Blocs

3.5.6

3.5.6

See all Versions

It might not be just as easy to use as Wix & co, but it's definitely still very easy! It requires no coding at all, and just gives you almost every freedom to design what you would like to, all while "guiding" you to a nice, fully & automatic responsive design. It's great in helping you to avoid those mistakes that make websites look unprofessional or outdated.
Another MAJOR advantage: You download & pay the software once, and you are free to use it for as many websites as you'd like to, no monthly fee, free forever. Almost no other modern website builder can compete with this offer, I've searched a lot before I found Blocs...

Great support and community makes this an essential tool for creating awesome looking websites. That said, it can sometimes be frustrating getting positions right. But ones you master this, it is just fantastic.

While it is true that Blocs has lots of ready made blocs and brics to work with, you don't have to. You actually have a lot of freedom in designing your website with blocs. Yes, you need to work within the boundaries of the Bootstrap 4 framework, but that's not generally a bad thing. And Blocs 4 will most likely add support for CSS grid and a lot of improvements for developers as well as designers. And true, while you can simply use the premade blocs to quickly assemble a website, it's not the way to go if you want your website to look different from what most Bootstrap built webpages look. Put a little effort into learning the ins and outs of Blocs and you'll be able to achieve very good looking websites. Learn some basic HTML and CSS to be able to apply custom CSS classes or edit those that come with Bootstrap, and you're golden to craft really good looking websites. Blocs is for beginners and pro web developers / designers alike that prefer a more visual approach to designing a website while still being able to customise the look and feel of the website by using custom CSS or inject custom JS and PHP. Combine Blocs with the VOLT CMS and Blogging solution, and you won't need much more. Anyone else saying blocs sucks because you can just use ready made blocs hasn't seriously tried the app. Just saying...

It might not be just as easy to use as Wix & co, but it's definitely still very easy! It requires no coding at all, and just gives you almost every freedom to design what you would like to, all while "guiding" you to a nice, fully & automatic responsive design. It's great in helping you to avoid those mistakes that make websites look unprofessional or outdated.
Another MAJOR advantage: You download & pay the software once, and you are free to use it for as many websites as you'd like to, no monthly fee, free forever. Almost no other modern website builder can compete with this offer, I've searched a lot before I found Blocs...

Blocs is not intuitive, its not "easy to use" its very limiting and very time consuming. I highly recommend putting the time to learning a software like dreamweaver and learning some code before diving into a front end like this that still needs A LOT of work. It looks nice, but working with it feels like trying to play golf with a bowling ball.

If you have Blocs 2 or use some other app like Rapidweaver do yourself a favour and buy Blocs 3. This is a huge upgrade with regular updates and lots more development in the pipeline.

It offers amazing control with the new column adjustments that allow you to resize visually in a couple seconds at four different breakpoints. Then you can create freehand margin adjustments that automatically set custom classes; again individually configurable at each breakpoint in real time.

Two columns with unequal quantities of content? Just click the full column height alignment to make them equal and while you are there why not create a graduated background on uniquely shaped button to stand out from the crowd.

It includes the ability to create complex forms, plus a wide range of built in design configurations and practically anything you can think of yourself, leveraging the power of Bootstrap 4. It does all of this and much more straight out of the box without having to spend another cent on endless $$ plugins.

Are there things I would change or improve? Yes without a doubt, but with Blocs 3 you get the sense they are all coming pretty soon.

This is actually out of date at Macupdate, since Blocs has now progressed to version 3 and it's a huge update with great improvements. It's strange, but if you search on this site for Blocs you find nothing and have to add the version number before a suggestion appears.

I've been searching for a web builder to replace Adobe Muse now that they've stopped developing it and came across Blocs.

After trying out the week long demo (which really wasn't long enough to get used to the software) I've come to some conclusions:
As one of the reviewers below has mentioned, it's not really intuitive; there are many, many frustrating moments trying to move blocs to where you want them to be to no avail. You seem to have to create custom classes (like stylesheets) to get anything anywhere close. Surely having all these options readily available in the one panel should be better?

Adding images looks promising, giving an asset library to add to. However, if you're image is bigger than 3MB, it won't add it in. It just tells you that it's too big! Could Blocs not resize to suit like most other applications seem to be able to do?

There's possibly an ability to add webfonts or your own fonts, but I couldn't work this out.

One of the main things that appealed to me was the ability to use a CMS. My clients constantly ask me if they can be given the ability to add and change photos, update news, etc. However, this is not as easy or as user friendly as you would expect. I tried installing October CMS, a freemium CMS. I installed on the server and eventually got it set up. Once I logged in to the 'backend' I quickly realised this was no good! I was faced with an unusual, albeit friendly looking code window. You seem to have to enter the text in what looks like an HTML editor along with links and the relevant code for your images. Surely this isn't what the client wants? I realise October CMS is not developed by Blocs so not really their fault, but I am surprised and disappointed in this integration.

The lack of an FTP upload is strangely lacking. It surely shouldn't be difficult to add this feature to prevent the complete export and upload of the site each time a change is made.

Among the several quirks I found was the strange resizing of images among the responsive layout. There were sometimes gaps at the bottom of images and then they'd disappear.

Anyway, this is just my short experience of Blocs.
I like the drag and drop nature of the application and feel Blocs has a lot of potential. It just has a fair bit to go before I would feel comfortable using it for a client's site - the moment they came back to me and said "could you move that there, or could you add this...", I'd balk.

Amazing what this software can do, its super easy to make your own, responsive, website. The possibilities are endless! Blocs staff listens super good to the feedback and requests and always gets updated to make it even better! 10/10 worth every penny.