Page Layouts Missing When Creating A New Page

[Ashleigh-bit]

Quick summary

When a user goes to create a new page, there are very few options for layouts, across all categories.

Steps to reproduce

1. Go to pages.
2. Add new page.
3. A pop-up appears with page layouts; browse through page categories.

What you expected to happen

Expected there to be many page layouts for each category.

What actually happened

There are only a few page layouts for each of the categories.

Impact

All

Available workarounds?

No but the platform is still usable

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

No response

Platform (Simple and/or Atomic)

Simple, Atomic

Logs or notes

9198418-zd-a8c

[github-actions]

OpenAI suggested the following labels for this issue:

• [Feature Group] Content Management: The issue pertains to the tools and screens that admins use to manage their site's content, specifically page layout options.
• [Feature] Post/Page Editor: The described problem is directly related to the functionality of editing and creating new pages, which involves the page editor.
• [Feature] Appearance & Themes: This label fits as the issue revolves around the appearance options available for page layouts, which is a core part of themes on the platform.

[github-actions]

Support References

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

• 9198418-zen

[ramonjd]

Here's what I'm seeing. There are a couple of categories with just one pattern:

Kapture.2024-12-30.at.17.33.11.mp4

The others have several, however. What's meant by "very few" here? Should there be more than what's in the video?

[valterlorran]

I discussed this briefly with @Ashleigh-bit, and I understood her concern, which was based on the list she sees on her site not matching what we have displayed on our docs: https://wordpress.com/support/wordpress-editor/page-layouts/

However, this is a dynamic list, and it changes from time to time, as we can see in this PR. I also reviewed the code and checked it more deeply, and I couldn't find anything wrong with it.

I will close this, but feel free to reopen if you have any other issues.

[jp-imagines]

@valterlorran Do you know if there's any recorded history of changes made to the list of available page layouts? I believe those come from https://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1/ptk/patterns/en (specifically anything with a category of page), but I definitely recall there being more available in the past. It seems odd to me that we'd remove so many patterns from the new page layout modal – enough that the customer from the original issue report noticed the change.

I'm all for removing patterns no one used or that maybe don't reflect current design best practices, but I'm curious if there's any info on when or why patterns were removed from the list. 🤔

[valterlorran]

Hey @jp-imagines, thanks for reinforcing this. You're right; that's the correct endpoint, but the patterns come from the posts, so it's a little difficult to pinpoint the changes. I will re-open this ticket and try to get more context from the people who work more closely with it.

[valterlorran]

I started this thread(p1735647743805429-slack-CRWCHQGUB) on Slack to try to get more context on this.

[madhusudhand]

I investigated the issue, and following is my understanding. It needs to be further checked.

The page pattern data seems to be coming from the jetpack plugin.
They are registered here,

const {
	templates: patterns = [],
	tracksUserData,
	screenAction,
} = window.starterPageTemplatesConfig ?? {};

and they are set in the jetpack here

wp_add_inline_script(
	$handle,
	"var starterPageTemplatesConfig = $config;",
	'before'
);