Tag Archives: blocks

The three text blocks that I use in WordPress

The PolyBlog
May 13 2020

I previously wrote about Deciding to play with Blocks as an adult, some of my favourite blocks, and whether I could even switch over to the Block Editor in WordPress. I had installed a bunch of block plugins and created a long list of possible blocks to use, including the default ones, JetPack, Advanced Gutenberg, Atomic Blocks, Kadence, Qodeblock, Stackable, and Ultimate Addons.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that having 60+ blocks available would slow down the back-end of the website when I was editing; I assumed they were more “available-on-demand”, i.e. that they wouldn’t be loaded during editing until you embedded them.

However, I had already created some reusable blocks for sign-offs to various posts, and I realized that they seem to be loading last when editing a page. For example, I would be editing an old post, go to insert the sign-off, and it wasn’t there “yet”. I would wait a few more seconds and it would show up in the available list, but otherwise, it was whirring with no option available, while it loaded all the other blocks into memory first.

Equally, having such a long list makes it hard to be inspired by anything either…psychologists call it the “paralysis of too much choice”.

Or I would confuse options. For example, I would go to do something simple like inserting a quote, but I couldn’t remember whether I preferred the blockquote from Ultimate Addons or the just default quote. Or perhaps one of the four different testimonial layouts that all do similar things.

That’s where the Block Manager comes in. You can disable the blocks you aren’t using. I tried creating a series of pages for testing out all the different blocks, plugin by plugin, but it didn’t really help with comparisons. Again, if I want a quote layout, I don’t want to pull up six different test pages to remember which quote layout I liked. I decided I needed to go about this more systematically.

So I created a simple grid in Excel with the 7 or 8 plugin names across the top, and then just started listing the various blocks by row. If a plugin had social icons, as almost every plugin does, then I would list their equivalent block beside the next one. I could then see at a quick glance the “types” of plugins down the side, and the options to the left. And now it’s time to prune. 🙂

Keeping the obvious text ones

The most basic block of all is the paragraph block. It is the fundamental building block of all text entries, so obviously that one must stay. I also have a lot of legacy pages created in the Classic Editor, so the Classic Paragraph has to stay, at least for now. It allows detailed formatting inline, which the new default doesn’t as easily. I’m surprised none of the plugins have created a new “Advanced Paragraph” option with similar features, but I know part of the reason is that it would seemingly violate the spirit and intent of the new block editor. If you want to style text, you use the top menu and the side menu, not inline menus that have it all together.

Interestingly, the default paragraph one includes an option for using a “drop cap” (a large initial letter for the paragraph, like old books, as this paragraph is styled), yet there are two other drop cap blocks that do almost the same thing. The ones from Atomic and Qodeblock give a few other options with them — the letter by itself, with a box around it, or in reverse (a black box with the letter cut out) — but I have no pressing use for the function unless I was trying to do some sort of odd “bulleted list”. I’ve disabled them and if I need it, I can settle for the default paragraph option. I also find it interesting that the default one shows the drop cap in the editor (as long as you are not editing the paragraph), while the other two only show up when you preview the page, which would easy to forget when doing editing on the fly.

Overall, the default paragraph and classic paragraphs are enough power for me. Scratch 2 other unnecessary blocks.

The next obvious one is the default Heading block (used above for the text “keeping the obvious text ones”). It gives me the options to do any one of the standard 6 heading styles, and I am trying to use it more liberally throughout my docs to enhance the structure. I tend to be verbose, so forcing a structure on my posts is helpful. However, there are two other big options.

Kadence has an Advanced Heading option which is decent. It moves the text alignment to the sidebar (rather than the standard options at the top for the regular header block) and adds configurable options for desktop, tablet and mobile phone, and extensive typography options (font family, letter spacing, line height, capitalization, highlighting, margins, padding, and shadows).

Ultimate Addons goes in a slightly different direction. Their default is centred and it allows you to add a description below the heading. It would be great for a page title, for example, or perhaps in pages in a very long post. Or perhaps even if you wanted to use it as a quote layout (the quote in the big text and the description could be a citation/source). The typography options are not quite as extensive as Kadence, but it is an interesting option.

