Add an option to configure the site icon in general settings

[jameskoster]

In WordPress 5.9 the Customizer is disabled when using a block theme (unless a plugin re-enables it).

Since the Customizer is currently the only place to set a site icon, this means that once 5.9 lands, if you are using a block theme there will be no way to manage your site icon option.

I propose adding a section to handle this in the General settings section of wp-admin.

[audrasjb]

Thanks for spotting this @jameskoster!

It sounds like we have two choices here: add this site icon option in any case or add it only when a block theme is used.

[jameskoster]

Seems fair to make the option available regardless? Otherwise it might be confusing if you want to update your site icon after switching from a block theme to a classic theme.

[andraganescu]

there will be no way to manage your site icon option.

In a block theme the we have the site logo block and from the template itself we can change other options. I find it weird that only the site icon is relegated to the options page. Isn't there any room for this to be managed in the site editor?

In the customizer there is some cropping/previewing happening once you select a site icon so this should be accounted for as well in tthe options page, the upload form element is not enough.

[spacedmonkey]

Related: #52321

[jameskoster]

I find it weird that only the site icon is relegated to the options page. Isn't there any room for this to be managed in the site editor?

There is a PR (​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35892) to make it possible to set the Site Icon while working with the Site Logo block. But since the Site Icon doesn't appear on the site itself, a dedicated block would be inappropriate.

Therefore a dedicated site settings interface needs to exist in the Site Editor before we can think about making it possible to edit the Site Icon therein. I think we will need such an interface for managing home page settings and so on, but none of that has been designed yet.

[andraganescu]

Am I totally wrong in thinking ​the PR should be enough? For now block themes can only set site icon to be the same with site logo. That is really not so bad.

By adding a stop gap solution, IMO we just seem to create more cruft:

• Will the site icon setting in settings remain for classic themes or would it only appear if there is a block theme active?
• Either way it's not great that we're _adding_ things for temporary reasons.
• If we add it, and it works for both classic and block themes, we'd have yet another thing which can be achieve in two places.
• If we add it, and it works for block themes only, it will be confusing when a user saw it there and then it's gone.

Also what will happen to this setting once we do have the option to set it in the site editor? I assume it will remain and continue to set the site icon. But at that time we'd have three different implementations of code that sets the site icon: customizer (works only for classic themes), options page (works for both kinds of themes) and site editor settings page (works only for block themes). The setting itself however is shared across theme kinds, only the interface to set it wildly changes based on context.

So I say let's not add this setting to settings. It should have been added when it was coded in the customizer. Now however, seems to me we're just adding, as I said, cruft.

[jameskoster]

Am I totally wrong in thinking the PR should be enough? For now block themes can only set site icon to be the same with site logo. That is really not so bad.

If your block theme happens to utilise the Site Logo block then that PR will make the discrete flow for setting the site icon awkward at best. If no Site Logo block is present then the flow is almost entirely undiscoverable. I'd say that is quite bad.

I don't really see this as a temporary solution, unless you consider the entire wp-admin settings views to be temporary, which is another discussion altogether.

Also what will happen to this setting once we do have the option to set it in the site editor?

You can ask this question about all settings. What about the site name, tagline, etc? You can set those in the Site Editor, so should we remove them from Settings? I would say no, but acknowledge it is a bridge we're not ready to cross just yet. In the mean time we need to ensure that existing Customizer functionality (like setting the Site Icon) is at least moderately discoverable when that feature is disabled.

[kjellr]

It seems reasonable to me to place this here, next to the site title + tagline fields. We've traditionally displayed them alongside each other in the Customizer, and if I couldn't find a place for this control in the Site Editor UI, I think Settings > General is the first place I'd look.

[shaunandrews]

I agree with Jay; This wouldn't be temporary, nor would it be for block-based themes only.

Requiring people to edit a template (which is likely the only place a logo block would exist, if at all) seems unhelpful and not at all obvious.

[andraganescu]

Current Customizer UI

[andraganescu]

Excellent then. If a site icon exists should we display the same UI that the Customizer has?

