Which Bricks Add-Ons Should You Use? Part 2
Vložit
- čas přidán 8. 06. 2024
- PDF CHEATSHEET
All the recommended add-ons that I cover across this series, with bullet-point reminders of the pros and cons of each: davefoy.link/bricksaddons
MISSED PART ONE - CSS FRAMEWORKS & TEMPLATES?
• Which Bricks Add-Ons? ...
TAKE MY FREE ON-DEMAND BRICKS MASTERCLASS
3 Reasons Bricks Will Level Up Your Web Design Workflow:
davefoy.link/bricks-masterclass
PART TWO ADD-ONS:
0:00 Intro
UTILITIES
1:11 Bricks Navigator: wordpress.org/plugins/bricksl...
3:01 Advanced Themer: advancedthemer.com
15:18 Bricksforge: bricksforge.io
17:52 Happy Files: happyfiles.io
ELEMENTS
19:19 BricksExtras: bricksextras.com
20:29 Max Addons: wpbricksaddons.com
20:46 Bricksforge: bricksforge.io
21:09 Bricksable: bricksable.com
GUTENBERG
21:43 GutenBricks: gutenbricks.com
ANIMATION
24:06 Fancy Animations: fancyanimations.com
24:29 Motion.page: motion.page
25:11 Bricksforge: bricksforge.io
DYNAMIC
25:49 ACF: www.advancedcustomfields.com
26:37 ACPT: acpt.io
27:09 WP Grid Builder: wpgridbuilder.com
CODE MANAGERS
28:45 WPCodeBox: wpcodebox.com
29:58 Fluent Snippets: fluentsnippets.com
FORMS
31:51 WS Form: wsform.com
33:22 Bricksforge: bricksforge.io
33:49 Fluent Forms: fluentforms.com
ALSO
Sridhar Katakam's Bricks Links: start.me/p/MbxMGe/bricks-links
BricksLabs tutorials: brickslabs.com
Corrections:
30:15 WPCodeBox does have a Functionality Plugin feature which allows you to save your snippets to a file outside the database.
---
A warm welcome back to this two-part series of my recommended Bricks add-ons. We did frameworks and template libraries in Part One, so this time it’s the rest of them.
Remember I’m being highly selective, only picking the add-ons I think are well worth considering. Let me know in the comments if I missed any of your favourites.
And if I make a mistake anywhere then let me know in a comment as well. I’ll add any corrections to a pinned comment and also in the description.
Dave seems like a person I would like to have a beer with. Cheers mate🍺
I look forward to it! 🍻
Sounds good to me too 😂😂😂 when and where 👏😂😂
Thanks very much for the mention, Dave! :) Great video. Well summarized. Very valuable for the community! ❤
Woah, thanks Daniele! Really appreciate you dropping by! Bricksforge is awesome. 😁
Thanks for including ACPT, really much appreciated ❤
Oh no problem! A pleasure to include it. :)
Was waiting for part 2- which dropped today. Dave's videos are always a treat. Excellent quality. The work, time and effort that went into making these videos is evident. Thanks Dave.
Nice one, much appreciated!
Uh oh! Looks like I'm going back to school 😮 lots of new toys to invest in
Dave, I enjoyed both videos and appreciate the overview of the different Bricks addons. I'm looking forward to your Advanced Themer video.
Excellent, thanks David.
wow... You the best, Dave.
Your tutorials and reviews, as always, are full of grace and are explained at eye level and clearly
Thank you so much, Zamir. That means a lot.
Another banger! Love this, you save me so much time reading forums and exploring tools on my own so I can focus on my business. If you are open to it, i'd love to see a full site build in Bricks video. You have a great teaching style and I would get an enormous amount of value from that.
Yeah it's a great idea. Though wow, that video would be a long one 😆
Thank you for doing this video it help a lot.
No worries, Mary. Glad it was helpful.
Just bought AT and can’t wait to start using it.
Awesome video btw, I’m tempted to get Bricks Forge, especially for their advanced forms feature.
Hopefully when I can afford it, I'll get ACSS, one of the elements packs and Fancy Animations - they are expensive here in Australia!
Yeah exchange rates can be a bit hellish, I know. Don’t feel like you need to get any add-ons unless you really need them. You’ll only know if you need extra elements till a project requires them, and strictly speaking you can write/copy the CSS for any animation. Fancy Animations just makes it easier.
Thank you very much, Dave, for mentioning our plugin Max Addons :)
You're very welcome. I'm sorry it was such a brief mention, I had a LOT to cover. :)
We need Kevin Geary and the gentleman from advanced themer to get together and explain how they work best together!
Think there'd be sparks in that room 😆
dainiale as well
although Gutenbricks is marketed as a client feature, I feel like if you're working with page templates and still want to include cool Bricks-built elements, even with dynamic data, you can do that. Same for blogs. No one is adding blogs through Bricks.
Yeah totally, good point. I use it a lot in the same way. People can often be quite confused about what GutenBricks does, so I've found if I simplify it as a client editing tool, most people can grasp that, and then start to see its many other applications.
