Don’t Save Style Variation after changing Global Styles

  • Go to Appearance > Editor > Styles to see Style Variations and “Choose a different style combination for the theme styles.” Select a variation. Make a single style change (maybe add a background to header text. Save that change into the current Custom Styles.

    Now go back to the variation selection. None of them are selected. There’s no indication of which variation was used as the base for current changes. Does it matter since now we’re working on a completely different variation of our own?

    Maybe after saving your changes you want to see the site with a different variation. You choose any variation and see a Save button. It’s not clear what that means, but it doesn’t seem right. You choose the same one as before, thinking “yes, this is the one I was using”. The Save button is active. “Yes, I want this one.” Click.

    But no, you’ve now gone back to the variation.json base and changes applied to that variation are lost. It’s not obvious how to get changes back – maybe LOTS of changes that were applied over hours of time to fine-tune over the variation base.

    The solution? : Open Global Style Revisions and select the most recent Revision. But on doing the Additional CSS is gone. Is it still in history somewhere? (EDIT: Yes, I found the Additional CSS in a history revision.) What else is missing? And where is the missing stuff? The documentation doesn’t make any of this clear, and I can’t find net resources on the topic.

    This describes a serious UX issue in this area. What can I do to get some eyes on this? A GitHub ticket? Slack discussion? Did I just do it?

    I don’t know what to do with this – and That is the problem that I’d like to solve here.

    • This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by Tony G. Reason: Answer one of my questions
Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • I came here having found the same problem you have described and looking for something/a setting I mised.

    I have customised a style in twenty-twenty-four theme how I like it. Click on that style to make more edits and it has all reverted back to default. Ideally I’d like my customisations to show as a new style option, for now I just have to hope I don’t accidentally reset them ??

    I come here because as you describe @starbuck, you can spend hours customizing global styles and all it takes is one click to test another style variation and you lose everything. Indeed, when we return to the previous variation, everything is reset. I hope that will change! @steveroot you can install the Create Block Theme plugin which allows you to save customizations in a new variation. But we have to add an extension just to do that. I hope it comes native.

    Use the Create Block Theme plugin (from www.ads-software.com) in addition to creating a child theme, you can save a style variation with your current customizations. That shows up in the standard style variations. Then you can customize that and save another variation, etc. No easy UI to delete a variation as far as I can tell.

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/create-block-theme/

    Thank you @hartsook : I just discovered this plugin thanks to your answer. It just is a shame that it isn’t a native feature indeed.

    I have the exact same problem. I’ve lost 3 days of work on this and there is hardly anything found online about it. I went back and forth with support of the theme and builder I’m using and they had no idea. I even did brand new WP installs. Going side by side copying style data from an old non-wp site to the new wp-block-based site, only to lose it all at the end of the day.

    So whenever we customize a WordPress Style, save it, and then accidentally click on that style in the Layout Styles tab or in the customize Styles tab, it revert back to the default settings.

    This is utter madness! Who signed off on that?
    What’s the use of having 10 different styles you can customize and save but that revert back to the default ones and delete your custom palette and other edits??

    Why not even generate a warning first? Or allow us to store it in an external or local file?

    This is the biggest FAIL of the whole Gutenberg / Block system. How can users embrace building with blocks, which is great with Block Addons, when the core WP system after all those years is still lacking this most basic thing?

    #FAIL

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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