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Build Versatile Layouts with the GenerateBlocks WordPress Plugin

Over the past few weeks, I have had the GenerateBlocks plugin sitting in my test environment. I have built a few layouts with it, tinkering with the plugin between other projects. The one thing I kept thinking was that it had huge potential. Aside from a couple of issues, I began enjoying the plugin more and more as I played around with its options.

GenerateBlocks was created by Tom Usborne. It was built specifically to work along with his popular GeneratePress theme. However, the plugin claims to work with any WordPress theme.

GenerateBlocks is meant to be the block answer to the page builder question. It is meant to take those elements that make page builders so popular and boil them down to a handful of blocks. It is meant to simplify the process of building complex layouts without the need for heavier solutions. The question is whether it holds up — does it do the job it set out to do?

Overall, it works well, particularly in terms of giving more freedom with layout building. It will not likely eat into the market share of page builders any time soon. However, it may make for a few more converts to the block editor, especially with those who are not tied into an existing solution and are looking for something lightweight.

Watch a quick video on how GenerateBlocks works:

The Plugin’s Blocks

Example output of the GenerateBlocks' editor blocks: container, grid, headline, and buttons.
Using each of the GenerateBlocks plugin’s blocks in a section.

GenerateBlocks’ bread and butter is its Container block. It is the WordPress Cover and Group blocks rolled into one with a gluttonous amount of additional options that cover nearly every need.

The one major area that the Container block falls short is with handling full-width sections. Instead of taking advantage of the standard full-width block alignment option that all themes can opt into, it goes with a custom solution. That solution is to provide a notice that the user’s theme must have some sort of full-width content option (likely via a page template). By choosing this route it means the majority of themes, including those built to style blocks, will not support the GenerateBlocks Container block when set to full width.

For end-users who are using a theme that supports the standard full-width block alignment, there are two tricks to bypass this limitation. The first solution is to enter alignfull into the CSS Classes field under the Advanced block options tab. The second solution is to wrap the Container block with the WordPress Group block and set it to full width. How these solutions work out will largely depend on how the theme handles those elements.

With all the flexibility of GenerateBlocks, this would be the reason that I would not recommend the plugin to users who want full-width layouts. The two tricks are not an ideal user experience. In design, the most important thing is for the user to not have to think. The provided solution should simply work.

If we gave that single element of the plugin a one-star rating, everything else would be an easy five stars.

The plugin’s four blocks can easily replace several other blocks. Instead of creating a library of dozens of one-off blocks, GenerateBlocks adds versatility without going overboard. It is easy to see why users have given it a perfect five-star rating (out of its current 34 reviews).

In total, the plugin adds four blocks to the editor:

  • Container
  • Grid
  • Headline
  • Buttons

Admittedly, I am partial to Automattic’s Layout Grid plugin, primarily because I prefer the visualization of the grid in the background. It puts me at ease. However, the Grid block in GenerateBlocks runs a close second. In practice, it is more flexible, providing more layout options out of the box and fine-grained control. For those who need greater control over column widths and a host of color, typography, background, and spacing options, GenerateBlocks is a no-brainer.

The grid block from the GenerateBlocks plugin in the WordPress editor.
Inserting a new Grid block in the editor.

The Headline and Buttons blocks are essentially recreations of the core Heading and Buttons blocks with all the options that make this plugin useful. Plus, the blocks have an extra icon option, which allows users to choose between entering custom SVG code or selecting from a predefined list of general and social icons. This is a nice touch that I would like to see in core WordPress.

The thing that makes the four plugin blocks so flexible is the bounty of block options. For every block, you will find most of the following options tabs with numerous fields under each:

  • Typography
  • Spacing
  • Colors
  • Background Image
  • Background Gradient
  • Advanced (extra options for the core tab)
  • Icon

The plugin also provides options based on desktop, tablet, and mobile modes. This allows end-users to make changes based on the screen size of the website visitor.

If I had one other nit-pick about the plugin it would be that its color options do not take advantage of the theme-defined color palette. For design consistency, it would be nice to be able to use those without using a color picker or entering the hex code. Update: there is a “Show Color Palette” button that does this, but it was not apparent that it would provide access to my theme colors.

Final Thoughts

Would I recommend the plugin? Absolutely.

I would make sure to note the full-width Container block issue with that recommendation. If you are using this with a theme other than GeneratePress, you will need to have a solution for handling full-width sections. For me, this is the most vital piece of what is essentially a layout builder, and it failed to live up to that expectation.