Great videos Dave 👍🏻
Thanks, Amanda!
Amazing video as usual :)
Thanks Michael. Glad you liked it!
Thanks for those two videos, really pleasant to watch - and hear! One question though: did you consider Brickscore? I am curious to have your opinion on this one. It seems to be a great set of animated elements with a GSAP animator too (in beta). Anyway, really great videos!😊
I've checked out Brickscore a couple of times now, and I do like it from what I've seen so far. In deciding what to include I'm also paying a lot of attention to what the community are saying generally. Right now I hear lots of great feedback, and some not so great. However... the not so great generally relates to how young the plugin is and that it's improving all the time, I'm told a really responsive dev, etc. So for me, it just wasn't quite there enough for me to be able to personally recommend right now, but that's not because I think it's a bad plugin. I just wanted to only include add-ons I could personally be 100% confident in.
@@DaveFoy alright, make perfectly sense and have to agree 💯 once more. Thanks for taking time.
12,658 days a year! Ah-mazing!! 😂😂😂 As always-thank you thank you thank you!
Just wish the damn phone focused! 😂 😂 😂
Thanks Dave! Great job. Also, Codebox will save to a file if you set it to.
Ah! Good tip. I didn't know that! I'll add a correction. Thanks, Greg!
Absolutely fantastic! I wasn't expecting to find a couple of absolute gems...especially Bricksable! What a steal !!! Bricksforge is a much greater value than I thought...so versatile !!!
One shock though, I am soooo pleased that I bought the plugin ACF Pro when I did (2020). It's the plugin that I never thought I'd use yet it's on every build I touch...and I'm overjoyed that I bought the Unlimited LTD when I did!! A veritable steal at US$60. 😁😁😁
Nice one Jim! Yeah, I’m quite pleased I got the ACF LTD when I did as well.
Great overview, a lot to cover! Would love to see more info on Gutenbricks and Advanced Themer working together. I know they aren't related but could be interesting...
Great and entertaining again!
Though I have about everything Bricks related, I agree with your pics... Instead of HappyFiles (that I do have), though, I use ASE Pro (Admin and Site Enhancements). Besides that, so far it's ACSS, AT and sometimes BricksExtras (while keeping an eye on BricksForge, but so far I didn't need it's features). Also waiting on my designer to learn Figma for her to use Frames for Figma and then me Frames for Bricks...
Thanks Nelson 😁
One of the things that I found to be a surprise when purchasing and installing AT for the first time is that it comes with ACF Pro built in, which I wish I would have known prior to purchasing the LTD for ACPT, though both are great.
As I understand it, if you bought AT before April 1st 2024 you get ACF Pro bundled in. But if you bought after that date, you do still get it bundled in, but you have to buy a license to be able to use the pro features. So effectively, if that's you, you don't get ACF Pro for free any more.
Hi Dave, excellent video, thank you! Fluent Snippets link in description seems to have some problem.
Ah! Thanks for letting me know. Turns out I'd put a load of wrong links in there. 🤦♂️ I was very tired by the time I wrote that description. All fixed. :)
Great video as usual. Regarding the color picker, did you see the one from ACSS 3.0? Looks amazing aswell. Question: Wont they stand in eachothers way now?
The front-end colour picker in ACSS 3.0 is for setting your ACSS framework colour scheme. The colour manager in AT is a separate control panel for managing your colour palettes. I'd say, if you use ACSS's colour scheme exclusively, and don't add any other colour palettes, then you don't need the AT colour manager. And then, when you pick colours when actually building, you still have to use the Bricks colour picker anyway. But at least with either ACSS or AT it's easy to create/edit/manage the palettes in the first place.
Thank you for the series, Dave! The only plugin I find missing in your toolbox is Fancy Bricks. Other than that your choices are spot on.
Thanks, Michal 🙏
Another great video Dave thank you. Already bought into your Bricks course so working my way through that. Do you have any recomendations for Mapping and Bricks - think a directory site with locations and regions. I want be able to list locations as a list beside a map with pins! Any thoughts? Cheers
I think you can do this in WPGridBuilder actually.
Mighty AT 🎉🎉
💪
Imagine a builder created by the creators of advanced themer and acss
A QQ. First off, brilliant to have you pushing your focus on Bricks. I too jumped on Webflow. Loved it. Seen the light, but needed to get back to WP. So Brick is the answer. However, I've now heard your and Paul (WP Tuts) not loving Woo Commerce to sell from. I can understand BUT what have you arrived at as the better alternative? I tried going though your videos to see if you have anything on that, but couldn't get to the answer. I'm right now hoping to make the fastest loading possible WP / WC site with Bricks. So if there is a better solution I would need to find this out ASAP. :) any reply would be very welcome and helpful.
