Content Blocks Builder

Description

Content Blocks Builder (CBB) is a tool that helps you create custom blocks, variations, styles, and patterns directly in the Block Editor without using a code editor.

WordPress, with its Gutenberg Block Editor, provides a robust foundation for building websites. However, when you need something more specific or unique features that are not available in the default blocks, you have to build custom solutions or explore third-party options. CBB is designed to help you create those unique layouts and features easily, eliminating the need to seek out third-party plugins.

The core feature of CBB is to create custom blocks by grouping core blocks or third-party blocks into a container block. This container block offers native features such as typography, colors, spacing, border, etc., along with a bunch of custom advanced features that help you create common layouts such as grid, carousel, accordion, modal, off-canvas, etc. You can also create repeater blocks to display repeating content that works similarly to the ACF repeater field. For more information, please check out the detailed guide about CBB blocks.

The goal of CBB is to help you build a complex website with WordPress using only core blocks and native Gutenberg features with any block theme.

Key Features

  • Manage custom blocks: Create, edit, copy, import, and delete custom blocks.
  • Create repeater blocks like ACF repeater fields that support grid, carousel, accordion, and vertical stack layout
  • Advanced block support features: Modal, off-canvas, toggle content, sticky, etc.
  • Manage block variations & block styles: Create, edit, copy, import, and delete block variations. It works on any block.
  • Manage block patterns: Create, edit, copy, import, and delete custom block patterns.
  • Enhance the Query Loop block: Add grid, carousel layouts, and advanced filter and sorting settings.
  • There is a library of pre-built blocks, variations, styles, and patterns
  • Load Google Fonts easily with a few clicks
  • Import/export custom blocks, variations, and patterns from/to other sites

Why choose CBB?

  • CBB adheres to Gutenberg, making it user-friendly and easy to use. If you are familiar with the Block Editor then you are already familiar with CBB.
  • CBB uses core blocks to build container blocks, ensuring it’s fast, clean, flexible, bloat-free and code-free.
  • Sites built with CBB are easier to maintain as most tasks are accomplished through the Block Editor. You don’t need to know React to create a complex block or maintain a code repository for it.

How does it help?

Below are some video tutorials that demonstrate how you can use this plugin to build your sites:

Create a banner slider for your site directly on the Editor

Create a custom blog page

Create a featured posts section

Create a glow-hover effect button variation

More video tutorials

Create custom layouts

You can create common layouts with CBB such as grid, carousel, accordion, and vertical stack. CBB includes 5 built-in layout blocks: Advanced Group, Grid, Carousel, Stack and Accordion. You can use them or build your custom blocks easily.

Watch the video tutorial to create a simple responsive grid using the built-in Grid block.

Create a similar layout by creating a custom grid block.

Watch the video tutorial to create a banner slider using the built-in Carousel block.

Watch the video tutorial to create a FAQ section using the built-in Accordion block.

Create popup, off-canvas, and toggle content

With the toggle content feature, you can build a popup, off-canvas, toggle content easily and you can put anything in there.

Watch the step-by-step video tutorial to create modal, off-canvas content.

Create a responsive header with hamburger menu and search bar toggle.
Create a notification bar.
Create a video popup.
Create a cookie popup.
Create an off-canvas content.

Enhance the Query Loop and other blocks

CBB provides a bunch of advanced features to add style to custom blocks like responsive width, height, spacing, border, box-shadow, transform, alignments etc. And by wrapping around other blocks, you can add those features to other blocks as well.

Create a custom blog page
Create a banner slider using the Query Loop block.
Create a carousel of posts using the Query Loop block.
Create a blog layout with overlay style using the Query Loop block.

Create block variations, block styles, and block patterns

CBB helps you create custom variations, styles, and patterns directly in the Block Editor without using WordPress API.

Create variations and styles for the core image block.
Create variations for any block.
Create patterns.

Google Fonts

This feature does a really simple job, it loads a font for headings text and another for the body text from more than 1000+ Google Fonts easily with a few clicks. If you are worried about GDPR compliance, there is an option to load fonts from Bunny Fonts instead of Google Fonts.

How to use Google Fonts and be GDPR compliant.

Which theme should I use with this plugin?

It is compatible with all Gutenberg-ready themes, but our recommended themes are default themes such as Twenty Twenty Four, Twenty Twenty Three, Twenty Twenty Two, or Astra theme.

How does it work with other blocks/plugins?

This plugin works with all third-party blocks but we recommend using single-block plugins for lightweight and performance. We also develop several single block plugins, that work great with this plugin, please see them in the below section.

Design library

We have already included a library of block patterns for you to quickly use or customize to fit your design. There is a popup inserter in the block editor for you to find and insert patterns with a few clicks.

How to use the pattern inserter popup.

Browse the Design Library to see what the plugin can do for you.

Block and Variation library

Besides the pattern library, we have built an external library of content blocks and common block variations. All of the blocks/variations in this library have been created by CBB directly in the Block Editor. With a few clicks, you can easily import blocks or variations into your site. You use them directly or customize or learn from them.

Watch some video tutorials to learn how to use the library:

Import the particles background block.
Import the basic header block.
Import the Query Loop variations.
Import the arrow buttons.

Learn CBB

Check out the documentation at contentblocksbuilder.com.
Watch all tutorials on Youtube.
We’re still recording video tutorials, so please subscribe to our YouTube channel to get a notification when new videos are released.

