Hi
@ashleykaryl, perhaps ‘convince’ was too strong a word as not sure I want to switch completely, it would just be another alternative? Can anyone tell me what sort of learning curve would be involved?? Honestly I am not far off 70 (OK not completely lost my marbles!!)…but would appreciate an incite into that at least.
It does look interesting and at the discount??? Just get very annoyed with VAT being added at the last moment!!
W
I love, too, that the developer of Blocks (@Norm) is so available. This is essentially a RW forum, yet he chimes in regularly- not to denigrate RW or “sell” Blocs, but to provide solid insight. To me, that says a lot about him (all good).
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@Piggles I always get annoyed by the 20% VAT charge, along with the root cause. There have been more than a few times when I have reached a shopping cart and immediately felt a purchase no longer made sense or simply spoiled my expectations.
There is definitely a learning curve with Blocs, but much depends on your level and how far you want to go. If you make do with largely default settings you could build your first web page inside an hour or two. There is a free course online covering the basics that would help to get you started at https://eldargezalov.com/blocs-master#pricing
At the core you have global areas at the top and bottom for things like navigation and footers that can be enabled or disabled on each page. In the middle you have a dynamic area where you can add general areas known as blocs.
Sometimes these blocs are empty structures waiting to be filled like a 3 column structure or they may be preprepared layouts like a feature bloc with an image on one side and text on the other. There are lots of these and they are all editable as you wish, however it saves an awful lot of time as a starting point. If you create a bloc layout that you like it can be saved as a custom bloc for use in other projects as well.
In addition to those bloc areas you then have brics, which are really the equivalent of stacks. This could be anything from a paragraph bric to a gallery or or something fancy like an animated background. The preprepared layouts mentioned above are essentially a combination of blocs and brics to get you started. I think @Norm has an aversion to the letter K hence the reason they are called brics and blocs.
The real power comes with the custom classes that allow you to do all sorts of crazy things and that is definitely a departure from working with RW, though largely a question of practice and experimentation to see how it works. Everything is based on Bootstrap and you can almost think of Blocs like an interface to create sites in Bootstrap without the need of coding or other plugins.
One noticeable change since Blocs 3 is actually the users on the forum. With Blocs 2 it was mainly beginners but after version 3 shipped more experienced professional users appeared and that tendency has only grown. It doesn’t mean that Blocs has suddenly become more complicated but there is a lot more general expertise within the community and remains good natured.
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@ashleykaryl thank you so much for your detailed reply…I have been giving the free trial a go, and looking around to see ‘the community’ and support. Video tutorials/templates etc. Seems like there are a few free videos that are helpful to get going, but as for templates no freebies I can see, so it’s ‘design it yourself’…which is great for you creative types but I find templates are very useful for this old brain to get a handle on how stuff works.
BUT, saying all that, it looks a good product, just not sure it is for me at the moment.
Thanks again for your input
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I don’t do website professionally (yet) but I just bought it. It’s supporting a British business and could be useful.
I’ve played around with it for a few minutes and it seems a lot more intuitive than Rapidweaver and it’s really fun to use.
I think it will need to offer decent commerce facilities and CMS to really flourish, but once it can effectively design your wordpress site for you, I think it could be a real game changer.
It works out at about £35 including VAT - definite no-brainer.
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@Jannis aren’t these all ‘paid for’ templates? I am not a paid professional website builder and all monies come from my own pocket…so that’s one of the reasons why I don’t think I need to move in this direction…the initial purchase is reasonable BUT…
Hmm… I thought there was a free one available also. Seems that changed.
Learning is free though ;-)
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@steveb well not ‘all’ the learning - only a few youtube videos that I can find …what are you looking at?? Links would be great…
I meant just diving in and learning it yourself. The Blocs forum is a great place to ask questions, or of course you can ask here, there are a few familiar with it here.
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Is this basically like Poster Stack for Blocs?
A big thumbs up for Volt CMS with Blocs. It’s perfect for many kinds of websites with a few extra refinements coming soon.
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@Piggles I’ve never seen much of a case for templates with Blocs, especially with all the preconfigured blocs that could be added. @Norm It’s not the first time I have heard this request and wonder if it might be worth making a couple freely available along with the trial demo?
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From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t really think templates are a requirement.
No, it is not. Currently it focuses on editable areas on pages.
A blog will follow up this year.
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@ashleykaryl would be good for a couple of ‘starter templates’ to get the feel how it all works?
https://eldargezalov.com/products think this guy does OK??
I have never used his templates, but not heard any complaints on the forums. Eldar is a big part of the Blocs community and has helped a lot of users.
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Eldar is very well respected and I believe he also has some very professional video courses.
However, you don’t need a template to start building with Blocs as you can drag just 4 Blocs onto a page and that would be considered a template layout in RW. Just try it and learn that way.
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