating and editing all aspects, (Content, Headers, Footers) of a WordPress website using blocks.
The Big Picture is about developing block-based WordPress themes.Full Site EditingThe Big Picture
