I’ve already reviewed the default blocks in WordPress plus nine other collections, with Stackable winning most head-to-head battles. I’m in the market for something that will do interesting tables without having to generate them from a database, but I’m also always open to new Block collections.
Let’s go through the collection of blocks:
Accordion: it is nice, simple, has a header and colour options, but I already have a good one with Stackable and an even better one with Kadence. Pass.
Alert: I’m impressed, as it is a nice simple box with a spot for a title and a background in one of four main preset styles and colours, although the colours can be altered. I’m tempted to keep it around just because it is a quick way to do a text box with light colours in it.
Author: Like many other profile boxes, nothing special.
Carousel: I have no need for a carousel as I use NextGen Gallery and it isn’t compatible. But in addition, for some reason, the images I inserted didn’t seem to line up properly for the top and bottom.
Click to Tweet: Not bad, prepopulate some text you want people to share, they click, and it will copy to Twitter along with a link to your page. Another I have no need for.
Collage: This is a really cool block, where you can have 4 or 5 pics laid out for you like a photo book, with a bit of overlap. Cool way to do a layout. I can’t think what I would use it for, but it’s different.
Dynamic HR: If you were into HTML, you’d remember HR was the code for a horizontal line. Otherwise you’d have no idea what this was. And it’s pretty bland…dots or a line, coloured, thickness.
Event: Wow, this is terrible. Bad layout, almost no styling, no box around it. You could do better on a typewriter.
Features: Logo / icon, title, text. Nothing special.
Food & Drink: If you were doing a menu, great little block. Section heading, title for the item along with icons for popular, spicy, vegetarian, adjustable sizes and fonts, prices, descriptions.
Form: Defaults for Contact, RSVP or Event, nothing special.
GIF: inserting from GIPHY, already covered with other plugins as standard embed.
GIST: inserting code from GITHUB, just as easily covered by code blocks, although I suppose it would be live update, no use for it.
Hero: Call to action with two buttons, nothing special.
Highlight: Simple line of highlighted text…which you could do in any paragraph block?
Icon: Pretty simple set of icons to choose from, hard to tell, you can’t see them all, change colour and size. Yawn.
Logos & Badges: Quick way to insert images from the media library, but for no special purpose other than perhaps to show them in grayscale? IDK.
Map: Standard insert from Google.
Masonry: Nothing special, and only works with default media library.
Media Card: Decent layout, you can insert video, but limited layout options.
Offset Gallery: Okay, nothing special, just irregular gallery.
Posts: Nothing special.
Post Carousel: Nothing special.
Pricing Table: This is the one that I really hoped would lead somewhere. It made it sound like you could do a sophisticated table. Nope, just pricing boxes.
Row: Actually it’s simple columns.
Services: Same as pricing table but with images.
Shape Divider: Eight choices, not bad, nothing fancy.
Share: Simple sharing icons.
Social profiles: Mirror image of Share for your own profiles.
Stacked gallery: You rarely see this but it is a gallery with all the images one above the other, full width. Or you could just insert them individually and have more control over them.
Wow. So I was mostly interested in the “Pricing Table” which turned out to be simply boxes side by side. The rest are okay, nothing very robust, a tier-2 set of blocks overall. I could use the Alert or the Collage, they’re different, but not enough to warrant leaving the whole collection installed for two blocks I will rarely use.
I’ve been testing all the big block collections, and it’s time for Ultimate Blocks. Not to be confused with Ultimate Addons, a different block collection.
Ultimate Blocks comes with 20 different blocks, let’s see if I want any of them in my personal collection:
Button — It says “improved” but since I didn’t see the original, hard to say. It has four different sizes, flex/fixed/full width, colours or transparent, rounded or square, etc. What doesn’t work for me is that it is just one button…if you wanted to put several side-by-side (like a horizontal menu), you’d have to wrap it in some other kind of box/container.
Call to Action — Title, text and a button, nothing unusual, but I do like the button is set up so that it overlaps the container (i.e. half-in, half-out). Not bad.
Click to Tweet — I suppose if you were trying to get a campaign going, you could write a default tweet and then click the button to share. But not something I would ever do — too close to a chain letter to me. If you want to re-tweet on Twitter, go crazy; pre-writing your tweet so it looks original? Not going to happen.