However, one issue does not discount the usefulness of what the developer has built. It is a solid plugin. Under the hood, it is a well-coded and documented piece of software. I have no doubt that it will be serving many more users in the years to come and will only continue to improve.

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GretaThemes Releases Lightweight, Block-Ready eStar WordPress Theme

Screenshot of the front page of the eStar WordPress theme.

GretaThemes launched its eStar theme yesterday. The team’s goal was to build a lightweight theme that focused on the block editor. However, it works alongside other page builders such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, and more.

GretaThemes is a project of eLightUp, which is the same company behind the popular Meta Box framework, WP Auto Listings, and FitWP. The site’s focus is on selling WordPress themes, many of which are pro versions of its free theme offerings. For now, eStar is merely a free theme with no direct commercial upsells.

eStar is promoted as a multipurpose theme that is suitable for various types of sites. In my tests, I found it to be best designed for businesses that need a clean and professional look. However, with enough tweaks via its numerous customizer options, end-users can get a lot of mileage out of this theme.

With gzipping enabled, the theme’s scripts and styles add less than 10 kb of data to the page load. That is reasonably lightweight and should result in a speedy website, assuming nothing else causes issues.

The theme recommends and integrates with the Meta Box and eRocket plugins, both of which are available for free in the WordPress plugin directory. The Meta Box integration will add extra per-post settings, which are primarily related to the layout on the front end. These can be configured globally in the customizer. The plugin integration merely provides the ability to do so on the per-post level. The eRocket plugin adds a contact info and recent posts widget along with social sharing buttons. The eStar theme has additional styles for making these fit into the design on the front end.

eStar ticks many of the boxes that would make it a great go-to option for people who need a reliable theme that supports the block editor. It does not push any artistic boundaries. It is not the type of theme that has an incredible wow factor. It is simply a solid offering that gives users a lot of freedom to take an almost boring default configuration and turn it into something special with a mix of font and color options.

Check out the eStar theme demo for a picture of what the theme looks like.

Build Landing Pages Like a Pro

eStar theme landing page.

The GretaThemes team has designed eStar to get out of the way for users who want to build full pages with either the block editor or a third-party page builder. It offers several post and page templates as a starting point:

  • Blank Canvas: Displays only the post content.
  • Narrow Content: Shows the header, footer, and post content, which is in a narrow column in the center of the page.
  • Full Width: Shows the header, footer, and post content, which stretches across the page.
  • Wide Content: Shows the header, footer, and post content, which stretches across the page.

No, there is no typo or copy/paste mistake for those final two templates in the preceding list. There seems to be no difference between the Full Width and Wide Content templates. I am unsure why both are included, except to wonder if one or the other is there for backward compatibility with other themes.

What makes the theme great at building landing pages so great is not its four custom templates. Those are nice additions that provide an open canvas. However, it is the theme’s block styling that provides the customizability to build these landing pages. Its block styles will not blow you away with unique design takes. They simply work.

The one thing that would bring this theme to the next level would be the addition of custom patterns. The Patterns API is not available in core WordPress yet, but it will likely land this year. Now is a good time for the team to get on top of this feature, even if it is a part of a commercial offering.

How Does the Theme Handle Blogging?

Customized single post layout for the eStar WordPress theme.
Single post view with custom options selected.

The theme markets itself as suitable for blogging. However, it falls short of being a great blogging theme with the default configuration. For long-form content, single posts have far too many characters per line for comfortable reading. For short, media-rich blog posts, it would work well.

To get the most out of eStar as a blogger, users will need to make some adjustments. Fortunately, this is one area in which the theme shines. It provides a slew of customizer options that provide enough flexibility to make it work. By heading to the Fonts section in the customizer and bumping up the Font Size in the Body section, it would transform the theme into something suitable for long-form content.

There are some other adjustments worth considering. If you routinely use the same image within post content as you do as a featured image, the theme will show that same image twice on single post views — a common issue in many themes. eStar does provide a customizer option to configure or disable the featured image on single posts. Using the featured image as the header background is also another useful option the theme provides and can make your posts stand out.

I also recommend disabling the sidebar for blog posts if you enjoy wide or full-width media. The theme’s design stands out when it can make copious use of the page.

The biggest issue — and would be a deal-breaker for me if I could not code — is the theme adds a custom design to the first paragraph of the post content. The font-size is increased and given a light gray color. It is not easy to read. The theme should leave this bit of customization in the user’s hands. WordPress provides block-level customization via the editor if the user needs to do something special with the intro paragraph.

