[Resolved] How to work with Blocks plugin

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[marcB-6]

Hi guys,

Recently i posted a thread where i had some general questions about the use of the blocks plugin for client projects. Those questions can be found here: https://toolset.com/forums/topic/questions-related-to-blocks-plugin/.

Luo suggested to make question more specific in a new thread, and that's the reason i opened this ticket. I'm setting up a new project. Good to know before answering, I don't want admin to be able to change structure and styling in sections and pages. The general admin is good at managing content that is related to his or her expertise and (in general) not building or designing websites and making good decisions related to user experience.

So, in attachment you find an example of one of the pages (landingpage) in this project.
My normal way of working would be:

1. Create a template (landing page template)
2. Create a fieldset that contains fields and repeatable field groups related to content i want admin to be able to changes (landing page fields)
3. Assign fieldset to template AND pages
4. Create a page and add content.
5. Build template in HTML/CSS/JS (partially hardcoded content/partially dynamic fields from step 2).
6. Test page
7. Hand over to admin

Now, what I need help with is how steps would be to build this page with the block editor given the condition that admin role is to manage content and not be able to make changes to structure or styling.

Hope you can help!
Thanks.

[Waqar]

Hi,

Thank you for contacting us and I'd be happy to assist.

First sorry about the delay in reply, as we had an unusually high number of tickets in the queue.

In the scope of this discussion, "Designer" will mean you or any person who is designing/structuring the website and "admin" will refer to a person who'll be managing only the content side of things, without access to design/structure.

The Gutenberg and Toolset Blocks will allow you to design/structure pages and posts right from their respective individual post/page edit screens. But for your requirement, it is important that those individual post/page edit screens are not used for the actual design/structure and instead it is controlled through content templates, Views, and WordPress Archives since these items are not available for editing to all user roles.

Considering the example of the landing page that you shared, a designer who is using Toolset Blocks to build it will create a new Toolset content template and then assign that completed content template to the desired page.
( ref: https://toolset.com/documentation/getting-started-with-toolset/ )

This way when an admin will open that page for editing, he/she will not see the structure or design elements, but will only be able to edit data elements like content and custom fields, etc.

I hope this helps and please let me know if you need any further assistance around this.

regards,
Waqar

[marcB-6]

Hi Waqar,
No problem about the delay, hope you made some progress. Thanks for your reply.

In the scope of this discussion, "Designer" will mean you or any person who is designing/structuring the website and "admin" will refer to a person who'll be managing only the content side of things, without access to design/structure.

No, actually not. We have a team of designers. This team design websites in Photoshop or Sketch. They are fully design focused and do not play any role in the actual development. Our front end developers are building the designs pixel perfect in HTML/CSS/JS. They have a role in step 5 of the process and don't have any role in design.

Q1. So if i understand you correctly, your suggestion would be to let the front end developers build the template using the new blocks plugin (instead of the old views plugin). Is that correct?

Q2. And to make that a bit more concrete. If you look at the design i shared, how would the first three sections be built. What blocks would you pick to make a pixel perfect copy?

Q3. And for the admin part; is a page in the backend actually looking more or less the same as when using the old views? Meaning a list with fields (see screenshot).

Hope you can help!
Thanks again your time and patience.
Marc

[marcB-6]

Hi Waqar,
Hope you are fine.
Did you find any time to review my additional questions?
Thanks a lot!
Marc

[Waqar]

Hi Marc,

Thanks for writing back.

Sorry if my general usage of the terms "Designer" and "Admin" caused some confusion. Let me rephrase that:

-- In the scope of this discussion, "Agency" will mean you or any person who is designing/structuring the website and "Client" will refer to a person who'll be managing only the content side of things, without access to design/structure --

I hope this makes it more clear and I know Agency and Client both of these groups can have people in sub-level groups or branches, but we're not discussing them in detail here.