However, to be honest, I don’t have a huge need when it comes to headings. Almost all of my headings are simple ones at the H4 level that don’t require extensive tweaking.

And if I do want that for a one-off situation, I can do it with lots of other blocks, without installing extra ones. I’ll stick to my three default ones.

Update: To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.

A few of my favorite WordPress Blocks…default, JetPack, Classic Editor

The PolyBlog
April 15 2020

I know, I know, you’re picturing me wandering through the Austrian hills singing about WordPress right now, aren’t you? No worries, I’ll wait over here at my computer keyboard while you think of raindrops on roses.

Oh, you’re done? Okay, good. In my last post (Deciding to play with Blocks as an adult), I gave a bit of intro to my decision to finally use the Block Editor on my website. Consistent design for a series of posts, a little bit of improved styling on my overall blog, and some improved efficiencies in workflow got me over the early molehills and ready to conquer the mountain.

Default blocks

The Block Editor comes with a healthy series of default built-in blocks, ready for anyone with WordPress installed to start using. The overarching “base block” is the PARAGRAPH block. In effect, this is like your “NORMAL” paragraph style in Word. If you start typing, this is the block it uses. It is designed for text, and there is some basic formatting available. Mostly things like BOLD, UNDERLINE, colour, etc. Some are at the top of the page, some are in the admin sidebar. ** Note, you only see these if you are in the BLOCK EDITOR mode; if you are in CLASSIC EDITOR mode, it looks like it always did…white text with a style ribbon at the top (like Word).

The second one is Heading block, and it is really nothing more than applying the HEADING style to a bit of text. Pretty basic.

Once you add an IMAGE BLOCK, things get more interesting. For example, it gives you the option to turn your image into a circle layout, something Classic Editor didn’t ever do easily. Not much more in the way of formatting, but decent improvement. An option to create a GALLERY is there, with pagination, but nothing amazing about it. Any decent gallery plugin will do the same, including JetPack.

Further options include a stylized LIST with a few more styling options than normal, a sample AUDIO block that I doubt I will ever use, another image block option that looks a lot like a header called COVER (large images, ability to put text over top of it, like a banner), a FILE block that allows you to click for downloadable content (for which I already have a better plugin), a decent VIDEO block, some basic TABLE options, SEPARATORS / DIVIDERS dividers for content, some CUSTOM HTML text, a strange VERSE block (to publish poetry and control ASCII layout), a couple of decent CITATION and PULLQUOTE layouts that improve considerably on the old QUOTE options, a BUTTON (nowhere near as good as most plugins or shortcodes), some options to have multiple COLUMNS of varying widths (including styling for background colour), options to add a group / “more” or “page break” / spacing options or insert various WIDGETS, and natural embeds from a long list of popular websites.

Out of all of them? I would use the base paragraph block, heading, image block (although rarely), the video block, and one more…there is a MEDIA AND TEXT block that lets you insert an image and put text beside it, as well as some basic formatting of the overall block. That isn’t completely easy to do in CLASSIC EDITOR. I don’t think it gives me enough styling options, but it lays out simply and nicely:

Media to the left, text to the right, un resized. Colour settings allowed.

JetPack

The JetPack plugin adds some extra functionality too. Much of the added functionality is around the ability to embed material from Google Calendar, Calendly, Eventbrite, Map, Markdown, OpenTable, Pinterest, Recurring Payments, Repeat Visitor, and Revue. I could, in theory, see a benefit to embedding a calendar entry or a map int eh future, but the rest are worthless to me.

It also adds options for some extra tools tools like a subscription form (already covered by a better plugin) or slideshows and tiled galleries (already covered). That really only left me two I could, in theory, use. One is another embed option, but this one is from a huge library of GIFs available online. Normally people have these GIFs in their social media accounts or chat messages. This plugin adds it for your website.

Of course one would have to use it sparingly for it to be useful. Another plugin I liked was called Star Rating, and I would consider it for my Book Reviews and other things, if I didn’t already have a better way to show that.