Yeah, I despise WooCommerce, you're right! Had horrendous experiences with it over many years, and seen many other people having the same. I think if you're going to use it you have to go all-in and specialise, and get yourself some very good quality Woo specialist hosting too, cos it can run as slow as a dog otherwise. The WP database was designed for blogging, not the complexities of e-commerce. I like how SureCart offload all the processing to their servers, keeping things light on your end. I'm actually trialling SureCart at the moment with a view to using it to sell my courses etc. Really liking what I see so far, and will almost definitely be switching from my current ThriveCart. But I'm no expert, unfortunately. I stay away from e-commerce sites for clients now, it's such a specialist area.
Great video Dave! You more or less went through my personal plugin repository, reminding me to check my bank account again 😅
Ha haaaa, yes! I love a sneaky automated annual plugin license renewal you'd forgotten about.
Thank you very much for the video.
Just a question: I am looking for Tooltips to add notes in my articles. Is there an add-on able to create Tooltips for Bricks?
Thanks.
This isn't an add-on, but Bricks has a way of doing tooltips natively with CSS: academy.bricksbuilder.io/article/custom-attributes/
Or if you have more complex situations requiring javascript: brickslabs.com/how-to-create-responsive-tooltips-in-bricks/
Love your tutorials, looking forward to your future vids, especially your AT video. One question though, you did not include JetEngine for CPT, any reason why, I use it a lot (having bought the LTD) I dont mind moving to something else if JE is not recommended, just need to know why. Cheers.
I just don't like JetEngine. I didn't like it with Elementor, and I don't with Bricks. Always found it a bit bloated and occasionally buggy. That's not to say it's not good... it's just that I feel we can achieve a lot of JetEngine functionality either in native Bricks or with some other add-ons.
@@DaveFoy Yeah, I agree its bloated - I will give ACPT a spin - thanks for coming back to me .
Dave, we are either kindred spirits, or the plugins you list a just a no-brainer, which makes me feel less special :)
Hey Alan - let's go with the former. 😉
Just caught up with the first video as you mentioned in the beginning. How would you say the code quality and adherence to best practices of Brixies compare to to Frames?
For me, Frames is the best out of any template library in terms of HTML structure and accessibility.
@@DaveFoy Thank you, I checked it out for myself and you are right, Frames is much better when it comes to HTML/accessibility with implementing proper attributes and using SVGs instead of loading entire icon libraries etc
Hi Dave, I have been a long time divi theme user , yeah yeah I know 😢😢😢😂😂😂 thinking of switching over to bricks. Would you say that bricks is better than the other builders out there
Yes. 100%.
Hi Dave, how did you create the "Success Pages" , "Legal Pages" etc. on the left sidebar?
Normally they're CPTs, which you create with dynamic data plugins like ACF
They're custom post types. I created those at the time with a plugin called CPTUI, but if doing it now I'd use ACF.
🎉🎉🎉
Vola
Don't forget you get ACF pro included for free with Advanced Themer.
Not the case anymore for new subscribers.
Yeah as far as I understand it, if you buy AT after April 1st 2024 you do get ACF Pro bundled in, but you have to buy a license to be able to use the pro features. So effectively, you don't get ACF Pro for free any more. ACF changed the terms, not Maxime.
Awh, thanks for clarifying that Dave. Perfect. 👍
You forgot JetEngine, use that for when dynamic data requirements get more complex, otherwise I use free ACF. The rest of my stack is pretty much the same: ACSS, Frames, AT, WPCodeBox, WSForm, HappyFiles, GutenBricks & Motion.
Excellent set-up there. I purposefully didn't include JetEngine.
@@DaveFoyWhy? You had a bad experience?
I just find it a bit bloated and buggy. I think we can achieve most of the same functionality these days with native Bricks functionality and other add-ons.
The devils advocate argument is there are so many things missing from Bricks natively that so many third party plugins are required.
The same is true for Elementor and others too.
Wish there was a super page builder that didn't have to rely on third party plugins, one theme/plugin to do it all.
To be fair, most of them are fully optional, for convenience, efficiency and to reduce the learning curve.
You technically don't need need a framework since you can use the class/variable manager in Bricks to build your own but using a framework like ACSS saves so much time and decision making fatigue.
Same with template libraries, instead of having layouts prebuilt, you can build your own from scratch.
You don't need ACF, Metabox plugins etc since you can write your own code or CPTs/fields/taxonomies directly into the Bricks child theme.
You don't need animation plugins since you can create your own CSS animations on the CSS tabs of bricks or JS/GSAP animations using the code element or code inputs on the settings page.
Advanced Themer is definitely not needed unless you want to save some clicks and get some extra bells and whistles.
@@jhonnatanr AT is not only about « saving some clicks here and there ». It does much more than that.
You’ve got to admit that’d be one hellishly demanding feature list for a single page builder.
@@DaveFoy True, haha, but it would be awesome to have - Bricks in a unified solution like Webflow for WordPress
.
Builder + Hosting + CSS Framework + Wireframes + The goodies from other plugins.
Single point of sale.
One can wish, haha.
@@jhonnatanr True that.
Awesome round-up Dave! Thanks for mentioning our Motion.page and Core Framework! Would love to see it in future vids again 😎
Oh hi there David! Big thanks for dropping by. 😁 And of course, yes, I'd love to feature both in future vids. Thanks for everything you do.