I also recommend switching the archive layout to either grid card or grid, which is used in the theme’s demo. The grid card option looks a little better and is a concept likely lifted from Tailwind’s component documentation.

Grid Card layout for archive pages with the eStar WordPress theme.
Grid Card layout option for archive pages.

Final Thoughts

The theme is not without a few trivial issues. For example, the site title and description feel a little cramped. I would love to see some extra whitespace above and below it.

With the default configuration of the theme, I would recommend it to anyone who needs a solid design for a business website. By throwing in a custom logo and adjusting a couple of colors, the average end-user would have all they need to launch a business site. With the power of the block editor or a third-party page builder, costs to setting up shop would be minimal.

For people who do not mind a little legwork and need something better suited for blogging, the theme can handle it. It will simply take some minor customization to make the text a bit more readable.

Overall, it is nice to see another good option land in the official WordPress theme directory that caters to the block editor. I look forward to seeing what GretaThemes does in the future with its themes and hope to see other theme companies follow suit with block editor support.

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Shinobi Blocks WordPress Plugin Adds How-To and FAQ Blocks

Shinobi Works, a web development and illustration company based in Japan, released Shinobi Blocks last week. It is the second plugin the team has added to the WordPress plugin directory. The plugin is a block collection that currently has two blocks for creating how-to and FAQ sections on a site.

Overall, the blocks work well. The developers also make sure to only load any scripts or styles on the front end when the blocks are in use, so it should not add any weight to page speed across the site.

The largest downside of the plugin is that neither of its blocks has wide or full alignment options. This is one feature that I am hoping more block developers begin to add support for. It takes minimal code and would make blocks more flexible for end-users. The workaround is to wrap the blocks in a core Group block and add alignment to it.

As a user, I would like to see the How-To block split into its own, single-purpose block. It would be a nice addition to the official WordPress block directory as a standalone solution for users.

Right now, there seems to be a bit of a mad race toward who can build the biggest block collection plugins. It is unclear what the future of Shinobi Blocks holds. Given that it is early in its life as a plugin, I would urge the plugin authors to consider building single-use blocks. This way, users can install only the blocks they need on their sites.

In this particular case, the How-To block would make a good option as a single block plugin. As for the FAQ block, users can find such blocks in several other plugins with more options.

How-To Block

  • Adding a how-to item.
  • How-to second step.
Adding step-by-step instructions via the How-To block.

The plugin’s How-To block is what drew me in. Its purpose is to allow end-users to provide step-by-step instructions with both a text block and an image for each step. It is a pattern that is common on sites such as wikiHow and other tutorial websites.

The design of the block is well thought out and easy to use. For more complex tutorials, users can split their how-to into multiple sections, each with their own steps. In tests against several themes, I ran into no issues inputting custom content in the editor and it appearing correctly on the front end.

The plugin provides an option to change the dot type, which is the number for each step. Users can choose between displaying numbers or using an icon for individual steps. The available icons are from the core WordPress Dashicons set. The color of the dot type can also be customized. By default, it displays a gradient, but the user can select a solid color if preferred.

The downside of the available color options is the block does not make use of the active theme’s color palette if registered. Using this would help the block better blend into the user’s current site design.

One option that I would add is to allow the user to input optional, additional text below the image while using the main text as a sort of headline. This would provide more flexibility for how-to instructions that need more information. However, it would also add an extra layer of complexity that may not be desired.

FAQ Block

Screenshot of the Shinobi Blocks FAQ block's front end output.
FAQ block accordion on the front end.

The FAQ block almost feels like an afterthought. It does not have the level of detail that was put into the How-To block. There are no color or other options for changing the design. It is basically a bare-bones tabbed accordion. The block works well enough for what it needs to do. Nevertheless, it still feels like a letdown after tinkering with the plugin’s first block.

Inputting content on the admin side is simple. Both the question and answer inputs are rich text fields, which allow the same formatting as a standard Paragraph block.

Each inner block for the FAQ block offers a single option that allows users to choose whether to display the tab in an open state. One issue I ran into with disabling this option is that it closes the tab in the editor, which essentially disabled editing the answer’s content for the item, at least until I re-ticked the checkbox.

It is not a poorly-designed block. For the most part, I would rather see the How-To and FAQ blocks split into separate, standalone block plugins. They serve two different purposes and would allow users to install just the pieces that they need.

