Is Blocs suitable for photo-heavy site?

I would like to build a site that would display photos (masonry-style) from myself and fellow photographers. The design would be simple, small header, search bar, and thousands and thousands of photos. Selecting a photo would bring up a larger version along with photographer info, text, etc. I want it be very fast, with no delay when a user selects a photo to see the larger version.

Would having such a large number of photos cause speed issues, or would Blocs be able to handle this type of project? Or is this something that should be hard coded? I’m pretty ignorant on the coding side of things, so I don’t know if what I’m shooting for needs to be coded from scratch.

Thanks for your help!

My suggestion would be using a CMS like Wordpress. So you could design your site in Blocs, and create a theme for Wordpress. It’s a feature of the Plus version of blocs.

How fast the site is, is governed by lots of variables. The quality of your hosting, image optimisation is just two of the things that make a difference.

Thanks for your reply.

Would designing a Wordpress theme in Blocs create bloat vs coding from scratch? Is it practical to design a single Wordpress theme in Blocs vs finding a pre-made theme that closely resembles what I’m after?

Can the cms be accessed directly from Blocs, or would I have to log into it separately?

There is a WP category on the forum here. I have minimal experience with WP.

But there are users like @brechtryckaert who have a lot of knowledge and can help steer you in the right direction.

With applications such as this, I find it’s better to not “re-invent the wheel”. There are a number of PHP scripts available that will do all the heavy lifting, leaving you to design a simple front-end to carry the website. One good script is PixelPhoto. It works in much the same way as the popular photo sites such as Pixabay and Pexels (which is what I assume you’re wanting to replicate). This particular script is about $54 but it is a fully supported product. There are cheaper scripts, but in many cases, the lower the cost, the less support you get.

Creating a WordPress theme using Blocs does not create bloat at all, since you’re not having to provide all those extra classes and javascript files required for themes using a pagebuilder. So in essence, you’re able to craft some really well optimized themes with Blocs. And that reflects positively on the performance of your theme and thus the entire site.

A WordPress theme crafted with Blocs works like any theme you’d install in your WordPress. Install by uploading the WordPress backed en activating it. From that moment on you can edit your content using the usual WordPress interface.

During the development of your theme, you can use the Blocs Developer plugin to preview as much of the content of your WordPress site as possible within Blocs preview itself.

Thanks for your help, Malachiman.

Great idea, and one I am completely unfamiliar with. Yes, Pixabay and Pexels are close to spot on in terms of what I’m after, though on a much smaller scale (incidentally, the popular key words under the search field on Pexels made me crack up). PixelPhoto sounds promising — thanks for the suggestion.

Could the front-end then be created with Blocs, or would going with a back-end PHP script change my options around that?

This is obviously out of my area of knowledge, and I’m a bit embarrassed by that. Is there a good book you would recommend I read or can you steer me in a further direction, if indeed I decide to go with the PHP script route?

Thanks for your input on this. In my case, if I’m just looking at creating one site design, is it still practical to create a Wordpress theme through Blocs? Or would I be better suited to go the PHP script route suggested by herdon52? The sites mentioned by him are what I’m looking to achieve, interface and speed-wise (minus a few design mods). What Wordpress interface do you recommend?

I might be mistaken, but I’m not sure if you be able to use the current WordPress loop in Blocs to populate a masonry gallery. I do have to point out I haven’t tested this yet. My parents are coming over but I’ll test it tonight.

That would be great — thanks. I hope this doesn’t get in the way of your weekend.

Any PHP script solution will have the option for you to embed certain interface elements within a web page designed in other applications. Typically, you would design a compelling home page for your site that would “Sell” what the site is all about. You would then embed the search function (which is the real key and purpose of the site) either into the home page via a code bric, or you would have a prominent link in your home page that would take visitors to the front end of the script.

The front end can usually be styled to match the rest of your site through the administrator back end, or by editing the style sheet associated with the script (CSS).

The only issue I have with using Wordpress for a site of this type is that you will most likely be faced with duplicating much of the effort needed to get the site up and running as you want it. Firstly, there will be a 30mb Wordpress installation which will use it’s own mySQL database. You will then probably need one or more add-on scripts to make it function as a photo-sharing site. This could entail extra costs, more databases and more complexity when it comes to site maintenance - and that’s before you’ve designed and uploaded a theme for the WordPress installation. Faced with these issues, I would prefer a situation where I had one database driven application that could deal with the main function and purpose of the site, then build a normal site in Blocs that can incorporate the script’s various interfaces (photographer accounts, visitor searches and image display/download) It can also handle payments if that is something you would wish to incorporate.

In a nutshell, the installation of a photo-sharing script will be almost identical to installing Wordpress, only the script will be tailored to your eventual needs, rather than having to be configured or adapted to meet the needs. In my mind, it’s a far simpler option which gives you the flexibility to build a more conventional website around the application, rather than trying to adapt the website to make it work like the eventual application.

I’ve just quickly drafted a concept in Blocs. It is possible to use the masonry element in such a way that the image load the “featured image” from WordPress. However, when using the same technique as displayed in this (Building a Wordpress Theme - Section 3 - Post Loops - YouTube) instruction video, you lose the masonry layout. The output results in a number of pictures displayed on a single row (at least in my test).

So I’m afraid you won’t be able to generate the output of the WordPress loop in the Masonry layout as of right now.

Thanks for all of your work with this. Good to know this now before I went in that direction — I appreciate your help!

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This is helpful — thank you for explaining it to me. After reading all of these responses, I can see that my knowledge in this area is severely lacking. So thanks to you and the others for getting me to face that reality. Your suggestion makes sense for my situation, so this will be a good starting point. Thanks again for your help.

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