Classic Paragraph

Last, but not least, I’m including a block that is added by CLASSIC EDITOR. You get one called CLASSIC PARAGRAPH, which is a simple paragraph option but it gives you your full formatting style bar back. Also, while a single default PARAGRAPH is one paragraph per block, CLASSIC PARAGRAPH can have entire posts or pages within them, if you want. It’s better to separate the paragraphs though as you can then move any paragraph around with a click of a button.

Overall? I can get it to do what I want, but I feel constrained still, even with Classic Editor that lets me do anything, without giving me a ton of extra functionality that I’ll use right away.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a really scary button. There are some built-in layout options that come with the defaults, and it is like having templates in Word that you DL from the ‘net. Or buying a theme for your overall site. It is a collection of “sets of nicely formatted and grouped blocks” that with a click of a button will give you an advanced layout.

For me, it is scary because it is not something small like tweaking a block or a paragraph here or there. This embeds huge swaths of design elements all at once — with no real regard for whether any of it fits within your default theme’s settings. It’s powerful, sure, but it seems like an overly blunt tool to me. Some would give you a good starting point though. In the meantime, let’s try some other BLOCK PLUGINS.

Update: To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.

Deciding to play with Blocks as an adult

The PolyBlog
April 14 2020

My wife’s friend’s husband, James, has started a blog and will be blogging about his experiences growing up in Ontario with some expected emphasis on simpler pleasures of childhood like toys, comic books, and TV shows (you can check out his blog here –> https://70scanadianmanboy.com/). The premise got me thinking about some topics I have had in mind for a while, as well as “toys” I have now, and it led me down a rabbit hole thinking about my current website.

I do have the tendency from time to time to “just play”. And I recently decided to revert to my own childhood and play with Blocks.

When WordPress went to version 5, they switched from a classic editor interface to a more graphical one called Blocks. The basic premise was that they were upgrading from a word processing program (like Word) to a graphical layout program (like Publisher). And like Publisher, it focuses less on the words and content and more on how all the elements fit together — page layout and design.

But outside of the virtual world, I have Word and Publisher at home. And I never use Publisher. I have no need for it, as I can do everything I want to do in a program like Word. Truth be told, I suspect about 80% of the people using Word don’t know how to use more than about 10% of its power. And that was the rub for me with Blocks.

Entry into the World of Blocks

I did not transition gracefully to the block editor when WordPress v. 5 released and they dropped the classic editor as the default. I immediately did what most people did, which is add Classic Editor as a plugin. And promptly went right back to using my admin site exactly as I had before. That was 2 years ago.

Since then, I’ve seen lots of stuff on Blocks, but most of it is irrelevant to what I do, which is regular blog entries. Not a lot of formatting involved, nor page layout, and to the extent that there is, I tend to fix it by designing one page/post I like and then just duplicating a template version of it whenever I need a similar layout.

If you’re an experienced Block user, and a convert to the Cult of Blocks (trademark pending), you’re likely sputtering, “But, but, but…”. Yes, of course, I *could* do all those things with a Block editor. But like using Word for my documents instead of a desktop publishing program, I didn’t need to, my trusty Classic Editor worked just fine.

About two months ago, my resolve to stick with the CE started to weaken. It’s a slippery slope to want something to look just a little bit better, for the design to be a bit more consistent in look and feel, or for a workflow to be just a little more efficient. And I slid all the way to the bottom.

In terms of looking a little better, I saw a design about 5 years ago where a website put the date out to the left of the content, stylized it to look like a Google Calendar button, and coloured it in red and white so it would “pop”. I’ve seen other themes do the same, but almost always with some fatal flaws. Not the least of which is that it often had just the month and day, no year. That goes against every grain in my design fibre, having a date like “March 15th” and not knowing which year it was. Many do it deliberately to fake something looking more modern/up-to-date — the post could be 10 years old, but the date makes you think it was more recent. But I thought it was still cool, and I wanted it on my site if I could. With Blocks allowing you to control and format layouts, could I do that with my site? It had made me curious for awhile. Sure, 200 BRs provide a lot of friction to sliding, but if the slope is steep enough, any friction can be overcome by momentum.