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Simple Photoblogging with the Instapress WordPress Theme

It is not often that I come across a free WordPress theme that instantly impresses me. Far too often, I spend half an hour or more just getting to know a theme, checking its options, and figuring out how long it will take to recreate something that looks remotely like the demo. However, every now and then I come across one of those diamonds in the rough that makes me a taker a deeper look.

Instapress is one of those themes. It is yet another reason I am in favor of a curated featured themes list. These types of unique themes tend to get lost in the crowd, and without the backing of a major company to market them, they usually go unnoticed by most WordPress users.

What drew me to Instapress was its take on presenting posts on the front end. It is a photoblogging theme that is mostly good at showing individual photos but little else. It also has some of the old-school simplicity from the early WordPress theme era.

Instapress is the first and only theme that Anton Lukin has submitted to the official WordPress theme directory. He runs the theme on his personal blog, in which he shares photos from the places he travels.

Beautiful Simplicity

The theme is truly a photoblogging-only theme. It is not ideal for long-form, textual content or many other types of sites. Fair warning: if your plan is to do anything other than post photos, you should look elsewhere.

This narrow design is what makes the theme stand out. On the blog page and other archive-type pages, the theme presents the featured image with an interesting JSON-style output of the post metadata such as the date, title, and author.

Screenshot of the Instapress WordPress theme blog page.
Posts page display from Instapress.

Instapress has a few customizer options. Along with a custom footer description, end-users can decide whether to show the post author and any custom meta in post summaries on blog and archive pages. Custom meta in this sense means all public custom fields, which may not be desirable for everyone, depending on what metadata is assigned to the post. However, it can be useful for photobloggers who include location data, such as latitude and longitude for their posts.

As shown in the following screenshot, Lukin includes the coordinates on his post (latlng):

Screenshot of the Instapress theme with custom metadata.
Custom metadata from Baikal post.

Themes rarely get much simpler than Instapress. It is intentionally lightweight. The stylesheet comes in under 20 kb, which is what any photoblogger should look for in a theme. The theme should not be the bottleneck for page speed on image-heavy websites.

Areas to Improve

While being a fan of the theme, some small things could drastically improve its appeal to end-users. I would not want the theme to add too many extra options. Its simplicity is part of its charm. However, a couple of home/archive views that offer a wider photo layout or grid would add a nice touch without bloating the theme.

Typically, I would deduct massive points for a theme that has no block editor styles, particularly in 2020. It is such a huge user base to leave out. But, the biggest loss for this theme is not taking advantage of the built-in, image-related blocks. They provide theme authors with a ton of design freedom. Throw in a few custom styles and you can do something special for photoblogs. Even just supporting wide and full-width alignment goes a long way in providing users better options for photos.

The other missing piece of the puzzle for this theme is that it has no site title output. End-users can shoehorn it into the nav menu or customizable footer description, but it would be nice to see it as part of the theme header, even if disabled by default.

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ACF Blocks Provides Assortment of Blocks Built from Advanced Custom Fields Pro

Over the weekend, Munir Kamal released version 2.0 of his ACF Blocks plugin, a project that creates a suite of blocks for the editor. The plugin offers 18 custom blocks in its free version and 15 more in the pro upgrade. It is built on top of Advanced Custom Fields Pro (ACF Pro).

The latest update of the plugin added support for typography, including options for using various Google Fonts for in-block text. Kamal also included base styling options for design features like margin and padding for every block in the plugin.

With ACF Pro as a hard dependency, it limits the audience of ACF Blocks. In large part, this plugin will be useful for agencies and freelancers who need to quickly build features for clients within their budget. For that purpose, the plugin does a solid job.

The tight coupling with ACF Pro hurts the user experience for the plugin. However, the ideas behind ACF Blocks and its custom options make up for the shortcomings of relying on its dependent parent plugin. Decoupling the two is unlikely, but it would make for a smoother experience and open the plugin to a wider audience.

Kamal took inspiration for the plugin from ACF and its pro version. He described the process of building blocks with the framework “super easy,” even for an intermediate-level developer. “It has been such an amazing WordPress framework for years to create custom fields,” he said. “And when [Elliot Condon] announced the block creation feature in ACF, that quickly triggered me to build this collection of ready-to-use ACF Blocks.”

The biggest technical limitation is that Kamal cannot build nested blocks, which is a current limitation of ACF. “I have already discussed it with [Condon], and he is already working on bringing that functionality hopefully soon,” he said. “Once that comes to ACF, we may create more amazing and powerful Gutenberg Blocks.”

