Intermittent: editing the home page template creates a copy or the template and edits to the original are not saved

[chad1008]

Quick summary

This doesn't appear to effect all sites, and there's probably something triggering it I haven't seen yet. On an impacted site, editing the template for the site's front page appears to work as expected when clicking "Save" in the editor.

After refreshing the front-end it becomes clear that the changes were not saved. Reopening the template in the editor also shows it unchanged. Moreover, looking under Site Editor > templates, an effected site will find a copy of the homepage template containing the changes that were just made but not reflected on the live site.

In effect, an effected site cannot edit the homepage template, and instead ends up with an ever-growing collection of template copies all with the same name. Those copies can then be selected to be used by another page if desired.

I've only encountered this on the one site that reported it to me today (see below). Another HE in Slack (also see below for link) mentioned seeing the multiple copies effect on another site, which indicates that while it's not impacting all sites, it might be impacting more than just one.

Steps to reproduce

On an affected site, on a theme that supports Full Site Editing and has a front page template (Front Page, Blog Home, etc.). Saison is a good example, and the theme in use on the initial report.

1. Open Settings > Reading and confirm that the home page is set to display latest posts and not a static home page
2. Open Pages, and ensure you have the Calypso view active (not wp-admin)
3. At the top of the page list you should see Homepage listed above the other pages, with a note that this page uses the Blog Home (or whatever you chosen theme calls it) template
4. Click on Homepage to edit it, and the site editor should open.
5. Make whatever changes you like, and save the template
6. View the home page of the site on the front end, confirm your changes are not present
7. Look under Site Editor > Templates and filter by template author. You should see a new copy of the homepage template with your changes included.

What you expected to happen

Editing the template edits the base template, with the history of changes being tracked through revisions.

What actually happened

The actual template remains unchained and the site fills up with a copies, a new copy being created each time someone tries to save the template.

Impact

Some (< 50%)

Available workarounds?

Yes, easy to implement

If the above answer is "Yes...", outline the workaround.

Instead of relying on the template included with the theme, customers can create a static front page instead. This static page can include a Query Loop block if posts are desired.

Platform (Simple and/or Atomic)

No response

Logs or notes

Original report 9246719-zd-a8c

Related Slack thread p1736196559242919-slack-C03TY6J1A

[github-actions]

Support References

This comment is automatically generated. Please do not edit it.

• 9246719-zen