This is part of my WordPress Explorations series where I’m exploring new, far out, ideas about WordPress.
Pages & Layers
Almost every time I watch someone unfamiliar with WordPress using it, I see the same thing: they want to add a page while editing another and have no idea how to do it.
Most will see the big plus button at the top. Makes sense—it’s prominent, it signals “add something.” But when they select it, they get blocks, patterns, and media. No pages.
So where are pages?
To view your other pages, you have two options, depending on where you are in WordPress. From a single page editor view, you need to leave the editor entirely and go back to WordPress Admin. Or if you’re editing from the site editor, you close the editing canvas and navigate to the Pages view, then re-enter the editor from one of those, like this:
You can’t easily move between pages to make changes, and you can’t clearly add new ones. The interface doesn’t make this fundamental action particularly obvious.
The Exploration
By having sidebars that are constantly in-and-out of view, WordPress creates a frame-of-reference problem. When you lose track of where you are, it’s surprisingly hard to get back.
This exploration centers on a persistent sidebar in the editor—a new kind of “List View”—with tabs for Pages and Layers. You can search and navigate between pages to start editing right off, or add new ones.
No diving in-and-out of the editor. Just one experience.
I imagine there would still be a table view of all pages higher up in the WordPress navigational hierarchy—useful for bulk actions, filtering, or managing pages at scale. But for the day-to-day work of editing and moving between pages, this keeps you in flow.
Why This Matters
I expect this to reduce the mental load of using WordPress. Pages become as available as content itself. You never lose your place, and you can add new pages right off.
Thoughts? Leave a comment or join the conversation on X.
You may have noticed there are other ideas baked into this that I’m still exploring—I’ll share more as I work through them. Again, consider this “thinking out loud”, not a formal proposal.
Check out the WordPress Explorations series to see what else I’m thinking about.
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