Pro version

The professional version adds more advanced features to your content such as:

  • Custom CSS Editor
  • Copy/Paste styles from one block to another across domains
  • Support multiple edit styles
  • Parallax, infinite scrolling, and zooming effects for background image
  • Advanced features for the carousel layout like entrance animations, advanced effects, customized pagination, navigation…
  • Advanced features for the toggle content layout(modal, off-canvas) like custom entrance animations, delay time, and closed state saving.
  • Advanced features for the sticky content.
  • Add custom JS, custom CSS and external scripts and stylesheets for blocks
  • Add custom CSS for custom variations
  • Reveal animation effects

Watch our video tutorials to see how the Pro version can help you build advanced features for your sites:

Create a custom block for the image zooming effect like Medium using an external script.
Create a page title bar with a parallax background effect.
How to create an animated heading block.
How to create a Back To Top block.
How to create an image compare block.
Create a custom variation/style for the core button block.

Go premium to unlock advanced features with CBB Pro.

If this plugin is useful for you, please do a quick review and rate it on WordPress.org to help us spread the word. I would very much appreciate it.

Other plugins

Please check out my other plugins if you’re interested:

  • Meta Field Block – A block to display a meta field, custom field as a block on the front end, supporting ACF fields. It can also be used in the Query Loop block.
  • SVG Block – A block to insert inline SVG images easily and safely. It also bundles with more than 3000 icons and some common non-rectangular dividers.
  • Icon separator – A tiny block just like the core/separator block but with the ability to add an icon to it.
  • Breadcrumb Block – A simple breadcrumb trail block that supports JSON-LD structured data.
  • Block Enhancements – A plugin to add more useful features to blocks like icons, box-shadow, transform…
  • Counting Number Block – A block to display a number that has the number-counting effect.
  • Better YouTube Embed Block – Embed YouTube videos without slowing down your site.

The plugin is developed using @wordpress/scripts.

Installation

How to install it from wordpress.org

Please see the video tutorial to install it from your site dashboard:

How to install it manually

  1. Upload the plugin files to the /wp-content/plugins/content-blocks-builder directory, or install the plugin through the WordPress plugins screen directly.
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ screen in WordPress

FAQ

Why do you need this plugin?

To change the way of creating sites with WordPress from the legacy Classic Editor to the new Gutenberg Block Editor.

Who needs this plugin?

This plugin is made for developers or designers but anyone familiar with the Block Editor can use it.

Is there a built-in design library?

Yes, there is a library of production-ready block patterns.

Is this another block library?

No. It’s like a tool to create custom layouts for core or third-party blocks without coding. However, it provides five custom block types: Grid, Carousel, Stack, Accordion and Advanced group.
Besides the five above block types, we have built an external library of content blocks and common block variations. You can easily import and use them in the plugin.

Which themes does it support?

It is compatible with all block-based themes and some popular classic themes like Astra, but our recommended themes are default themes such as Twenty Twenty Four, Twenty Twenty-Three, Twenty Twenty-Two, and Astra theme. If you find it doesn’t work with your theme, please let us know. We’ll work on it.

Reviews

སྤྱི་ཟླ་བཅུ་གཉིས་པ། 18, 2023 1 reply
Flexible, clean, fast - perfect! Thank you so much for this plugin.
སྤྱི་ཟླ་དང་པ། 27, 2024 1 reply
Great plugin.You can access a lot of parameters and easily customize the blocks + the pattern library is nice and very helpful.
སྤྱི་ཟླ་གསུམ་པ། 9, 2023 1 reply
I've used this plugin multiple times to add sliders on sites. A fantastic way to loop posts/tags/categories into lists and sliders.I ran into a error, and support was on it in minutes to solve the issue and release a fix.
སྤྱི་ཟླ་བཅུ་གཅིག་པ། 9, 2022 1 reply
I've been using it for a few weeks and little by little I see the potential it has. It is very flexible. The developer is very attentive.
སྤྱི་ཟླ་བཅུ་པ། 21, 2022 1 reply
From what I saw and tested so far this plugin seems really amazing! Apparently it's exactly what I needed for my projects. Keep up the good work and let's wait for good news.
སྤྱི་ཟླ་བཅུ་པ། 12, 2022 1 reply
Really an excellent plugin, that provide grid, carousel, accordion, modal popup, canvas offset and more. But its not a block library, it giving just some very basic blocks to create any kind of custom blocks we want, plus the best part is that we can even create variations of the blocks, also for the default blocks like button and cover. One more thing, it providing library of pre-build patterns, to directly insert and modify as per your need In one word this is a kind of plugin, that anybody can have love at first sight.
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Contributors & Developers

“Content Blocks Builder” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Changelog

2.5.2

Release Date – 26 March 2024

  • Added – Add preview style for the HTML block
  • Fixed – Accordions do not work properly in the multiple opens mode
  • Improved – Replace the full-sidebar mode with the sidebar mode for the custom editor
  • Improved – Refactor the unique Id for the custom Editor, Accordion item, and toggle
  • Improved – Force query blocks, variations, and patterns on the debug mode, only cache data for production
  • Improved – Minify dynamic custom JS code for production
  • Fixed – Should update the slidesPerGroup parameter automatically if its value is larger than slidesPerView

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