As you can see from about 10 of my last 20 posts, I’m on a run testing out various blocks on my Gutenberg site. The next “collection” to consider is called “premium blocks” and we’ll see if it lives up to the name. There are 12 blocks in the collection:
Accordion — A really nice simple accordion block. I already have one with massive styling with Stackable, or highly workable with Kadence, but if I didn’t, this one would definitely get the job done. Easy to add items above each other, and then once created, to change typography, spacing, borders, padding, and even shadows. Nice.
Banner — I have no use for it, but it is a block to put an image with a title and description over it, with some basic animation. There are six options, and depending on which you choose, the title and description pop up when you hover, or the description is added, or the title slides in, etc. Decently done, I just don’t have a use for it. It’s more like an animated “cover” image option.
Button — There are lots of button blocks out there, and I have one that does multiple buttons together well. But this one has a nice animation feature, which is when you hover, it can do a slide, a radial or a shutter transition. Standard options for typography and colours, borders and CSS, but the transition options are decent.
Count Up — This is probably the best block I’ve seen for a count-up function, and it almost makes me wish I had a use for it. There’s an option for an icon or image above it, prefixes and suffix text, the actual number of course, and some text afterwards (part title, part description). And you can make the standard changes to the typography and colours. But what I think really sets it apart is the control over the count-up progression. You can set the time in milliseconds for the overall rolling, as well as the delay before it starts. So you can make it go fast or slow. Really nicely done. But as I said, I just don’t have a use for it.
Dual Heading — Have you ever seen a mixed text heading where say the first word is one colour and the second word is different, and maybe they change typography, colours, and other features? Yeah, not often, except in logos. And if you were doing a logo, you’d do a graphic. Not sure the point of this block is, I certainly don’t have a use for it.
Icon — It has about 800 to choose from, but like most of these, I don’t know why you wouldn’t use actual clip art of some kind.
Icon Box — It’s an icon. It’s a box. There’s a button. Oooohh, ahhhhh. Zzzzzzz.
Maps — I assumed it wouldn’t work without API key, and yep, it doesn’t. Moving on.
Pricing Table — Let’s be clear, this is a pricing box. There’s a spot for the table, the price, some features or terms, a description, and a link box. All standard, but all nicely done. And then they drop the feature everyone should have. You can add a “badge” to the corner of the box to make it stand out — like a triangle in the corner so you can identify savings, or that it’s popular, or the recommended choice. You choose the text and what it means, but none of the other blocks I have seen have had this. Really nice. And again, I wish I had a use for it.
Section — This is more of a text box to separate out different parts of a page, but there are dozens of ways to do that already, not sure what this adds. It’s more of a container wrapper though, with any other block possible within it.
Testimonials — At first, I was thinking it was rather ho hum. Until I realized that it had double sets of quotes around it. It would make for a really good simple blockquote block. And TBH, if I hadn’t already styled 400+ instances with another block, this would have been a serious contender for me to use for a simple quote block. They have an image I wouldn’t need, company info not so much although I could make it the citation, author, etc. I would like an option to turn the quotes OFF, but guess what? I could make the opacity on it 0, which hides it completely. I’m seriously tempted to keep the plugin just for this block.
Video Box — This block has the option of YouTube videos (already covered), Daily Motion (never use them, or Vimeo (ditto), or, wait for it, self-hosted videos (which I do have). It’s not fancy, I can change some start-up options, add looping, etc., all pretty standard, and a border. Overall, impressive. If I didn’t have video options already, this would be a nice uncomplicated addition.
As I said on numerous sub-blocks, this is a really nice, highly-functional middle-range set of blocks. Not overly complicated on the styling, not too many functions, and it does all of the ones it has really well. Several work AWESOME, I just don’t have a need for them, and I already have my quote block covered, so I won’t keep the Testimonial one.
I’ve already worked through a bunch of major block collections, and chosen which ones make the grade and which ones don’t. So I had seen the recommendations for Orbit Fox and thought I would give them a try. Except I already tried Otter’s collection by itself.
When I opened up the one called Orbit Fox, I got the exact same block options as Otter. They’re identical, and I’ve already reviewed them (Trying-out-otter-blocks-for-my-wordpress-site/). Well that was a waste of time.
But, while I’m here, I can check out the plugin’s other features I guess.
Social Sharing Module — This allows you to create sticky buttons on the left side of your screen for your content, making your share buttons always visible. Umm, how about no? It totally doesn’t integrate with your theme in any way, shape, or literally, form.