Watch a short walkthrough of how the plugin works:

Useful Assortment of Blocks

While primarily testing the free version of ACF Blocks, I found that it has several useful blocks that could immediately address common needs for end-users. With 18 free blocks available, users have plenty to work with before deciding whether they want to move along the upgrade path to the pro version.

One of the best blocks in the collection is the Photo Collage block. It is ACF Blocks’ answer to the core Gallery block. The grid options for this block alone make this plugin worth checking out. The block offers between 2 and 15 grid layouts, depending on the grid option the user selects.

Screenshot of the Photo Collage block from the ACF Blocks plugin in the WordPress editor.
Setting the grid for the Photo Collage block.

My second favorite of the assortment is the Testimonial block. Coupled with the typography options, which are available for all blocks, you can have a lot of fun designing a testimonial section.

Screenshot of the Testimonial block from the ACF Blocks plugin in the WordPress editor.
Tinkering with Google Fonts in the Testimonial block.

This is a small sampling of what the plugin can do. The Price List block can help restaurant sites set up their menu. The Pricing Box block, particularly when nested into the core Columns block, makes it easy to set up a pricing section with multiple product options. And, the Team block makes it simple to create profile sections on a company’s team/about page.

The following blocks are available in the free version (with several more in the pro version):

  1. Scrollable Image Block
  2. Tab Block
  3. Toggle Block
  4. Accordion Block
  5. Image Slider Block
  6. Social Sharing Block
  7. Photo Collage Block
  8. Posts Block
  9. Testimonial Block
  10. Team Block
  11. Multi Buttons Block
  12. Pricing Box Block
  13. Price List Block
  14. Start Rating Block
  15. Progress Bar Block
  16. Counter Number Block
  17. Click to tweet Block
  18. Business Hours Block

Kamal’s favorite blocks from the overall suite are Image Hotspot, which allows users to set an image background with “pointers” to pop up content; Before After Image, which lets users compare two images using a sliding bar; and Photo Collage, the plugin’s grid-based gallery block. The first two are available only in the pro version of the plugin. The plugin creator said he thinks all the blocks are useful but these were the most fun to build.

Room for Improvement

ACF Blocks is a nice concept. It gets a lot of things right. However, there are minor issues that dampen the experience of working with its blocks. These issues are not insurmountable, and I expect Kamal will address them in upcoming versions based on familiarity with his past work and drive toward building great products for users.

The most immediate issue and likely the simplest to fix is the plugin’s styles for left and right margins on every block. The plugin resets these margins to 0 by default. Depending on the active theme on a site, this could shift the blocks to the edge of the screen instead of the content area on the front end. Some themes use left/right margins to align content. This is not an issue with only ACF Blocks. It is prevalent among plugins with front-end output.

One quick solution for the margin issue is to wrap any of the plugin’s blocks within the core Group block. This will put margins back under the theme’s control.

Editing block content happens in the block options panel instead of directly in the block. I am unsure if this is a limitation of using the ACF Pro framework or a design decision on Kamal’s part. It feels odd to jump between editing content in the content area to editing content in the sidebar.

One example of my confusion with block content was with the Photo Collage block. I clicked on the block, hoping to have the media library appear for uploading. Nothing happened. I clicked again because, well, maybe I did not get a good click in that first time. Nothing happened. I eventually found the image upload button under the block’s option panel on the right.

Setting block options can feel a little sluggish at times with the block output in the editor not reflecting changes immediately. This is primarily because ACF Blocks relies on the server-side rendering capabilities of ACF Pro. It is unlikely this can be addressed in the blocks plugin. Some users may find the delayed rendering to be tedious when editing multiple options.

Final Thoughts

Kamal has put together a useful set of blocks that will help many end-users build sections of content they cannot create out of the box. Between the free and pro versions, there is a total of 33 blocks. The creator is committed to adding more blocks over time based on user feedback. In the immediate future, he plans to keep hacking away at bug fixes and improving the code.

I still feel like how ACF Pro works is a hindrance to how good this plugin could be if built from scratch. With that said, the framework helped make Kamal’s plugin a reality. ACF Blocks is a showcase in what is possible via ACF Pro, which should inspire other developers who are looking for solutions built on top of one of the most widely-used frameworks in the WordPress ecosystem.

Kamal understands that some ACF Pro users may try their hands at creating similar blocks but feels like his team’s knowledge and dedication to offering support are the most important parts of the equation. “ACF Blocks saves time and effort for creating blocks yourself for the most common web design elements,” he said.

Note: this plugin review and feedback were requested by the plugin author. Read our post about honest feedback based on genuine experiences for more information on how reviews are handled.