Content Filter — This is sort of a strange block, and uber powerful. You know how sometimes you go to a site and you click on a page, it gives you a whole bunch of categories, and as you click on them, the selection gets narrower and narrower? Like COMPUTERS, DESKTOPS, ALLINONES, etc.? Most sites do that with query lookups and results. This allows you to do it all in one page. So you can enter your categories, lots of content blocks that you assign to various categories, and voila(!), semi-instant sortable page with content that changes as you choose which categories/tags apply. Interesting, but I have no real need for it. Pretty impressive though for all that content in a single page if you didn’t have query functions available easily.
Content Toggle — Basically a single accordion, and with not much styling.
Countdown — I am really surprised almost no blocks have this. Sure, there are widgets available easily, but a simple countdown block would seem a no-brainer. You have Count-Up blocks? Why not Countdown ones for dates, times, etc.? You set the final date and time, add in your choice of largest and smallest units of time (weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds), and choose a look/style of regular text, within circles or more like an odometer. All of them are pretty useful, to be honest. The only thing that surprises me is that I can’t style the text or the background or the numbers or the typography in general. You have a choice of black text on a standard background. I could wrap it inside something else, sure, but on its own? Bland. Functional, but bland. Oh, and you can enter text to appear when the magic time arrives! Nice.
Divider — A single line that I can control colour, thickness and a bit of spacing? Yawn.
Expand — Very similar to an accordion function, or as they call it, a content toggle, but with text that toggles the change, rather than an arrow.
How To — This is one that interested me, although I confess I want to adapt them to do recipes. It offers a title area, basic introduction, options for a video tutorial, duration (i.e., cooking time/prep time), required supplies (i.e., ingredients), required tools (i.e., pans, pots, etc.), separate steps with images / descriptions / tips, and even a final result option with a picture. It’s quite decent. But TBH, it is more about giving me ideas for what I want in my own recipe block layout than making me want to adapt this one.
Image Slider — It works okay, but as noted earlier, I have no need for such a block, since I use the NextGen Gallery, not the media library, to store my photos.
Post Grid — I have consistently said I have no need for such a block, and that holds, but this one has some nice simple options to let me choose which aspects of the preview shows (FI, title, date, author, excerpt, read more) and lets me put it in a vertical list if I want. I just don’t have a use for it.
Progress Bar — Holy snicker-doodles. Whoever designed this block is a relative genius. It is the simplest way to enter a progress bar that I have ever seen. Literally you add your “description” with basic styling if needed (although you could just put a paragraph block above it with full styling), choose whether you want a dial or a slide bar, adjust widths and colour of the bar, and then, wait for it, you literally just move a slider left and right for the percentage complete. It’s basic, but it is REALLY well done. I’m super-impressed.
Review — Well, this is another block that is quite unique. It has the option for a title of the review, you can add multiple features and rate them separately (1-5). And when you’re done, it will add an overall summary at the bottom! Sweet. It’s not the style of review I do, but it’s a nice format. And back some time ago, when I was reviewing individual episodes of TV shows and looking for a way to showcase them, this could have worked. My only complaint is the lack of more “descriptive” space to tell a story as part of the review. While each mini-block allows you as many lines as you want, the ability to style them is quite limited.
Social Share — The block, such as it is, is decent, with round or square buttons, and options for FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit and Tumblr. I don’t have need for any of them, as I already have tools for the site, but if I was looking, I like the ability to change the size of the icons here. If you want, you can even colorize all of them to match your theme, which is, umm, interesting.
Star Rating — This is a pretty basic block … you choose how many stars and their colour, that’s about it.
Styled Box — Again, they take a unique approach to the boxes, giving you a sub-choice of a Notification box, a Feature box (with images), a number box, or simply a box with a border. None are spectacular, but the number box isn’t very common, so nice to see an alternate version.
Styled List — I had hoped for something funky for bullets and numbers, but it’s really just an icon list.
Tabbed Content — Yep, they’re tabs all right. Nothing exciting.
Table of Contents — As I only had a couple of other ones to try, I was happy to see another possibility. Alas, it’s only real feature was the ability to have multiple columns.
Testimonial — Pretty basic setup, picture to the left (rounded), testimonial text and a name + company, with basic styling for colour.
Wow, this is a really tough call to make for retention or deactivation. There are 20 blocks, and for 18 of them, I can easily pass. The Countdown one though is pretty sweet, and the Progress Bar is excellent. Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I’m keeping them.
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.
