Block-based themes: what happens to Reading Settings?

[nickcernis]

Block-based themes and full-site editing seem to make several Reading Settings less useful (or more confusing, perhaps):

Your homepage displays

Would the user now decide what's on their homepage via a block template, instead of with this setting? It's not currently possible to build a block template that honors this setting, as far as I can see.

Blog pages show at most

Would this now be set in a block template for a blog page as the “number of items” parameter in a query block? (Same with archives.)

Again, at present I couldn't find a way to use this value in block templates.

Feed and search engine settings

• Syndication feeds show the most recent
• For each post in a feed, include
• Search Engine Visibility

These seem like they could survive, as they don't have block-based equivalents unless the settings move to a global panel in the Site Editor.

[mtias]

Initial thoughts are that when the query block is used in a template inheriting the global query (that is, not as a custom query), it should definitely reflect the main reading settings and allow changing those settings directly. It might turn out that controlling the query through the template and block settings becomes generally more intuitive to users.

[ntsekouras]

Blog pages show at most

This has been implemented for Query block here: #25674

[jameskoster]

For the front-page template could we potentially bring some of the reading settings into the Inspector?

[mtias]

@jameskoster that makes a lot of sense to me. I can also see it being useful for templates that inherit query to be able to manage some reading settings like posts per page, etc, from there.

[youknowriad]

I think these settings are now editable and reflected in the site editor. I'm closing this issue, please reopen if I'm missing anything.

[jameskoster]

@youknowriad not yet I'm afraid. The designs here are still relevant, and align with the latest work in #36951.

[scruffian]

What do you think about totally hiding reading settings for block themes?

[jameskoster]

Probably worth discussing. Communicating the interaction between reading settings, templates (Front Page and Home in particular), page contents etc. in the UI makes for a quite overwhelming experience.

It would be much simpler to just select a page in the Site Editor's Pages panel and say; "This is my homepage".

[skora-cpl]

more conversation about this is happening at #64620