Gutenberg Blocks — Pass, as I said above.
Uptime Monitor — I already have that in Jetpack.
Analytics Integration — Integrate Google Analytics? Already have it, thanks.
Template Directory — This is one of the few options I see in the plugin worth considering. They have pre-designed templates for pages and, once imported, they operate as “all-in-one” landing pages with an interactive header, FAQs, etc. If you can fit it all in one page, this is a good option. Except, btw, you have to install Elementor for it to work. I didn’t see that ANYWHERE until I got to the preview page. Major pass not only on content but on marketing approach that basically advertises you can simply import them.
MyStock Import — The ability to directly import from mystock.photos…with a whopping 1200 or so photos. Umm, I have clipart collections with 10x that number, plus there are sites with free clipart and images with literally 1000s of images. Why would I want this?
Policy Notice — a simple notice bar to “inform users about your website policy”. Umm, which website policy? User policy? My policy on Covid distancing? Privacy policy? Yawn.
I jumped over one of their modules in there, mostly because my snark was on a roll and I didn’t want to kill the bad buzz. But they have an option called Menu Icons. A lot of the button blocks you see in the collections gave options to add icons to the buttons, right beside the text. This one lets you do the same thing, but to every item in your navigation menu. Your text remains, but beside Home, you could have an icon of a home button. It’s a nice feature and one I haven’t implemented well in other plugins without a lot of overhead. Nicely done.
Overall, I admit I’m beyond disappointed. The site that reviewed the plugin and collection said nothing about Elementor nor the repetition of Otter’s collection (the same company). So I was pretty jaded, pretty fast. But I’ll admit the menu icons option is decent, if I needed it. Which I don’t. Hard pass.
I’ve already gone through and reviewed the blocks from various collections — Default+Jetpack, Advanced Gutenberg, Atomic Blocks, Kadence, QodeBlocks, Ultimate Addons and Stackable. Stackable was the clear winner for me, and I kept a handful from Kadence + Ultimate Addons + Advanced Gutenberg, plus the defaults. I ditched all of the Atomic Blocks and Qodeblocks — there were just better options available or I didn’t need the blocks they had to offer.
I’m going to do a quick test of 13 blocks from Otter to see if any are worth keeping. One of their “big” offerings is built-in animation like bouncing or fades, none of which I have much use/need for…some great transitions, just not for anything I’m doing. And I’m a little disturbed it adds animations to EVERY block, not just the Otter ones.
About Author — A simple bio block that pulls data from WordPress admin about the author of the current post. Since I’m the only author on the site, that would be ME, and it would be highly repetitive in posts.
Advanced Heading — Nothing fancy, just the animation options.
Button Group — Up to five options, basic styling, heavy on the animations but otherwise yawn. And I already have such a block.
Font Awesome Icons — There is a very large list of icons, but of what use the block is, I have no real guess. Most of those icons could be simply pasted into the text. Oh, wait, now I see it. They do a whole bunch of other “grouped” blocks that use that as the replacement for services or products. Meh.
Google Map — Same problem as other plugins, if I can’t get the Maps API key to work, this doesn’t work at all.
Plugin Card — This is a fairly unique need — to post a profile of a specific plugin you want to talk about?
Posts — Same as other blocks by other collections, to show a series of recent posts on the site, and something I have no need for at all.
Pricing — This is a pretty basic pricing box, with a title, price, some features and a button. Nothing exciting.
Section — Apparently this is the strong point of the plugin, and particularly good for pages, as pseudo-page design, but it is highly misnamed. It’s basically a columns-and-grid tool with relatively basic options, although the width controls for each of the columns is pretty granular.
Service — The same as the pricing block, with minor styling tweaks. Meh.
Sharing Icons — I can insert Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Reddit. Nothing exciting about any of it, and I already have tools to do that. It could be interesting for a fast load page combined with animation, but I’m not really feeling it.
Slider — I got so excited using this, because when I clicked on the media library, it showed me a link to NextGen galleries, and I thought for a moment it was going to let me pull from them. It didn’t. And that is the only source I would want/need, so no dice.
Testimonials — A basic block that doesn’t look much different from the pricing box. You have an image, a name, title, and description. All of which I can do a hundred different ways without this block.
And just like that, another block collection bites the dust.
Across the eight-block collections that I’m reviewing (default Gutenberg, JetPack, Advanced Gutenberg, Atomic Blocks, Kadence, Qodeblock, Stackable, and Ultimate Addons), there are a bunch of blocks that perform special functions. A couple show up in multiple collections; others in only one. Let’s run through them quickly.
