Description
BlockCrate adds nine blocks to the WordPress block editor. Each one is built on
the editor’s own design tools rather than a parallel set of controls, so colour,
typography, spacing, borders and shadows come from your theme and behave the way
core blocks do.
The blocks work before their JavaScript loads. The accordion is a native
details element, the carousel is a scroll-snap strip, the progress bar renders
at its final value, and the tabs fall back to a plain stack of labelled
sections. Scripts only ever upgrade what is already there.
Blocks
- Accordion — collapsible panels holding any other blocks. Uses native
details elements, so keyboard support, screen reader semantics and
find-in-page expansion come from the browser. Panels can open one at a time
with no JavaScript at all. - Tabs — horizontal or vertical tabbed panels following the WAI-ARIA tabs
pattern, including roving tabindex and arrow key navigation. - Testimonial Grid — testimonials as a responsive grid or a carousel, with
star ratings, avatars from the media library, and initials as a fallback. - Countdown — counts down to a date and time, with selectable units and a
choice of what happens when it ends. - Info Box — an icon or image with a heading, text and link. The whole card
can be made clickable while keeping one meaningful link for screen readers. - Pricing Table — plans side by side, each with a price, a multi-line
description, a feature list and a call to action. Accent colour, card
background, borders, corner radius, padding, price size and the button style
are all adjustable. One plan can be highlighted, and the badge that names why
carries the meaning so it is not left to colour alone. - Progress Bar — a labelled bar that fills when it scrolls into view, and
respects a reduced motion preference. - Image Slider — images in a swipeable slider, one or several at a time,
each with an optional caption and link. The frame shape, the crop and where
the caption sits are all adjustable. It can advance on its own, and when it
does it pauses on hover and on keyboard focus and never runs at all for a
visitor who has asked for reduced motion. - Page Slider — your published pages, or any other public post type, in a
slider built from a live query rather than a copy. Each slide carries the
featured image, title and excerpt, and the page it sits on drops out of its
own results. Rendered on the server, so it never goes stale.
Accessibility
Interactive blocks are keyboard operable and expose the right roles and states.
Decorative graphics are hidden from assistive technology, ratings are announced
once rather than as a row of glyphs, and every animation is dropped when the
visitor prefers reduced motion.
Source Code and Build Process
This plugin is fully open source (GPLv3 or later) and contains no obfuscated or
minified-only code.
Where the source lives
The human-readable source for everything in build/ ships inside the plugin:
resources/js/blocks/— the editor bundle (TypeScript/React), one directory per blockresources/js/frontend/— the front-end view scripts, one file per blockresources/css/—style.css(front end) andeditor.css(editor chrome)-
app/,bootstrap/,config/— all PHP, unminifiedbuild/ contains nothing but the compiled output of those files.
How to rebuild it
The compiled output in build/ is produced from the sources above with
@wordpress/scripts (webpack), PostCSS and Tailwind. Requires Node.js 18+:
npm install
npx wp-scripts build
composer install restores the single PHP runtime dependency (PHP-DI) into
vendor/. The webpack, PostCSS and Tailwind configuration files are kept out of
the distributed archive, as the plugin directory does not accept .cjs files in
a published plugin. They are standard @wordpress/scripts configuration and are
available from the author on request.
Bundled third-party libraries
All are MIT licensed and GPL compatible:
- Embla Carousel 8.6.0 — https://github.com/davidjerleke/embla-carousel — powers the three carousels
- clsx 2.1.1 — https://github.com/lukeed/clsx — class name helper
- tailwind-merge 3.3.1 — https://github.com/dcastil/tailwind-merge — class name helper
React and the @wordpress/* packages are not bundled; they are loaded from
WordPress core as registered script dependencies.
Screenshots



Blocks
This plugin provides 11 blocks.
- Accordion Collapsible panels that can hold any other blocks.
- Event Countdown A countdown to a date and time, for launches, offers and events.
- Pricing Table Pricing plans side by side, each with a price, a feature list and a call to action.
- Info Box An icon, heading, text and link in one card, optionally linked as a whole.
- Page Slider Your published pages in a slider, each with its featured image, title and excerpt.
- Testimonial Grid Testimonials in a responsive grid, each with a quote, author and rating.
- Tabs Tabbed panels that can hold any other blocks.
- Image Slider Images in a swipeable slider, each with an optional caption and link.
- Progress Bar A labelled progress bar that fills when it scrolls into view.
- Tab panel A single panel inside a tabs block.
- Accordion panel A single collapsible panel inside an accordion.
Installation
- Upload the plugin to
/wp-content/plugins/blockcrate, or install it from the Plugins screen. - Activate it.
- The blocks appear in the editor under the BlockCrate category.
FAQ
-
Do the blocks work without JavaScript?
-
Yes. Every block renders usable content before its view script runs, and the
scripts only add enhancements such as dragging a carousel or animating a bar. -
Can I style the blocks with my theme?
-
Yes. The blocks use the editor’s colour, typography, spacing, border and shadow
tools, so they inherit theme.json settings. Frontend styles are driven by CSS
custom properties prefixed--blockcrate-, which a theme can override without
!important.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“BlockCrate” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
ContributorsTranslate “BlockCrate” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.0
- Initial release.
- Accordion block built on native
detailselements. - Tabs block following the WAI-ARIA tabs pattern.
- Testimonial Grid block with grid and carousel layouts.
- Countdown block with selectable units.
- Info Box block with an icon or image.
- Pricing Table block with highlightable plans and design controls.
- Progress Bar block that fills on scroll and respects reduced motion.
- Image Slider block with captions, links, autoplay and a scroll-snap fallback.
- Page Slider block, rendered on the server from a live query.