In terms of consistency in design, I have Book Reviews on my site, and I’ve either chosen or been forced to change the layout and content of my BRs for varying purposes 3 previous times. When there were only 20 reviews and again when there were about 50 reviews, I changed my approach and content for my reviews, and it wasn’t a big deal to quickly go through them, open them up, tweak the layout, close them down, and be done. I did the same when there was around 100 because of something dramatic that Amazon changed in the way I could link to images of book covers. When I finished, I ticked a box to say “done” and fully expected to continue on my merry little way with that template / layout until I die. I know consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but I like the idea of a consistent look. So I was determined not to change it again unless something dramatic happened or I was forced to change it. And even then, I thought, “No going back. Old ones stay as they are.”

Yet, over the last few weeks, I’ve been playing with the back-end of my site for TV Reviews and Movie Reviews. And that process has given me insights into how I layout my Book Reviews, with some alternatives that I didn’t do before. But the TV Reviews and Movie Reviews have different elements, and as I figured out how to do those, I realized that I had some inconsistent layout in my BRs too. Plus I could upgrade an element of design.

Finally, the inefficiencies in workflow were brought home when I attended a virtual WordPress camp from San Antonio a couple of weeks back. I joined the web conference specifically to get a better feel for Blocks, and while I misjudged a few sessions and their likely relevance, one that was more about workflow showed incidental uses of Blocks that were quite useful. Ways, for example, to create and save a “reusable” block in my template for use in all my Book Reviews — and if I later want to edit and tweak it? It will make the change across ALL of the BRs. Plus I found a way to collapse my BR index from six separate pages to a single sortable one, complete with filters too, and that requires a change to all 200 BRs to make them consistent. I could “cheat” and create a redirect, but it wouldn’t look right. At least not to me.

So I put on my deep water waders and headed away from my safe shores into Lake Block. In my next post, I’ll talk about learning to swim again, but I’m still alive, and switching from one editor to another quite frequently. Later I’ll even talk about the calendar “block”.

Update: To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.

Block options in WordPress – Default Gutenberg blocks

The PolyBlog
March 29 2020

As I mentioned, I’ve been trying out various blocks in WordPress, and I’m starting with the default ones pre-programmed with Gutenberg’s basic install.

There are a number of blocks that I quite like:

  • regular paragraph (although I’d like more Tiny MCE buttons);
  • classic paragraph (boring, but not much choice but to keep it with all my old posts);
  • headers (dead simple, adds structure to the page);
  • NGG gallery (my images didn’t have captions for some reason but I like the extra container controls);
  • video block (simple container);
  • code block (I don’t really have much use for it, but easier than trying to put it in a pull quote);
  • basic button (radius for corners, multiple colours, and, more importantly, it autofills links to pages and posts on the site);
  • columns (feels like I’m on a site like Shutterfly choosing page layouts…I love the power, just not sure when I would use it too much, but admittedly the background colour options are really nice);
  • embed (pretty powerful, lots of options, including things like embedding a tweet);

I’m on the fence for a few others:

  • image block (I already use NGG for everything image related, but it has the option to change the image to a circle too!);
  • quote block (different sizes, but the citation isn’t as controllable);
  • cover block (a large page with the option to change opacity and add a title overtop, great for previews and sliders, but I don’t really need it);
  • file block (allows easy downloads, but I have a download manager that handles it just as well, and tracks traffic);
  • dividers (great for the small one, and the wide one, not sure about the three dots);
  • table (nothing special, although stripes is easy);
  • custom HTML (rarely have use for it, except when I’m embedding things);
  • pullquote (good simple info box);
  • verse (allows you basically a quick and dirty courier / ASCII layout, but not sure why);
  • media and text (I should love this one, but I just found the granularity for the image controls and text a bit weak);

Other ones, I don’t particularly like:

  • gallery from media library (no use for it when I have NGG);
  • list block (boring!);
  • audio block (no use for it);
  • preformatted (boring!);

I didn’t try the GROUP, MORE, or PAGE BREAK ones as I have no real use for them. Same with widgets that allow me to add widgets, shortcodes, archives, calendar, categories, comments, posts, RSS, and search — can’t think of when I would ever post them in a post or page.

