How do I add one of the theme's ready-made sections to a page?

Full Site Editing 3 min read

The sections you see on a theme's demo pages, a hero, a list of services, a FAQ, are patterns: groups of blocks the theme registers so you can drop them into any page. Inserting one puts a copy on the page, and from then on it is ordinary content.

#Insert a pattern

Open the page in the editor

Open the page from Pages, or click into a template in AppearanceEditor.

Open the Patterns tab

Click Block Inserter, the plus button at the top left. The panel opens with three tabs: Blocks, Patterns and Media. Click Patterns.

Pick a section

Choose a category to narrow the list, or type in the search box. Click a pattern. It appears on the page where your cursor was, made of the same blocks you would add by hand.

Replace the demo content and save

Change the text, the images and the links, then click Save. Nothing you change reaches other pages: the pattern was copied in.

#See every pattern on the site

AppearanceEditorPatterns lists all of them. Patterns the theme ships carry a lock icon: they are part of the theme and cannot be edited there, only inserted. To keep a section of your own for reuse, build it on a page, select its blocks and create a pattern from them, or click Add Pattern on the Patterns screen. The patterns documentation on wordpress.org covers both.

#Synced and not synced

Each pattern on the Patterns screen is marked Synced or Not synced. A not synced pattern is copied each time you insert it, which is what the theme's patterns do. A synced pattern is one shared block: edit it anywhere, and every page that uses it changes. Use synced patterns for things that must stay identical, such as a call to action repeated on several pages, and plain ones for layouts you will rewrite.

#Questions

Will a theme update change the sections I already inserted?

No. An inserted pattern is part of your page content, so updates to the theme's pattern only affect pages where you insert it again.

The pattern looks different on my page than on the demo

A pattern brings its blocks, not the demo's images or settings, and it takes the site's current colors and fonts from Styles. Replace the placeholder images, and check where colors and fonts went if the colors are not the ones you expect.

Can I add a pattern to every page at once?

Put it in the template rather than in each page: open the template at AppearanceEditorTemplates and insert the pattern there. Every page that uses the template shows it.

#If the Patterns tab is empty

A theme that registers no patterns shows only the WordPress core ones, and some plugins hide pattern categories. If the theme's patterns are missing after an update, clear any caching plugin and reload the editor. Still empty? Open a support request and say which theme version you run.

#Still stuck

Open a support ticket and say what you tried and where it stopped. Your product, your domain, a screenshot and the exact message you saw are usually enough to settle it in one reply.

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