The Best Block Editor Plugin

I’ve spent a lot of time in recent years using and testing plugins. It started when I revisited WordPress after a break of more than 10 years! Remember Kubrick in WordPress 1.5? I was there, tinkering away, before life pulled me in another direction.

I came back to WordPress looking for a quick, simple and easy way to start a blog, but couldn’t help looking under the hood! I’m an engineer, why wouldn’t I? It’s changed, of course, and it’s better, much better. So I was hooked.

The principles behind Kubrick, now known as ‘Default’ on the WP repository, are what I came looking for – simplicity, clean, minimal design, yet deceptively powerful. I was looking for something that gets the job done elegantly and without any fuss. Instead I was initially bombarded with the word “Multipurpose” – the implied sentiment being that “you can build anything with this even if you’re the most stupid person in the world – all you have to do is pay”! Themes, plugins and services all after cash, but with inadequate descriptions and with demos which promise big but the delivered theme simply won’t adapt to your real-world requirements without sometimes days of reconfiguration. Applications were either seductively elegant but lacking, or ugly and cumbersome yet powerful. In the global, media savvy marketing world, substance has very little value, so it was proving difficult to find themes or plugins which were written to the highest standards, were adaptable, and which had a logical balance between form and function.

Then I came across Rich Tabor of Themebeans, as was, the author/co-author of this plugin. He writes clean code. He writes clean, well thought-out themes. He writes beautiful projects which successfully run the tightrope of function and aesthetics, and CoBlocks is no exception.

It combines all that was Gutenberg and is now the Block Editor. Gutenberg was about thinking again, about overlaying what we know now on what we knew, to discover something new. Rich was the first developer I came across who wholeheartedly embraced the Gutenberg project and made it sing, and he continues to do so. CoBlocks elegantly provides and enhances what you need as a blog author and fills in some of the gaps. From what I’ve seen so far, the continued steady and considered development of this editor plugin, means that in months to come, users will enjoy the pinnacle of what is achievable with the Block Editor.

There are many other editor plugins out there, with far more options than CoBlocks offers. I have trialled them all, styled them, tweaked them, and then ended up deleting them. I try them again, a few weeks later, only to delete them again! Almost every block in other plugins feels rushed. Indeed, there is a race at present to add functionality to the editor, but every developer knows, you can’t beat time. Usability takes time. Design takes time. Testing takes time, but with other plugins of this kind, it feels like the user is the testing platform. There are frequent updates which add more nearly-finished blocks and don’t seem to add any polish to what already exists. It’s a block count fest and I guess that’s a part of the territory of open-source. Nevertheless, it remains the case, as I found only yesterday, that many of the blocks in most of the other similar plugins need work, regardless of the theme. I always seem to have to finish them with, for example, some padding or margin to align elements or text within a block. And conflicts with other plugins? Yes.

Not so with CoBlocks! Like Kubrick, CoBlocks starts from the beginning. This plugin utilises and enhances what is already there and adds a little more. Major additions are beautifully designed and executed, and work perfectly, such as the Page Divider block. CoBlocks adds what you don’t at first notice, but end-up needing. Select a paragraph and you’ll find a drop-down for typography and spacing. There’s a Dynamic HR separator block which adds adjustable spacing. Well presented and seamlessly integrated. Understated yet powerful and very, very useful.

Rich Tabor has inspired me, after all these years, to get involved again. I’m following his GitHub projects, cloning my own and learning SASS.

I would highly recommend that you at least try CoBlocks. It won’t light-up you admin or make your editor look any different, but leave it activated and carry on writing for a few weeks. Then deactivate it and try the writing experience without it. You’ll soon activate it again!

For me, it’s become an integral part of any theme I’m working on and of my own blog, to the extent that I almost regard it as core.

If you’re a budding developer, I recommend you take a look at his work. If you’re a user, I would urge you to try everything he has to offer.

An excellent project which exemplifies how WordPress development should be done.

• This topic was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by bcworkz.
• This topic was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by Jan Dembowski. Reason: Removed all links