Table of Contents
Ultimate has a fantastic block called “table of contents”. Just like in Word or other word processing programs, the page generates the ToC all by itself by recognizing where else in the page / post you have used headings. I frequently use H4, so I limit it to only grabbing those. I can style the background, width, texts, etc., even make the contents collapsible. Heck, I can even change the colour of the bullets…what’s not to love?
Advanced Gutenberg has a similar block called Summary but it takes all headings, with no real styling options. It works, but I have much more power with the Ultimate Addons one, so I’ll stick with it.
Notices, calls to action
Atomic Blocks has a block called Notice; Qodeblock has Inline Notice; and Stackable has Notification. The first two are virtually identical with a large block with a box around it, a bright colour for a heading, and some notice text to go under it. It is designed to stand out on a page, and frequently is used by companies right now for things like Covid notices or shipping delays or even specials. They can be “permanent” or you can make them so the viewer can dismiss them, almost like a popup.
Stackable, as always, has a different approach. They put the whole block in colour (not just the heading), and in addition to the title/heading and the description, they give you an option for a button.
They’re all okay, but honestly, I have a dozen different ways to do exactly the same thing. Pass. But interestingly, they all have a similar block called “call to action” blocks. What are they? Basically large text on a colour background, some description, and a button. Hmmm, sounds familiar.
Atomic Blocks lets me adjust fonts, colours, and the button. Qodeblock is the same. Ultimate goes in a slightly different direction by putting the button over to the side, and allowing it to stack on tablets and phones, but otherwise the same.
Stackable goes a bit crazy, as usual. They have six different layouts — two typical vertical ones, three different horizontal ones changing the relationship between the title and the description, and one called split centred which goes for a big title to the left and button and description stacked to the right. If you have the premium subscription, they have 33 different stylings all with unique backgrounds and colour schemes. Yep, they work. And while I confess I feel like I have almost no need for this type of block, I’m going to leave it active anyway. Just in case I want it in the future. Oh, and by the way? If you turn off the button, you basically have the same functional block as the notice ones. 🙂
Social blocks
I use the plugin AddToAny and it lets me include social icons at the end of each post. I also have a widget that lets me put it in my side bar. But some people want to put them in the middle of their page, which can be useful on a Contact Page for example, and so there are five separate blocks available in the collections to let you put in the social icons for people to click on. Some people use them for their own links, as well as giving people easy to click on “buttons” to get to a YouTube video or someone else’s Twitter feed. I have almost no use for any of these functions.
The Default collection includes Social Links and has options for not only icons but widgets too. The three choices ar medium-sized rounds, the logos only, or a flattened pill size button. Advanced Gutenberg has 16 presets in the Social Links block or you can upload any logo you want, as well as change the size and colour of the basic backgrounds. Atomic Blocks has a Sharing block, but limited to only six choices and none of the proper logos for each one (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Email), along with REALLY odd colouring. Qodeblock has Sharing Icons, and they too follow the AB model of not using the real logos, with the only difference being that the colour is better and they add Google. Last but not least, Ultimate adds one called Social Share, and it expands your choices to 12 sites — it adds Digg, Blogger, StumbleUpon, Tumblr and, wait for it, MySpace??? What is this, 1998? And just to be weird, they give you what looks like the real icon/logo, and only available in black and white? What the heck. NONE of the other blocks adds hardly anything to the default one as far as I can see, except perhaps styling the colours. I’ll leave the default, and disable the rest.
Tools for embedding
I’ve mentioned in other posts that there is a Default “embed” tool for a ton of different sites, almost none of which I use or would embed things from into my site. Sure, in theory, I could, but just as with the social sites, many of them are just of no interest or utility for me. So I disabled the blocks created for embedding from their sites too.
Three collections have a unique option for embedding a map. The Default collection uses a block called Embed: Map, and it links to a site called Mapbox.com. To embed from it, you need an Access Token, which you can get from creating a free account…which I did, and then it stopped working. I couldn’t figure out how to even tell it an address to show by default. Advanced Gutenberg wants a Google API key, and to be honest, I struggled to get a Google Map API for something else I was doing online. I’ve filled out the forms for three different types of APIs, and all of them fail at the OAuth stage, with no explanation as to why nor can I find any examples online that are any different from what I did. Ultimate has a block specifically for Google Map too, with the same results. It’s easier to just post a link that will open Google Maps itself, I guess, on the rare occasion I might actually need it.
