More blocks

Hey all Is it possible so buy or download more blocks? I find myself using the same ones again and again and really want to mix it up q but more. Thanks Simon

what answer do you get when you go through the Search box for "more blocks" -- you might be surprised at the quality of some of the responses

I think you ultimately need to ask yourself what it is you're doing, and why, and go from there. Ultimately this program does as its name suggests --- handle "Bootstrap" -- a CSS framework, productively and, to some extent, creatively. "Blocks" are the proper preserve of programs that shield users from getting to know much about webpage design and coding of the "end products" -- Mobirise claims to have hundreds of blocks, but requires no knowledge of how they're put together, and most people with difficulty developing the motivation to learn such things are simply stuck with what they've produced, and bad luck if the third-party produced results don't work (which is VERY often the case, years after successive releases)

There is an Online tab at the top of the list of Components where you can search for more blocks, but do be aware these are not scanned for quality so you need to decipher whether or not it is good enough for you or not. There are some awesome additions there though and it's worth your time to do some searches (as the full list is not obtainable unfortunately).

The other option is when you get something made up that you know you will use again, save it to your Library and you can reuse it anytime you want. You can create folders for your library items so you can organize them etc. Handy feature this one.

Other than that, the blocks that are included are basically the blocks that Bootstrap has created for use and a few extras I believe. Good luck, it's fun creating them and if you find some on the web that you'd like to use, just recreate it and save it to your library. :)

Thanks All,

Searching didn't bring up any answers. I tried that.

In the money vs time equation i would rather buy a set of pre made blocks to use than code them myself so was feeling out that option.

If this is not possible then I would need to do them myself.

Thanks

Simon

As @Jo pointed out, your source for new "blocks" (which are basically collections of BSS components that people have stylized, assembled, saved to their user libraries and then shared) can be found in the Online library which is the tab in the upper left corner next to the Studio tab.

Unfortunately, many of these shared components are of poor quality, or just kind of useless. Many of them are just blocks of custom code that people have found on the internet, copied into a custom code component, and shared. This means they're not customizeable through the BSS interface. You'd have to know how to code to edit the code if you wanted to make changes. (I personally never do this. All my shared components are made with BSS, and can be modified with the program's UI.)

If you do find a useful component that you like, and that is well made, you can hover over it and see the name of the person that uploaded it. Then if you click on their name, you'll see any of the other components they shared.

For example, I've started to add the prefix "ultimate" to any component I share, so by going to the online search and entering the word "ultimate", you can find the components I've made. Then if you click on my name (printninja), you'll see all the components I've ever posted online.

Aimon, when I first encountered Mobirise, I too was attracted by the seeming time economy of pre-made blocks, until it turned out that there were so many problems with how they were implemented. I found I needed to use a "workaround" simply to make headings bold and centered (!), and rather than fix this problem quickly many months later people in the forums were still complaining about it! Since I had learnt to develop web pages myself many many moons ago, when I found I couldn't simply hand code this "block" within the program -- only after it had been done, but then found it couldn't handle "custom code" -- you couldn't return the code to the program I gave up on it. I've encountered similar problems with other programs (like CoffeeCup), and I now "demand" a program permit me better functionality -- which BSS has. So, in pursuit of time economy I've purchased a range of programs, and have spent much much longer "working around" the programs basic problems than I would have hand coding. There are programs, like Pinegrow, which have a relatively large number of "blocks" developed for them, which also permit a lot more hand coding, but there are other issues with it -- see some of Printninja's comments by searching.

Pinegrow only comes with a set of "blocks" for Bootstrap 3.0. They're basically useless now.

There are a couple of third-party companies that make blocks for Pinegrow for Bootstrap 4. If you like to build with "blocks" they've got some decent stuff.

Personally, very soon after I started building websites, I realized that I didn't want to work with "blocks", much in the same way that I don't want to work with templates. The reason is that 99% of my clients have specific ideas and visions for what they want their websites to be/look like. And I, too, know what I want the sites to be/look like. Rarely is it what someone else has come up with in a "block" going to fit my need. So what ends up happening is I add the block to the page, and then go in and start altering all the CSS anyway to get it to look/work how I want. By the time I'm done, I could have just created what I wanted from scratch more quickly.

