Skip Navigation

[Resolved] New optimizations / converting to Blocks?

This support ticket is created 2 years, 11 months ago. There's a good chance that you are reading advice that it now obsolete.

This is the technical support forum for Toolset - a suite of plugins for developing WordPress sites without writing PHP.

Everyone can read this forum, but only Toolset clients can post in it. Toolset support works 6 days per week, 19 hours per day.

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
8:00 – 12:00 8:00 – 12:00 8:00 – 12:00 8:00 – 12:00 8:00 – 12:00 - -
13:00 – 17:00 13:00 – 17:00 13:00 – 17:00 13:00 – 17:00 13:00 – 17:00 - -

Supporter timezone: America/New_York (GMT-04:00)

This topic contains 3 replies, has 2 voices.

Last updated by Christian Cox 2 years, 11 months ago.

Assisted by: Christian Cox.

Author
Posts
#2031927

Last week, there was an email about Toolset Blocks optimizations that will speed up sites (in preparation for Google placing more emphasis on page speed). I have an older site using Views/Layouts - will these improvements apply to this as well? Or do I need to re-work my post/page templates to Blocks now?

If I were to convert everything to blocks, is there a way to create the various templates I need in a dev version and then import these into the live site? Otherwise, we'd need to suspend entering content while working on it, which I don't think we can do. Is there a way to export/import the templates? Or if I were to 'Export Types data' could I then import that into the live set to get all my new Blocks-based templates? Or would that mess up existing post types/fields? Are there any preferred workflow approaches to converting a Views/Layouts-based site to Blocks?

#2032579

I have an older site using Views/Layouts - will these improvements apply to this as well?
Hello, yes the improvements we implemented will still apply in your case. The Layouts plugin itself did not receive much in the way of optimization improvements, but the Views plugin will load significantly fewer assets "up front" to speed up initial page load time.

If I were to convert everything to blocks, is there a way to create the various templates I need in a dev version and then import these into the live site?
Not really, because the general recommendation is to keep using Layouts for existing sites and to use Blocks for new sites. There isn't a simple conversion tool - the conversion process often involves more than just redesigning templates. Access Control, Editing Forms, and Relationship Forms can be tightly coupled to Layouts implementations, and those coupled situations must be handled case by case when moving from Layouts to Blocks-based Content Templates. The Toolset export tool does not support Content Templates, so the only real possibility is copy + pasting Content Template contents between sites, which is temperamental at best.

#2032595

Thanks. So now I realize that with Layouts/Views (and not Blocks) enabled I am still able to make Blocks-based content templates. It wasn't clear to me previously that I had access to that on this older site. So if I were to create new Blocks-based templates, disconnect the old Layouts from the post types and use these instead, would I ultimately be able to disable Layouts/Views and have these new templates work using just the Toolset and Blocks plugins enabled? The site isn't particularly complicated; I'm confident that I can create Blocks-based replacement templates fairly easily. For the few information pages that use Layouts on, I want to switch these to normal WordPress Gutenberg -based pages anyway. So I guess my question is - does it seem like a valid workflow to gradually implement Toolset Blocks templates (while Layouts/Views are enabled) and then switch over to the Blocks plugin?

#2033145

Yes, that seems reasonable. Just be aware that Blocks-based Content Templates will override Template Layouts if they are assigned to the same content. So during development you should take care not to assign Blocks-based templates to any content you would like to display using Template Layouts until you are ready to display the Blocks-based templates.

This ticket is now closed. If you're a WPML client and need related help, please open a new support ticket.