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Sendinblue vs Mailchimp – Email Marketing Compared

sendinblue vs mailchimp comparison 2020In this review article we’ll compare Sendinblue vs Mailchimp – two popular email marketing and marketing automation platforms. Traditionally, both Sendinblue and Mailchimp started out as email marketing tools, and gradually evolved into holistic all-in-one marketing platforms. Today, both these platforms have a wide range of features including marketing automation, behavioral targeting and customer relationship […]

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Matomo Analytics: Free Self-Hosted WordPress Analytics

Matomo Analytics: Free Self-Hosted WordPress AnalyticsTraffic is the lifeblood of a successful website. Without traffic, you have a good-for-nothing website, no matter how good your offer or product is. And it’s not just any traffic, but the right kind of traffic. In other words, you need targeted traffic to grow your website hence business. But to drive targeted traffic, you need […]

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Affinity Designer Review: An Affordable Tool For Creative Designs

Finding a software that is easy to use, has advanced cross-platform functionality, and allows you to explore different options as a graphic designer is essential.  Affinity Designer is a must-have if you’re a vector artist who likes to work on the go.Below is a detailed Affinity Designer review with all the features, pros, and cons. […]

The post Affinity Designer Review: An Affordable Tool For Creative Designs appeared first on designrfix.com.

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Build Custom Templates with the MB Views Add-On for Meta Box

Meta Box released its MB Views add-on plugin last week. The new extension allows developers to build custom templates from the comfort of their WordPress admin. The goal is to provide an easy-to-use interface for outputting custom fields without editing theme files, but its flexibility pushes the boundaries of full-site editing.

Quick take: MB Views offers a solid developer experience but falls a little short of being friendly for those unfamiliar with code.

I have long been a fan of what the Meta Box team has done with its core plugin and extensions. The project’s developers have created a well-documented code base, written solid documentation, and have generally paid attention to details where others have failed. MB Views is no different. In minutes after activating the extension, I had custom views set up and rolled out on the front end of my test site.

The interface is simple enough to pick up almost immediately with enough flexibility to build nearly anything from the WordPress admin.

On the whole, the team’s new add-on is well worth the price of one of the available premium bundles, which range between $79 and $349. It is not without a few minor issues, but that is to be expected with a version 1.0 release.

A Powerful Tool for Front End Editing

Screenshot of the MB Views plugin's view code editor.
Creating a custom view with the plugin’s view editor.

My experience working with the view-editing screen felt natural. The code editor uses Code Mirror and its Oceanic Next theme. It has auto-tabbing and auto-complete built in, so it feels like most offline editors. Developers should feel at home quickly building a custom view.

Because I mostly use Tailwind CSS these days, I was able to build a faux email signup form in a couple of minutes and display it directly beneath my posts using the available view settings.

Screenshot of a custom-built email signup form using the MB Views plugin.
Custom-built email signup form with MB Views.

The code editor has a “New Field” button that opens a slide-out box on the right side of the screen. It allows users to insert post, site, user, and query fields. The options also include custom fields created via the Meta Box plugin.

Besides editing the template, users can also add custom CSS and JavaScript directly from the view code editor.

The output of these fields are all handled through Twig, a modern PHP templating engine. Many PHP developers will already be familiar with Twig and will feel comfortable with its syntax. Through this system, plugin users are not limited to HTML. They can use conditionals and loops to customize the output of their view content.

For a better developer experience, it would be nice to see an auto-complete option for inserting new fields instead of clicking the “New Field” button and then clicking on a particular field. Most likely, developers will begin memorizing the fields over time and simply type them out. Auto-complete would be a nice touch for custom fields.

Screenshot of the settings meta box for the MB Views plugin.
View settings and conditionals.

Where MB Views really shines is its view settings. The plugin allows views to take over the entire page between the theme header and footer or just the content area. It allows users to choose between displaying a view on singular posts, archive pages, or something custom using its built-in shortcode. Users can further break down where a view appears based on conditions that can be grouped in various ways. It can be as simple or complex as needed. It is not completely on par with what’s possible with custom PHP conditionals, but it is close enough to cover the majority of use cases.

If someone wanted to try their hand at it, they could use MB Views as an entire site editor. The only real requirement would be to build their theme with a header and footer. At some point, maybe the plugin will allow users to take over the entire page layout, effectively making a theme unnecessary.

