Theme: Twenty Twenty-Two, Archeo, Pendant - Simple sites missing Featured Image function

[sophiegyo]

Quick summary

Featured Image function is missing in the block editor, for pages, posts and custom post types like Jetpack portfolio.

NOTE: I also reliably replicated this with Archeo theme and Pendant theme on a Simple site.
I don't know if there are other FSE themes which don't include it.

Affects:

SIMPLE sites only, with theme Twenty Twenty-Two active.
Could not replicate on self-hosted, or Atomic, with or without the Gutenberg plugin active, while still using Twenty Twenty-Two.

I'm pretty sure this is a bug, not a feature. The theme showcase page for Twenty Twenty-Two mentions featured images:
https://wordpress.com/theme/twentytwentytwo

Steps to reproduce

1. Start at any Simple wpcom site URL
2. Activate theme Twenty Twenty-Two
3. Try to add a new page, post, portfolio project, testimonial
4. Try to add a featured image to your post

What you expected to happen

The post/page/portfolio project/testimonial should have an option to add a featured image.

What actually happened

No option appears:

Also missing 'Featured Image' panel from editor preferences:

The option to add a Featured Image is just flat out not there.
No errors in the browser console. It's just not added in.

Context

Customer report - 36047244-hc and follow-up 5367728-zen

Simple, Atomic or both?

Simple

Theme-specific issue?

Twenty Twenty-Two
Archeo
Pendant

I haven't found any others so far.

Browser, operating system and other notes

Firefox v 102 on Mac OS 11.6
Chrome 103.0 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

Reproducibility

Consistent

Severity

All

Available workarounds?

No but the platform is still usable

Workaround details

The only workaround I can find is to change theme.

[Joshgrygiel]

📌 SCRUBBING

• Tested on P2 - N/A
• Tested on Simple ✅
• Tested on AT ✅
• Tested on Self-hosted ✅
• Replicable on Core - No

📌 FINDINGS/SCREENSHOTS/VIDEO

• I can confirm while having Twenty Twenty-Two, Archeo, or Pendant active on a simple site, there is no option to set a featured image for any taxonomy type:

• I further tested on Self Hosted/AT and the option to add a featured image is displayed as normal:
  

• Definitely appears to be a bug as I'd expect the Featured Image option to be apparent regardless of whether the site is AT/Simple/SH.

📌 ACTIONS

• Marked as Triaged for Quality Squad review
• Transferred to Themes

[Robertght]

I believe this might be a combo between Jetpack's Portfolio post type and the themes, but I cannot pinpoint if that's changed in a recent Jetpack update or not.

cc @jeherve or @karenalma

[sophiegyo]

I was wondering if that was the case too, but it doesn't make sense to me that *some* FSE themes don't show the Featured Image function, but others do - I didn't look at all of them but to compare, Meraki, Antonia, and Heiwa are all FSE themes and work just fine. Could it be that the other two I saw are based off of Twenty Twenty-Two framework (I know they're not child themes, but I assume there has to be a link between them), while the ones which do work are based off of, say, Blockbase or Blank Canvas (which also have the Featured Image function working correctly on Simple)?

[jeherve]

Interestingly, I cannot seem to reproduce on a simple site with Twenty Twenty Two right now. I do however use the wp-admin editor. I wonder if the problem may be limited to the iFramed editor in Calypso? Do you still miss the Featured Image panel when trying to create a new post in wp-admin/post-new.php?

[sophiegyo]

Interestingly, I cannot seem to reproduce on a simple site with Twenty Twenty Two right now. I do however use the wp-admin editor. I wonder if the problem may be limited to the iFramed editor in Calypso? Do you still miss the Featured Image panel when trying to create a new post in wp-admin/post-new.php?

Decidedly yes for me with pages:

With posts it's fine:

Edit:

Portfolios also have the same issue for me:

[jeherve]

Ah, thank you. I can reproduce on the page editor as well. For some reason, on WordPress.com something seems to change the response from the themes endpoint to indicate that Twenty Twenty Two only supports post-thumbnails for posts:

On self-hosted sites, it just returns true, and thus post thumbnails are available for all post types:

I'm not quite sure how block themes declare support for featured images, so I don't know where WordPress.com would overwrite that response. This may be a good question for someone working on Gutenberg, or on Gutenberg's integration on WordPress.com? @ebinnion Would you know who to ping about this?

[sophiegyo]

• Just noting another case from 5349934-zen

This user uses Twenty Twenty Two for almost all of their sites. Please can we update them when this issue is resolved (added by @pauljacobson )

[happychait]

Pendant theme doesn't have the option to set featured images for pages, but allows featured images for posts.

• 36530753-zen

[noahtallen]

The root cause is that the way theme support for this feature is added by core WordPress is incompatible with the way our public-api setup works. (Hence the problem only happens on simple sites, where the public-api exists.) For some context, post-thumbnails support is automatically added by core WordPress for any block-based theme as part of the setup-theme action.

More info here as we explore possible workarounds: Automattic/wp-calypso#65895 (comment)

[github-actions]

Support References

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

• 5367728-zen
• 5349934-zen
• 36530753-zen

[noahtallen]

This issue should be resolved in production 👍 (Fix: D86721-code)