CoBlocks, the Gutenberg page builder

Posted on August 16, 2019

We continue our Gutenberg block plugin review series with a dive into the features and benefits of CoBlocks. While most block plugins are billing themselves as first and foremost, block plugins, with a touch of page building capabilities, CoBlocks has gone all in as a self-proclaimed Gutenberg page builder. We spent some time playing with some of the latest CoBlocks features, and we’ll explore some of what we found in this article.

CoBlocks has powerful page building capabilities

The row is the one basic layout mechanism included with the CoBlocks system, and it’s powerful. Unlike some of the popular purpose-built page builders, the row block allows multiple levels of nesting; it’s also easy to adjust width, margin, padding, and colors of the [nested] rows. The block interface is super intuitive, and width adjustments can be made using drag-and-drop features that make this block feel very much like a visual builder. 

While CoBlocks is off to an excellent start as an in-editor page builder, there’s more work to be done to reach the level of capability of purpose-built builders which allow for conditional display and full-page layouts. Probably more a limitation of Gutenberg, the blocks interface gets a bit clunky attempting to drag elements from within the row block to other rows or new elements.

There are plenty of cool specialty blocks

From social blocks to restaurant / services menus, CoBlocks has created some pretty awesome blocks built with the same intuitive interface used within the row block. Our favorite specialty block is the Pricing Table which facilitates quick creation of simple, responsive pricing tables well suited for a services company. These specialty blocks compliment mobile responsive Genesis themes and help the creation of advanced layout objects that appear to have been built mobile-first. The masonry gallery is also particularly awesome providing a nice visual refresh of the old gallery system within WordPress.

Why should I trust this plugin?

It seems these days that the good Gutenberg block plugins are all being acquired by larger companies. In this case, acquisition seems to be wearing well on the CoBlocks plugin as it has maintained it’s stellar rating in the WordPress repository, and has the backing of one of the largest WordPress hosting companies in the world, GoDaddy.