Issues and Future Enhancements

Version 1.0 is about shipping something into the hands of users. It is a time when developers get some of their most useful feedback, so I expect the following to be addressed as the developers continue to build upon the plugin in the future. I did not hit any major roadblocks, but I did come across some minor issues and had some ideas for improvement.

The first issue I hit made me initially believe the plugin did not work at all. I had chosen to display my custom view on singular posts. This is easy to do via the view settings. You select the “Singular” type. Then, select “Post” in the first drop-down select. I had assumed this would make the template appear on all posts. However, nothing happened after saving. None of my custom content appeared on the front end. The problem was there was a second drop-down select, which had not been populated with a value by default. There was an “All Posts” option I needed to select. It was a quick issue to address, but this is why good defaults are so important in plugin development.

There is no revision support. For a code editor in the WordPress admin, it makes sense that users could revert their code to an earlier version. If users only ever create views with minor bits of code, this will be a non-issue. However, the plugin goes as far as allowing users to create an entire page layout between the theme’s header and footer. That will sometimes mean a lot of code and the need to backpedal changes.

MB Views offers an [mbv] shortcode for outputting a view within shortcode-ready areas, such as post content. However, there is no block equivalent for use in the block editor. At this point, having a shortcode but no block seems like a major oversight. Shortcodes need to die a slow and painful death.

The view management screen could use a little love too. It would be nice to see at least a column for the view type. As the list of custom views grows, it may get hard to figure out where each view is used at a glance.

User Friendliness and the Future

You want to get values of Meta Box fields and put them on your front-end templates, but you’re not too familiar with coding and don’t want to touch theme files?

MB Views’ opening description claims the plugin is geared toward users who are not familiar with coding. I am unsure if the average user could take advantage of it without picking up some coding knowledge along the way. The interface is primarily geared toward developers. Quite literally, the view editor is a code editor. It does have an easy-to-click field inserter, but those fields will often be useless without some familiarity with HTML and CSS.

The tool is good at what it does, but it almost feels like a stop-gap measure in the era of the block editor.

For MB Views to be a more useful end-user tool, it will need to transition to more of a visual, point-and-click interface with design options. Otherwise, it will mostly stay in the land of developers who can customize view output to perfection.

I don’t necessarily think MB Views must go in that direction if the team wants to focus on a great developer experience. However, it does not currently live up to its claim of friendliness for those less familiar with code.

We are still likely at least a year out from a full-site editing experience via the block system. Efforts by the Meta Box team may be best spent integrating view editing within that system. The MB Views add-on is a useful and necessary tool for many Meta Box plugin users today, but it may not have time to gain traction before full-site editing lands in core. At that point, the plugin team will need to already be transitioning into a much different world of user experience with WordPress.

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Convert Blog Posts to Social Media Campaigns with Missinglettr

missinglettr reviewIn this article we will review Missinglettr – an easy-to-use, fully automated, content repurposing tool for social media. Given that reach of organic social media posts are just around 1-2%, it only makes sense to periodically share your existing content on these platforms. However, re-creating social media posts from the same old content is a […]

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WP Hive: A Bold & New Take on the WordPress Repository

People have been using WordPress for more than 15 years. There have been many changes and improvements to WordPress since Matt forked it from b2 in 2004. Allowing others to create functionalities on top of WordPress was the biggest growth hack for WordPress. It wasn’t until May 22, 2004, when the third release of WordPress, […]

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WP Popups Review 2020: A Better Alternative For OptinMonster and Bloom?

As of January 2020, there are so many WordPress plugins available for lead generation, and for adding a popup to the WordPress blog. And the free version popup plugins comes with some basic features and limitations. If you are searching for a lead generation plugin, you would probably land upon the OptinMonster and Bloom created […]

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GoDaddy’s ‘Go’ WordPress Theme Offers a Page-Building Experience via the Block Editor

Screenshot of the Go WordPress theme.

GoDaddy launched its Go WordPress theme last week. It has been publicly available through its GitHub repository for several months, but the theme review team finally approved and set it live in the theme directory. Thus far, the theme has garnered 7,000 active installs and is likely to hit the popular list, given GoDaddy’s history of releasing popular themes. It also provides translations in 27 languages out of the box.

Go is simple. After working with the theme through GoDaddy’s managed hosting onboarding process in October last year, I was admittedly a little disappointed this time around. The onboarding process made things almost too easy. I had a predesigned site without thinking about it. After installing and activating Go in my test environment, I couldn’t help but feel like it would take 100 times more work to recreate the magic I once basked in. I knew the power of the theme because I had been presented an ideal set of options that were preconfigured for me in the past. Without the configuration, the theme seemed a little less impressive.