[jameskoster]

Yeah I think it makes sense to re-use as much as we can 👍

[webcommsat]

While there is further discussion on this ticket to achieve a great solution, adding a note for documentation/ marcomms awareness.
Customizer is often the place where less experienced site users update things like this. If it does not go into 5.9, it would be worth having easily accessible documentation / FAQ on what to do if you are using the block editor and want to add/ edit the site icon.

UPDATE with info from @poena that no one has built a way to re-enable it as yet with the block editor / global styles, that is why the change is needed. Re-adding the customizer menu item was reverted.

[mkaz]

Thanks @webcommsat - I'm starting to track documentation and added it to the list here:
​https://github.com/orgs/WordPress/projects/11/views/4

[poena]

Would it be enough, short term, to have link from this settings page to the customizer option?

[andraganescu]

Investigated this a bit.

The Customizer has the site icon functionality as a control, but not a standalone one unfortunately: it is a special case of the cropped image control, which is itself a special case of the image control.

Reusing that implementation in the settings page is nearly impossible as we suffer from the "bananna -> gorilla holding the bananna -> entire jungle" problem. The UI is also wired to the customizer in terms of interactivity and CSS.

The settings admin section is quite lean. To replicate how setting the site icon behaves a new cropping and preview functionality should be added, which is a lot for one thing, which already exists in the Customizer for classic themes. I have not investigated thorroughly enough to see if there is some simple approach that I miss, but implementing a good UX will add quite a lot of stuff to the general settings part.

Therefore this ticket, IMO, is not just duplicating a feature, but instead a new implementation for a new context of this site icon feature. I believe that to make the most of it we should implement it keeping in mind how to turn this later in whatever Gutenberg will need for its settings panel, so maybe a REST site icon thing is good to have.

Given the above, this would be more worth it if - and I doubt it - these admin settings forms will not be later superseded by Site Editor settings panels and other related functionality. Otherwise it is a temporary solution in terms of usefulness, with potentially a lot of stuff required to be crammed in.

I agree with @jameskoster 's view that we should not remove settings because the site editor can set them. But to duplicate settings because the site editor can't set them yet is a different thing in my mind.

[jameskoster]

But to duplicate settings because the site editor can't set them yet is a different thing in my mind.

The thing is, it isn't a duplication. When a block theme is active the Customizer is hidden, which means the only way to set the site icon is through an awkward flow in the Site Logo block.

This issue seeks to make it easy to manage the site icon when a block theme is active.

Apologies if this is a short-sighted suggestion, but wan we not use something like the Featured Image interface in the classic editor? That allowed you to upload, choose, and edit (crop) images all via the media library modal.

[kjellr]

I understand the technical reasons for not wanting to adding this in, but sending folks to the Customizer to edit this single setting is a really confusing user experience. I don't believe we can link directly to just this field in the Customizer, so when they land there, they're going to see two controls they've just navigated away from in the General settings UI (Site Title and Tagline).

Beyond that though, they'll end up in a totally different UI just to modify a single setting that's generally of minor importance. It seems like this would be the only entry-point to the Customizer that's still visible in the UI by default in 5.9, correct? It seems really weird to keep it around just for that.

[shaunandrews]

Given the above, this would be more worth it if - and I doubt it - these admin settings forms will not be later superseded by Site Editor settings panels and other related functionality. Otherwise it is a temporary solution in terms of usefulness, with potentially a lot of stuff required to be crammed in.

I don't understand why you think this would be temporary? I foresee the need to have a way to change a site's icon without having to use the visual site editor; Just like someone can edit a site's title or tagline without the need to use the site editor.

Involving the customizer as a solution is temporary. Creating a way to edit a site's icon _without_ the customizer or the site editor is the preferred solution for now, and the foreseeable future.

[stacimc]

Creating a way to edit a site's icon _without_ the customizer or the site editor is the preferred solution for now, and the foreseeable future.

I agree with @shaunandrews. The flow to set the Icon through the Site Logo block is not sufficient. The block only has an option to sync the Icon with the Logo. At the moment I have help text which links the user to the customizer (for now) to further edit the icon.