Bootstrap Studio is the perfect middle ground. It lets you freely create complex components using basic Bootstrap components, customize them, and save them to a library (or share them online.) I think this is a FAR better system than if they loaded up the program with a bunch of pre-made blocks. Honestly, I have NEVER used a single component from Bootstraps Studio's Articles, Features, Footers, Headers, Highlights, Projects, Structure or Team categories. I'd just as soon prefer they weren't there taking up valuable screen real estate.

Building websites with blocks is fine if you're a casual web developer, you don't want to code, you've got very undemanding clients who don't mind generic looking pages, and who don't know the difference between something that's been designed professionally, or by an amateur.

Some people want to pay $300 for a website, and don't care as long as it has the info they want on it. It doesn't matter to them if their site shows up on the 8th page of Google's SERPs because the site has no on-page SEO. Other people are willing to pay $3000 for the same site that ranks #1, looks totally unique (no "blocks",) loads fast, has clean, semantic code, and screams "professional." Still other people will pay $30,000 for a website that will make them $30 million a year, and the developers wouldn't be caught dead using "blocks" to build a site like that.

There's a client for every web developer, and vice versa.

As always you have to ask yourself what you want a product for

@Printninja "There’s a client for every web developer, and vice versa" +1

Do you want to be a developer? Printninja owns both Pinegrow and BSS, and never uses blocks But some professional developers own both sets of blocks and the "full" Pinegrow -- after all, we all have to start somewhere. Some of us "dabble" in web design, mostly for our own "amusement", and have owned, at some stage, darn near everything, being less interested in justifying our time investment on the basis of monetary return. Others have a limited set of very capable "tools" but are craftsmen in their use, earning most in terms of monetary return per dollar invested. Some are tradesmen, using "blocks" put together by others, whether it be websites, or kitchens, flogging them off to all and sundry. What would you like to do, how do you choose to value your time, what are you prepared to get back in exchange for it?

If anyone comes across this they can note that Pinegrow’s latest version, 5.99 (Dec 17, 2020), now comes with a set of 120+ blocks – form your own opinions about the use of blocks

They are also not strictly Bootstrap so their 120+ blocks will not all be usable with just bootstrap I’m sure. Pinegrow allows for multiple frameworks so I’m sure that 120 blocks is parts of each. I do own it myself, but I only use it right now on sites that I haven’t taken the time to convert into BSS. :slight_smile:

I had a look at their documentation page and they are currently specific to Bootstrap 4 but state that a similar set of blocks is being built for Tailwind CSS. They also mention that more blocks are coming with an improved theming process and they will update those for Bootstrap when they eventually support v5.

The Blocks that came with Pinegrow originally only worked with Bootstrap 3. Their latest release (5.99 that just came out) appears to have a set of Pinegrow-made Blocks that work with Bootstrap 4. I haven’t had a chance to install 5.99 yet (still on 5.8x) but it’s kind of ridiculous that it took the PG team until 2020, when we’re practically on the eve of Bootstrap 5 being released, to offer a set of blocks that work with Bootstrap 4.

Personally, I don’t ever use Blocks of any kind. I don’t want my websites to look like anyone else’s sites, but I can see the appeal of Blocks to total beginners. But PG is hardly a good program for total website beginners, so that’s probably why they didn’t put much effort into developing any Blocks for Bootstrap 4 all these years. They know their users are mostly developers who are building and customizing their own Bootstrap sites.

Also, AFAIK, the set of Blocks that come with PG 5.99 only work with Bootstrap, not the other frameworks. It took them this long to create a set of Bootstrap Blocks for Bootstrap 4. I seriously doubt they made version that work with the other frameworks the program supports.

Personally, I would never build a website from scratch with PG (I did ONE, once, a long time ago in BS 3, and I used their Blocks, and it’s literally the least appealing site in my portfolio.)

PG is a powerful program that certainly has its uses, but website development is not what I use it for. I mainly use it when someone has an existing website, and contacts me about whether I can change or update something on. Occasionally, I’ll fire up PG when I’m trying to track down a really obscure problem and need to have nitty-gritty access to everything in the site, but 99.99% of my web development is done using BSS and Chrome’s Developer Tools.