I have YOAST installed, and it adds a few default ones too, including FAQ and a how-to layout for step by step instructions. Could prove useful, although I don’t have an immediate need.

Jetpack adds GIFs (mildly interesting) and a five-star rating system (too basic). On to the other block plugin options!

Update: To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.

Deciding if I can use blocks for WordPress editing

The PolyBlog
March 29 2020

I participated in the overview of WordPress (WP 101 in the WordCamp for San Antonio, TX) that was done virtually this weekend, with two goals in mind…learn more about custom post types and figure out how to transition from classic editor to block editor.

I’ve literally had a mental “block” about switching to the block editor. I played with it initially just long enough to get confused, I wasn’t sure about how to align things, all my settings to tweak seemed to disappear, etc. I felt like it was giving me a lot of power over page layout like a graphics layout program used to do for printing paper when all I really wanted/needed was the digital equivalent of a typewriter. Maybe a few graphics to stick in here and there. Certainly things that I could easily do in something like Word without going for the full layout manager of another program.

I didn’t get to do much with custom post types, but I did watch an overview of blocks. And with the number of posts and themes that are going the way of blocks, well, I need to figure this out sooner rather than later. Particularly if I’m going to transform some layouts of things like book reviews that I’m in the process of tweaking right now anyway.

Blame it on the book reviews

My book reviews have a pretty stable layout overall:

  1. An image that I pull from Good Reads via HTML and that will take me to the GR site if I click on it;
  2. Three sections of text – Plot / Premise; What I liked; What I didn’t like;
  3. My multi-star review;
  4. A text bottom line of a few words;
  5. Links to GoodReads site;
  6. Links to my index of other book reviews; and,
  7. My closing / signoff.

But I’ve made some tweaks before when I had about 90 reviews; again when I had about 130; and again now that I have 180. Each time, I’ve had to go back and reformat quite a bit. So, of course, it makes me wonder…would a block layout let me “fix” it once and move on? The short answer is that in many ways, this is EXACTLY one of three elements that a block editor will give you. So with the book reviews in play, I’m motivated to fix it once.

Options with the block editor

The block editor allows me to have a consistent look and feel (goal 1) while having a lot more flexibility (goal 2). But it is goal 3 that is the most exciting — creating reusable blocks that can be dropped into a post or page, and if later you want to edit it, it will update across all of the site. Sort of like a macro.

For the image, I paste / embed an image from Good Reads, and GR gives me the code to use for embedding. The only real “tweak” I do to it is to increase the size to a specific width. Ideally, I would put the code in a wrap container, it would resize the image, and voila, it would sit there perfectly in the same spot. I can even “save” it as a special block and reuse it, potentially.

For the three headings, they never change so I can preprogram them and set specific font and heading size. If I ever want to change them, as long as I save them as separate reusable chunks, they’ll stay put. If I change one, it will change them all. Similarly, I can add in three paragraph blocks just after them, although those will change.

For the review, some of the block plugins come with review formats, but I kinda like my “reading frog” image. So I’ll likely stick with that. I *could* play with the format and look/feel for a 1 star / 2 star / etc setup and save those. Then, if I ever decide to ditch the frog and go with stars, for example, I just need to edit the block and they’ll all change.

The bottom line is a set header plus a flexible paragraph text, so again, pretty straightforward.

Where things might get interesting is the Good Reads link. Like the image, it is a set “format” but not a set block (the link would be different each time). However, the link to my other reviews is a set block that can be reused easily.

And then there’s my signoff block. It is a standard element I use ALL the time. So it will definitely get turned into a reusable block. And give me maximum flexibility for the future.

Enter the block plugins

The default Gutenberg editor has a lot of default blocks, and they are more than enough to get me going for testing things. But not all blocks can be converted to all other types of blocks, so I don’t want to get too far down the testing and then find another block plugin has this awesome additional block that is perfect for my Good Reads images, for example. So I’m working through a bunch of the main block options.

Update: To see my current collection of blocks, check out the blocks I use.