The logic to sync the logo and icon from the block is non-trivial, so if there's interest in moving that PR forward as part of this issue I'd love to get some more eyes on it: ​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35892

That complexity is maybe another reason to +1 adding an option elsewhere/temporarily involving the customizer.

[audrasjb]

Moving to milestone 6.0 as today is 5.9 beta 1.

[kafleg]

#54630 was marked as a duplicate.

[andraganescu]

@shaunandrews I think it will be temporary in terms of usefulness as I am looking at explorations such as ​this one around surfacing site navigation and combining that with reusable block management, global styles. It's likely many settings will find a home in various panels or via blocks. I wonder for the user of a full block theme what is the point in sending them to the settings screen to update something which will then be reflected across the site in the header and the favicon, and do so saving directly to the live site.

I also believe there is a very small number of "settings" that won't be absorbed by the editor, so the usefulness of having them in a separate unpreviewable form will get ever lower.

[Suresh Shinde]

#55487 was marked as a duplicate.

[peterwilsoncc]

The ​Gutenberg pull request mentioned earlier in this discussion as an upstream fix has since been merged and is included in WP 5.9.

The site editor links to the relevant page in the customizer to allow admins to set an icon.

As this was reported upstream, I will close it as such. The issue referenced was ​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/30406

[critterverse]

Hey all — just wanted to reopen this issue because I find the current flow of linking to the Customizer to be very weird/confusing from a user experience perspective. Can we look at adding an option to configure the site icon in the General settings section of wp-admin as discussed above?

[clubkert]

I find the current flow of linking to the Customizer to be very weird/confusing from a user experience perspective.

I'd like to +1 this comment.

I found this issue because I am writing a guide on how to set the site icon using our FSE theme. For what seems like it should be a simple task, the steps are actually quite complex.

[heymehedi]

I think adding the site icon in general settings would be good choice. Hope it will be available soon.

Currently I am changing the icon by switching to other theme, after adding the icon switched back to current theme.

[mikeschroder]

I find the current flow of linking to the Customizer to be very weird/confusing from a user experience perspective.

I read through the history here after a kind ping from @annezazu and wanted to also add a +1 to this.

Do I understand correctly that currently the only way to modify the Site Icon with a Block Theme is through the Site Logo block?

It seems like there is general consensus that it's a good idea to add it to Settings -> General as well, and I agree that's where I'd go to find it, given the current state of things.

It would be ideal if this were not a link to the Customizer, but I think it would improve things for users even if that turned out to be the case, given the discoverability issues around users finding the Site Logo block method. If we were to go that route, we could remove / change it when someone has the bandwidth to write something new.

In either case, I've messaged the #core-media channel (linked above) to find out if anyone has the bandwidth for any exploration here, or maybe some additional technical ideas on how to approach the problem.

[paaljoachim]

It would be great to get some movement in this ticket. As this is one feature that is easy to handle through the customizer but when the customizer is not available as with Full Site themes it right away becomes more difficult. Adding the option and syncing the favicon between the customizer and the WordPress Setting -> General screen would be helpful.

[h71]

Site icon settings in the setting page

[h71]

Here's my take:

It makes sense to handle the 'Site Icon' and 'Site Title' in the same way. So, adding a way to upload the 'Site Icon' in the main settings could be a good move.

The settings page isn't as visually focused as the customizer, so we don't really need a preview. A simpler solution (considering the implementation complexity) could be to add a file upload button on the settings page, allow for cropping, save the settings, and then check how it looks in the web browser.

On the other hand, this is the first setting that involves media, images, or uploads. I'm not entirely sure if a basic file upload button will be suitable if there will be more similar options in the future.

[jorbin]

@h71 That looks pretty good, but I think it might be best to copy over some of the experience from the customizer such as:

1) Instead of an upload button, make it a target that an image can be dropped in OR that you can open up the media library

2) When one is uploaded, we should display it (I like the way the customizer makes use of displaying both the image and a preview of what a tab in the browser will look like) and also the option to remove the icon or the option to replace it.