I love WordPress block themes.
I think they're one of the biggest technical achievements in WordPress over the last decade. They give us consistency, flexibility, global styles, design systems, and an incredible amount of control. As someone building on top of WordPress every day, I wouldn't want to go back.
But…
I'm increasingly convinced that the Site Editor will never be beginner friendly.
Not because it's badly designed.
Not because the people building it aren't incredibly talented.
But because of the mental model.
The Site Editor is a bit like Photoshop.
Photoshop is an amazing piece of software. If you're prepared to learn about layers, masks, smart objects, and blend modes, you can create almost anything.
Most people don't want to learn any of that.
They just want to make a birthday invitation.
That's why Canva became huge. It didn't beat Photoshop by being more powerful. It won by making powerful design feel approachable.
I think WordPress has the same challenge.
Beginners don't wake up wanting to understand templates, template parts, patterns, synced patterns, global styles, and style variations.
They wake up wanting to move a picture.
Or change some text.
Or make three boxes sit next to each other.
The architecture isn't the problem. It's one of WordPress's greatest strengths.
The problem is that we're asking beginners to think like WordPress instead of letting WordPress think like beginners.
That's why I've been experimenting with Gogh, a Canva-like layer built on top of Gutenberg. It doesn't replace block themes or the Site Editor. It simply lets beginners work in a way that feels natural, while still saving real WordPress blocks underneath.
You can read more about that experiment here:
https://www.pootlepress.com/2026/07/i-built-a-canva-like-page-builder-for-wordpress-with-fable/
Maybe I'm wrong.
I'd love to see the Site Editor become something complete beginners enjoy using.
I just think we're solving a Photoshop problem, when most beginners are looking for Canva.
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