As I mentioned, there is a LONG list of other embed options and I disabled most of them. A few that are more relevant to me are:
Twitter … It lets me insert an individual tweet by someone, all I need is the URL. Note that Twitter lets you do it too, by giving you an embed code for every tweet, but it has extra code with it and requires a custom HTML block to insert it. The default block works better.
Facebook … It seems like it would be the same as Twitter, you have to paste a URL. Except there’s a catch. You can only do it IF the entire timeline of the account is public. Not just THAT post even, the ENTIRE timeline. Kind of defeats the purpose, but when I think about it, it makes sense. Only people who are logged in can see various posts. Unlike Twitter where you can see anything whether you’re logged in or not. Dang, I was hoping to keep a few. Oh well, bye-bye FB block.
WordPress … So here’s another weird thing. The auto-WordPress embed works with my own URLs too. For this same site. Which means I have no use for any of the big fancy Posts blocks that show dozens of other posts at once.
Google Calendar … I thought there were actually two calendar blocks, just slightly different nomenclature but they are actually quite different. One of the default ones, called Calendar, is actually a calendar of all my posts that I’ve done i.e., for each day where I’ve posted something, it’s clickable to give the archives list of posts for that day. Definitely not something I would ever use. There is also an Embed: Google Calendar option, but after my experience with FB, I wasn’t surprised to find out that the Google Calendar you’re embedding has to be totally public. Not that helpful if you wanted to share a single event and make IT public somehow.
So I’m keeping the Twitter one, disabling the rest.
Formatted prose
In previous posts, I talked about all the different text blocks for various things. But I intentionally left out five that are pseudo-related, and all come from Default/Jetpack collections.
First and foremost, there is one called Verse. This is for the poets among us, or at least the ones who need control of spacing in their poetry. The block has a small mono font, and the block won’t adjust spacing no matter what. Indent three spaces? You’ll see three equal spaces. Type three dots? Same distance. So if you’re into writing poetry, and the visual wrapping points on the page are important, you can style them in the block. I don’t do poetry, but having a way to totally control spacing and blocks isn’t a bad tool to have from time to time. I’ll keep it.
A second block is called Code, and it meets a similar need for not messing with spacing and fonts. If you are into showing computer code, like CSS or HTML, the code block lets you paste it in, control relative monospacing, and have the webpage ignore it so it doesn’t think it is actual code that it should execute. But I don’t need two blocks doin the same thing, so I’ll keep verse and disable code (code tends to highlight its text a bit).
The third block is called Preformatted and does the exact same thing as the first two. So I can disable it too.
The fourth and fifth were mistakes I made in looking at them. I thought “custom HTML” was to allow you, like Code, to be able to type in HTML that people could see to learn HTML. Nope, it’s a block to actually let you manually enter HTML code and execute it in the page. Same with Markdown, but it actually executes Markdown language. I don’t need Markdown, but I’ll keep Custom HTML for some occasional uses, although I could always switch any block like a paragraph block to an HTML view and type it there. This is just easier and cleaner. It even has a preview built-in to the block.
Totally unique blocks
As I have gone through all the different posts in the last few days about different types of blocks, most of them I could group together. A bit arbitrarily at times, but often they had clones in other collections. The last five blocks are a bit more unique although the first one has a clone.
Both Advanced Gutenberg and Stackable have a block called “Count Up”. The intent for this block is often related to things like fund-raising or some sort of web-state or a stat in general that you want to show off. Let’s say, for example, you’re trying to raise $500,000 for a charity, and you want to show that you’re at $222,312 so far. If you put that number in a block, it’s kind of flat. Boring even. But the count-up block allows you to enter the number ($222K) and when it is on the screen, it will show the numbers count from 0 all the way to $222,312 really quickly. Advanced Gutenberg counts up slower than Stackable, but Stackable has a lot more styling options. But to be honest, I have absolutely no need for either, really. Cool, interesting even, but useful? Not for me.
