theme.json and plans for the future of Kadence Theme

  • When I saw that theme.json has made it into Kadence Theme, I wondered if/how that feature may be expanded in the future, or whether it’s even on anyone’s mind. I have my own thoughts about how I’d like to see theme.json utilized in Kadence Theme, but maybe it was introduced as a fix for a narrow issue and nothing more.

    It’s been a year since Ben Ritner’s blog post about his thoughts on the state of Full Site Editing. As time goes on, and FSE features continue to advance, I become more curious about what approach Kadence might take to bridge the gaps between legacy WordPress features and FSE. I don’t even know at this point if Kadence Theme is likely to incorporate more FSE features in the future, or if they’ll release a separate Block Theme instead.

    We support some enormous websites and need to support our theme/platform for a very extended period of time. It would be unfortunate to build a new site based on Widgets, Sidebars, and Appearance>Menus only to be stuck there long after it’s made sense to move on to Template Parts, Synced Patterns, and the new Navigation CPT.

    This has been a long post, but I’ll end by saying that it would be very much appreciated there were more communication (follow-up blog posts?) that provides insight into how Kadence might handle this transition, even if it’s at a high level and not set in stone.

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  • Hello @ericbrissette,

    I am support for Kadence and I haven’t heard much about the plans for FSE and Kadence. As fir the theme JSON file, there is a hook you can use to update the settings. Some of the core Gutenberg blocks require the theme.json file, but there aren’t really Kadence features that depend on them like templates or patterns.

    However, you can use the theme.json file as you would for other FSE themes. https://developer.www.ads-software.com/themes/global-settings-and-styles/introduction-to-theme-json/

    For example, here is a script that updates the JSON file. It adds the “blockGap” spacing support to blocks like the standard Columns block. The snippet could be a template to update other JSON settings. 

    add_filter( 'wp_theme_json_data_theme', function( $theme_json ) {
    $update_data = array(
        'version'  => 2,
        "settings" => array(
            "spacing" => array(
                "blockGap" => true,
            ), 
        ),
    );
    return $theme_json->update_with( $update_data );
}, 100 );

    However, as to, “…?if/how that feature may be expanded in the future, or whether it’s even on anyone’s mind,” support staff isn’t aware of future plans as the developers are occupied with other theme features.

    Thread Starter ericbrissette

    (@ericbrissette)

    Hi Gilbert, thank you for the response.

    My thought about theme.json was that it’d be great if the theme’s settings, especially those for typography, spacing, palette, etc, could be set from theme.json when theme.json mode is enabled.

    For a large organization or agency that wants to push settings from a code repository, or sync settings across multiple sites, or a number of subsites within a multisite network, centralizing them in a file like theme.json is so much nicer to deal with than having them stored in the database and accessed through the customizer.

    Granted, changes in this direction only make sense if Kadence Theme incorporates more FSE features in the future. Without some idea of the roadmap for Kadence Theme, it’s difficult to consider it as a solution for our projects that require long term support.

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