The Agency (a group of designers and developers) will deploy the backend fields and front-end designs and layout.
The Client will only manage the data in those back-end fields and that data will automatically reflect on the front-end.

Moving on to your questions:

Q1. So if i understand you correctly, your suggestion would be to let the front end developers build the template using the new blocks plugin (instead of the old views plugin). Is that correct?

- To answer this question, first, it is important to explain what the new blocks editor offers. The new Blocks editor is designed to extend WordPress' new Gutenberg editor. The goal behind the Gutenberg and Block is to minimize the need for custom code and reliance on third-party page builders like Divi, Elementor, etc.

The Toolset Blocks is continuously improving based on the feedback and suggestions that we receive and it has in fact grown a lot from its initial release.

The best way to explore all its features and capabilities would be to experiment with it on a test website and see if it can help you achieve all the design/appearance goals for your new projects, moving forward.

The other page builders do have years of head-start, but we're also fully committed to developing Toolset Blocks into a fully functional page builder that offers all the necessary features that users of those other page builders would expect and more.

Summing this up, my recommendation would be to ask your front-end developer(s) to explore the available Blocks and their options that are offered with this new editor and let them decide whether they're comfortable with using it at this time. You're welcome to share any feedback or suggestions that they have to make it even more useful.

Q2. And to make that a bit more concrete. If you look at the design i shared, how would the first three sections be built. What blocks would you pick to make a pixel perfect copy?

- To get familiar with the design basics of the new Blocks editor, I'll recommend to check out the introductory videos in these guides:
https://toolset.com/2019/12/toolset-blocks-1-0-build-beautiful-dynamic-sites-quickly-and-easily/
https://toolset.com/documentation/getting-started-with-toolset/

In summary, to achieve the section based design from the screenshot, you'll be adding a "Column" block for every section and splitting each section into the desired number of columns.

After that, inside each column, you can include the blocks like "Buttons", "Single Field", "Heading" etc and all these can be linked to the dynamic data source from the current post, for example, post titles, post URLs, custom fields etc.

The option of these blocks will also let you control the design elements like font, colors, margin, padding, shadow, border etc.

Q3. And for the admin part; is a page in the backend actually looking more or less the same as when using the old views? Meaning a list with fields (see screenshot).

- Your observation is correct and for the admin who is editing a post/page, the edit screen would look the same with input fields, whether you're using the classic views editor or the new blocks editor.

As I've explained earlier, you guys ( the agency ) will design the content templates which will hold the design information for the front-end and your client will only manage the data elements of posts/pages, which will show inside the already built content templates.

I hope this makes sense and to make it more practical and precise you can deploy a test website where you've started building that design/layout and then share its admin access, for any follow-up questions or challenges that you may face. I'll be in a better position to guide you accordingly.

regards,
Waqar

[marcB-6]

Hi Waqar,
Sorry for the delay and thanks a lot for your extensive answer.
I'm very familiar with page builders so now i understand the concept. It would be great if the Blocks plugin is eventually evolving to a tool that is speeding up development without doing concessions to either design options and quality of frontend code.

Summing this up, my recommendation would be to ask your front-end developer(s) to explore the available Blocks and their options that are offered with this new editor and let them decide whether they're comfortable with using it at this time. You're welcome to share any feedback or suggestions that they have to make it even more useful.

So if the front-end devs conclusion is that at this time building an exact copy of the design with the Blocks editor is taking more time than the old school HTML way, than your recommendation would be to build it the 'old' way with the Views plugin (and keep checking future updates)? And in line with that; will Views be supported forever?

Thanks again and have a good day!
Marc

[Waqar]

Hi Marc,

Glad my message helped and yes you've summed it up nicely.

The classic views and content template editor is not being depreciated and I don't see it going away until the newer blocks editor can be used to achieve all the complex tasks, like the classic one.

Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions and for a new question or concern, please start a new ticket.

regards,
Waqar

[marcB-6]

Thanks Waqar, all is clear and i will follow all future development in the blocks plugin.