html2wp / Visual Edit
WordPress website editor: click the page and edit it there
Visual Edit Lite is a free front-end WordPress website editor. On a block theme such as Twenty Twenty-Five, you click a heading, an image or a menu on the page and change it right where it is. The same editor also edits sites converted from static HTML with html2wp, and the page markup stays 1:1 with the design. Every save is a point you can go back to. The paid Pro version costs €59 a year, with 30% off the first year during the beta, and it is sold on its own.
Try the WordPress editor on Twenty Twenty-Five
The video shows text and Google Fonts, sections and colours, a blog post, the Single Posts template, the menu and a photo swap. Each change is saved, and you can roll it back.
Click a heading, type, save
On a block theme, Visual Edit Lite opens WordPress's own Site and Post Editor in its toolbar and shows a floating settings panel next to the block you clicked. Blocks, patterns, templates and Global Styles keep their usual WordPress controls. The content stays in standard blocks. It is not a page builder, so nothing depends on it for the page to display.
Style text where it is
Set the font, size, weight, upper or lower case and colour of the element you clicked. The whole Google Fonts library is there to choose from, and you can keep up to five fonts ready for quick use.
Sections from your theme
Duplicate a section or add a new one from your theme's patterns, then give it colours, backgrounds and gradients without writing CSS.
Posts and templates
Blog posts edit the same way as pages. When you change a template such as Single Posts, every post follows it.
Menus right on the page
Move, add and delete navigation links where the menu appears on the page. It is still the regular WordPress navigation.
Photos from the Media Library
Click an image and swap it for another one from the Media Library. Its alternative text sits right next to it.
Go back to any save
Each page keeps its ten most recent saves (the Pro version keeps up to 300) plus the original version. Templates and Global Styles have their own WordPress revisions.
A static HTML website you edit in WordPress by clicking
The same editor also works on a website converted from static HTML to WordPress. The HTML goes through html2wp first. Visual Edit then edits the theme that html2wp creates, or the same theme after a second conversion into a native Gutenberg block theme with html2wp-to-gutenberg. That second step is still an experimental feature, and you can switch it on in the settings. You edit text, images, links, forms and menus where they sit on the page. A website that started as hand-written HTML thus gets a WordPress editor that a client can use without touching the code. Meanwhile the page markup stays 1:1 with the design.
Two editions of the WordPress editor: Lite and Pro
Visual Edit Lite is free, needs no licence key and includes the whole click-to-edit experience. Pro adds the things a studio usually wants. It is sold on its own for €59 a year.
| Lite (free) | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Click-to-edit content editing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Forms, menus, SEO fields | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI chat editing | – | ✓, with your own API key |
| Theme export | – | ✓ |
| Turnstile spam protection | – | ✓ |
| AI image editing and animations from images | – | ✓ |
| Edit history | 10 saves plus the original version | 300 steps |
| Sites | any number, no key needed | 1 domain per licence |
| Licence | GPL-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
How you get each one
Lite is a free download. It is on WordPress.org, with no key and no account. In your dashboard, open Plugins → Add Plugin, search for “Visual Edit Lite” and install it, or download it from its WordPress.org page. If you want to try it before you install anything, the Lite in WordPress Playground link opens it in a WordPress that runs in your browser tab, with the editor already open. It is released under the GNU GPL, version 2 or later, the same licence as WordPress itself. You can use it on any number of sites, your own and your clients', paid work included; you register nothing and nothing expires. There is nothing in it to unlock, because what Pro adds is not in Lite.
You buy Pro separately, as a yearly licence on the pricing page. Every conversion, on the free tier or on Pro, points to Lite. After you buy, a Visual Edit Pro key arrives by email. With it, you download the plugin on the download page, install it and enter the same key in the plugin in WordPress. While the licence is valid, updates come through WordPress. A licence is registered to one domain at a time. If you want to move it, first deactivate it on the old site. The theme works without it too.
The Visual Edit Pro key belongs to the editor only and does not run conversions. The theme it edits comes from a conversion on the free tier or on Pro.
What stays in WordPress when you remove the editor
Switch it off and the pages stay whole
On a block theme, the content is made of plain blocks. On a site converted from HTML, the pages, blog, forms, menus, SEO and redirects are the theme's own code. When you remove the plugin, the design is still there.
The markup stays 1:1
Editing does not rebuild the structure of the page underneath you. Only the thing you click changes.
The AI key is yours
Chat editing in Pro runs on your own API key, and you pay your provider for it. Everything else in the editor works without one.
History, so nobody has to be careful
You can go back to any save. In Lite that means the ten most recent saves plus the original version, and in Pro it means 300 steps.
Native menus, posts and forms
Menus are WordPress menus, and the blog is made of real posts right in the theme, whether or not you have the editor installed.
The delivered site calls nowhere
The site you hand over does not connect to any server of ours while it runs. The conversion itself uploads the built site to the server; the delivered site does not.
Questions about the Visual Edit WordPress editor
Yes, if it is a block theme. Twenty Twenty-Five and other themes built on templates and patterns work straight away. It also works on themes converted from static HTML, because every html2wp conversion declares what the editor needs. On a classic PHP theme the visual editor does not work, but forms, email delivery, mailing lists, SEO, redirects and llms.txt keep working.
Not while it stays static HTML, because every change means editing the files. Once you convert the website to WordPress with html2wp and install the Visual Edit editor, they can. On the live page, they click the text, image, link, form or menu they want to change, and then save. Visual Edit Lite is free and needs no licence key.
No. A page builder rebuilds the page out of its own widgets, and the site then needs the builder just to display. Visual Edit is a WordPress frontend editor: it edits the elements that are already on the page. On a block theme it works inside WordPress's own editor, and the content stays plain blocks. On a site converted from HTML, the page markup stays the same as in the design. In both cases the theme displays without the plugin.
The site keeps working. Pages, blog, forms, menus, SEO and redirects are the theme's own code. Deactivating the plugin removes only the editing interface, and the design stays in place.