Default+Jetpack adds a Star Rating block and I wish I had found it years ago, even if I’m not going to use it. Let me explain. I have book reviews, TV reviews, movie reviews, even recipes. Lots of things I *could* use a ratings block for, and probably should. But the image is that of a star. And while I can increase it up to a scale of 10, and even colour it dark green to fit in my overall theme, I can’t change the icon. And some time ago, I came across the frog emoji that fits in with my PolyWogg theme. So I use that. It’s manual, I’m not thrilled by it, but it works. And so I’ll stick with that, cuz I like me my frogs. 🙂
Ultimate includes one called Timeline, and I almost missed it because there is another “posts” block in one of the collections that lets you see all your posts in a timeline diagram. I have no use for it, so I was going to pass on this one as well. Except it isn’t about posts. Honestly, it’s kind of a weird inclusion in any collection, as it is more like a plugin option for those wanting graphs and things. You can create a vertical timeline with it, with “blocks” / “tabs” hanging off either side. You enter descriptions in blocks with a Heading and a description, and opposite it, you insert a date (actually, you put dates in the block options). And it will let you create, wait for it, up to 100 things in the timeline. Honestly, most people doing this on a website would use a graphic editor to create an infographic of some sort, and then just share it as a photo. But this one lets you create it like a Powerpoint tool in your website, and you can totally enter text and links in the description boxes. The default is alternating left and right (called centred), but you can have it all go left or right with stacking above each one. Equally, there is a default connector that looks like a calendar, but you can have any one of 1200 other icons for the “hub” of the timeline bar, and turn dates off if you want. As I said, it’s totally unique, nobody else has anything like it. I can’t think of ANY reason why I would want it, but I have to keep it. It’s just too cool not to keep it.
And finally, the last block is from the Default+Jetpack collection and is a simple Contact Info block. While lots of other blocks had ways to show off contacts for team members, or bios, this is more of a website tool.
You can enter an email, phone number, street address, City, Province, Postal Code, Country, and link to a Google Map. I initially was of the mind, I have ZERO use for this. It was more for businesses, for example. Except, any of the rows that you don’t enter, it just ignores them and collapses the info. So if I wanted to give an address to, I don’t know, the place I was doing some astronomy, I could put in the info, and it would show up as an address that was clickable to a link. Now that I see it, I can see some of the allure. But if it is just a link, I have way better ways to do that. I could even make it a button, for example, that jumps to a Google Map. I can see the appeal, but not interested.
Update – Another special block
Shortly after I was nearing the end of my review of these blocks, Ultimate Addons included two “new” blocks that are “schema” friendly, but I don’t need that functionality per se. One is a “how-to” format for a page, but it’s pretty rough, and I have no real use for it. I can create my own headings just as easily. However, they have a second one to create a FAQ page, and it is pretty decent. Another “unique” one, although you could do the same with collapsible accordions just as easily. This just formats easily. I’ll keep it around.
Update: To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.
A lot of people would immediately think “meta” would mean blocks that let you do meta information within a webpage or site, but I am using the word more in the philosophical sense that there are a large number of sites that are “self-referential”…blocks that basically say, “Hey, I’m part of a website and here are some ways of looking at other parts of the website”. While most blocks let you add new content in a specific way, these “meta” site blocks are ones that basically pull data from elsewhere in the site and let you show that data within another page or post. For the various collections, I have 19 blocks identified across 9 general functions.
Posts or pages
The most obvious function is a block that lets you show other posts or pages within this post or page. The default collection has options for the latest posts, categories, archives, or even a tag cloud. Atomic Blocks has one called the post and page grid, Qodeblock has the same, Ultimate has a grid + a masonry layout + a carousel, and Stackable has one just called Posts.
I get why people want them, and I do have similar widgets in my sidebar. And many people create a three-column layout to put these at the top of the page as a sticky, and basically have the latest three posts sitting there ready to be clicked. But that’s not a web design I like. I am a vertical layout kind of guy, and to be honest, I have no use for any of these blocks. If I want to create a link to other posts, I’ll do it relatively manually, not as a preview of another post or page.
Shortcodes
I used to use shortcodes in my Classic Editor days. So, in theory, I might want a shortcode block. Default includes one to embed a widget, but outside of something like a Twitter feed or a Countdown widget, I’m not sure I have any use for it.
I tried it out with a shortcode style that I do use, like the NGG Image chooser, and sure, it works. But I can dump that into a regular paragraph block just as easily.
Equally, as with above, I have no use for a simple generic Widget ShortCode insertion either.
Miscellaneous default meta blocks
The default collection also includes blocks for repeat visitors, showing the latest comments on the site, adding an RSS feed, or styling a separate Search box. Pass on all of them.
Advanced Gutenberg has an Search Bar block, and if I needed one, I’d choose it. But I don’t, so I won’t. 🙂
Newsletters
Advanced Gutenberg, Atomic Blocks, and Qodeblock all have newletter blocks. AG is a simple contact block, even simpler than the standard Contact form block.Atomic Blocks and Qodeblock requires integration with a service like MailChimp. In theory, I like the idea, but I am not running a newsletter option. Pass.
Update: To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.