That’s the beauty of great marketing and onboarding. GoDaddy had already reeled me in.

While the Go theme is simple, it is also powerful. A lot of that power is in its block styles. Instead of focusing on theme-specific features, the team behind the project poured their work into creating an experience that allows theme users to piece their sites together with the block editor. The theme is ideal for users who want to utilize the block editor as a page builder.

The theme has a handful of customizer options that provide additional flexibility, but the main selling point is that it gets out of the way and lets the user do the designing. I suspect we will see many similar themes in the next year as theme authors come to grips with building themes in a block world. A large part of the market will want themes that are essentially open canvases for site owners to manipulate the output of their site via blocks.

Go is also designed to work with WooCommerce, which is a large part of the company’s eCommerce hosting service. This integration should make it a nice option for small business owners.

CoBlocks Companion Recommended

Screenshot of the Features block from the CoBlocks plugin designed in the Go theme.
Features block from the CoBlocks plugin.

The magic of Go is not in the theme itself. It’s in GoDaddy’s companion plugin CoBlocks, which the company acquired last year in a deal with ThemeBeans. The plugin has soared from a mere 3,000 active installs to over 100,000 since.

CoBlocks offers everything from accordions to maps, from logos to pricing tables, and a lot more in between. It covers a lot of ground that the core WordPress editor blocks do not cover.

The Go theme is designed to go hand-in-hand with CoBlocks (can we get GoDaddy to just go ahead and rename the plugin to GoBlocks?). The theme is meant to offer a page-building experience. Because GoDaddy owns both products, it makes sense they would offer one of the nicer integrations between the plugin and a theme.

Not Ideal for Blogging

Screenshot of a blog post with loads of whitespace between paragraphs and other blocks.
A lot of whitespace between text and other blocks in posts.

The theme makes generous use of whitespace, but its overuse can often break the reading flow for blog posts. The flow from paragraph to paragraph is fine. However, the moment you drop an image, gallery, pull-quote, or one of many other blocks into the content, the theme adds an extra 140 pixels of whitespace above and below the block. It completely throws off the vertical rhythm of the post.

Go also displays the full posts on the blog posts page instead of excerpts. There are few things I dislike more when it comes to blogs. Providing an option for users to choose between a full and summary view would be ideal.

The theme does not claim to be well-suited to blogging. None of the demos for the theme show off a blog. If you’re looking for a theme to handle blogging with media mixed in the content, you will find better offerings elsewhere, such as the Blocksy theme

Limited Yet Useful Theme Options

Screenshot of the Go theme's customizer options.
Design style and color scheme options in the customizer.

The theme adds five sections to the customizer:

  • Site Design
  • Header
  • Footer
  • Social
  • Site Settings

Within each section, Go provides a few basic options, most of which are related to colors and layout. The most useful options reside under the “Site Design” section. The theme presents a design style option that changes the theme’s fonts and colors. Currently, there are five design styles: traditional, modern, trendy, welcoming, and playful. Once a design style is selected, users can choose from four color schemes for that style. The design of this system is brilliant. It gives users choices without forcing them to become designers and handpick the perfect hex code for each color.

Users who prefer to manage individual colors are not left out. The theme also provides options for overriding any of the colors from the chosen color scheme.

I was disappointed that Go opted for creating individual options for various social networks instead of using a navigation menu. Using WordPress’ built-in nav menu system for social links has become the de facto standard in the last several years, which allows users to carry their social links from one theme to the next. Unfortunately, users are required to retype all of their links with this theme.

The theme keeps does not go overboard with options but provides enough customizability to make the theme unique to the user.

How Does the Code Stack Up?

The theme offers a solid and well-documented codebase. There is not much PHP or JavaScript code, so there are few areas where it can go wrong. The theme’s strength is in its CSS.

The theme templates were primarily HTML with PHP sprinkled in. For DIY users who like to hack away at theme templates, you should not find any surprises.

Final Thoughts

Users who want to customize every page of their site will likely enjoy this theme. It is well-suited for small business owners and others with small sites. It could work well for artists and others with portfolios as well.

It does not fit with my personal taste because it does not cater to my blogging style, which is my primary interest in themes. However, I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone who wants a ton of control over their site’s inner page design.

The following is a list of the available demos. There is a lot that can be done in combination with the CoBlocks plugin, which you will want to use in combination with Go.

Demos with the CoBlocks plugin:

Demos with the CoBlocks and WooCommerce plugins: