Font changes won’t preview in site editor

  • Unknown's avatar
    joeyaloha · Member ·

    Brand new to WordPress. Premium account. Byrne theme.

    For the life of me, I’m getting infuriated trying to change the site fonts.

    I’ve gone:

    • Appearance
    • Editor
    • Styles
    • Edit Styles (Pencil)

    Then, I’ve tried editing the header fonts both under Blocks/Heading and under Typographys/Headings.

    Literally the only thing I can change about the heading font anywhere is under Blocks/Headings, and the only thing I can change is the Font name, boldness, and decoration. Anything else I change (line height, letter case, etc.) won’t do a single thing. The interface will let me click it, but nothing previews.

    Under Typography/Headings, zero out of zero things will change. If I change the font for all headings (or even just a single one like H2), nothing reflects. Literally nothing about it.

    If I save from the editor (while the UI looks like it saves my selections), the final site still matches the preview… meaning NO CHANGES AT ALL to my fonts (other than the few things I can do under Blocks/Headings).

    What is going on? I’m about to abandon WordPress.com and switch to Squarespace.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    joeyaloha · Member ·

    In particular, for example, Byrne seems to default all the headlines to all-caps. I want to change this to not alter the capitalization. Nothing I do in the site editor seems to make this stick in the preview.

  • staff-95percentghost · Staff ·

    Hi! Just to check, are you still seeing headings in uppercase? I had a look at your Site Editor but at the moment it looks like the post titles aren’t currently showing in uppercase; and I was testing Byrne on a test site but couldn’t exactly replicate the issue.

    For the Site Title in the top left of the Byrne theme, I had a look using my test site and it seems to explicitly have the uppercase set for this specific instance of this specific block – this will override the overall style settings.

    Feel free to let us know if there’s any specific examples of things you’d like to change so we can take a look and help you get that done!

  • Unknown's avatar
    joeyaloha · Member ·

    Hey @staff-95percentghost, this proved correct!

    It was excruciating for me as a first-time WordPress user (but very experienced with design tools in general), trying to figure out the difference between site-wide styles and things unique to individual blocks, because the UI is so

    I have two small recommendations for you guys to pass on that would dramatically help first-time users like me:

    • On your built-in themes: Make sure the “default sample” top block on the home page of every built-in theme doesn’t override many styles, so that first-time users can understand what the site-wide styles are doing.
      • Where various “default sample” top blocks do tweak the site-wide styles, use the text of the block to describe what it’s doing and how to change it.
        • E.g., “In this block, we’ve overridden the site-wide styles to make the headings all-caps. You can change the site-wide styles by clicking ABC and edit this block’s overrides by clicking XYZ”
    • In your WordPress UI: It took me, no-joke, 3+ hours to recognize that (in the Site Editor) I could edit the formatting of a block by clicking the sidebar (“Settings”?) button (in the top nav) after selecting a block. And that I could swap back and forth between the individual block formatting and the site-wide styles by alternately clicking the nav buttons for the sidebar/settings and for the styles.
      • There should be a button (that could just say “Edit”) in the context-sensitive pop-up toolbar for each block that, when clicked, would automatically open the sidebar when it’s clicked. I spent hours before I realized clicking the sidebar button on the top nav (!) would do this. The “Edit” button could even just be included under the context-toolbar “…” menu so it doesn’t take up as much space. It would’ve saved me hours, and I almost gave up WordPress in the first few hours, because I was so confused.
  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Hey, thanks for this, @joeyaloha. I’ll share it with some folks who work on the WordPress project; it’s good to have some fresh eyes and candid feedback!

    In the meantime, these videos / articles on the block editor and site editor can help you get a feel for things, including features you might not have noticed yet, and which could save you time going forward. And if you have the time, I’d highly recommend checking out our webinars.

    And, if you get stuck on anything or need help, we are here to help! Your plan comes with direct support, so feel free to reach out there or continue working with us in the forums community. Cheers!

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