Hello Everyone! I am a new blocs user - I started last week with this application and I love it for interface design. The first site I did was for my own company - I used Blocs for layout design and Laravel for the back end. I really like how well these two technologies work together - the site that blocs created was super fast and elegant and I was able to use the output from blocs along with blade templating in Laravel.
I did use a package called Scout in Laravel to do the searching, although I do think that the bric for searching that is available on the store would have worked in 90 percent of the cases, I like the indexing through command line on data models that Scout allowed me to do because the case studies are all data driven with only one page design driving that and the keywords approach wouldn’t work in those cases. I was still quite impressed with the search bric even though the use of it didn’t follow through into production.
This was a test run and I am going all in - I will probably never to another wordpress site if I get the chance to do pick scaffolding and data architecture - blocs will be my goto for design and Laravel my go to for the php framework.
Overall I like it. Maybe a little too much animation for my taste. A couple of suggestions. The paragraph text size is ok but I’d add a little more line height. The paragraph text will read better. I’d also use a smaller bloc size for some of the full screen text. Using 12 wide is harder for the user to read, I use 8 to 10 bloc width.
Yes, I’m in agreement with @casey1823 concerning the leading/line height. A bit more space would make it much more readable and probably look a bit nicer.
Good site though, just looked on my mobile so far.
Could I be lazy and ask what Laravel is and how you’ve used it? Just curious.
Cheers
Laravel is a PHP Framework. I know that much Also interested in how you implemented it. And agreed on the other two comments. Less width on the text and more whitespace to make it easier on the eyes and more readable. Too much going on in very little space.
I personally would even make the font awesome icons less obtrusive.
This may disappoint you, but Blocs will soon have the option to export directly to Wordpress…
Luckily you can also export to October CMS (based on Laravel) and @PeteSharp is the resident expert on that. Alternatively you could look at Volt CMS, which is an efficient flat-file CMS built specifically for Blocs by @Jannis and there are some other options directly integrated with Blocs. To paraphrase an old song the future of Blocs is so bright we have to wear shades.
its a fairly lightweight php framework that has a lot of packages built in. for instance - the package scout allows me to do regex searching on any database model and fields that are designated as searchable. https://laravel.com - I implemented first on our test servers and then moved it to cpanel hosting. a lot of command line stuff, far less effort than in other frameworks
wow…really great first time bloc site…I would recommend exploring more ‘white space’ between elements…elements feel a bit scrunched together, but that of course is a matter of taste, or a visual strategy to have visible on different screen sizes what you aim to have visible without scrolling…so please disregard the comment if its not helpful!
Not sure why that would be disappointing - wordpress is still very relevant, and we even recommend it to some clients depending on their needs. In this case = through creating my own data architecture, I was able to reduce the database size from more than 24M down to less than 1 - which is why I prefer it.
In general, I personally prefer to write my own CMS and laravel is pretty great for that. I did a review of October CMS and it is decent and lightweight. Depending on the project size and requirements, it could be a fantastic choice for a lot of needs.
You mentioned in your original post that you would hopefully not need to use Wordpress again, so I answered with some wry English humour. Obviously it’s good to have the option of using Wordpress with Blocs, however it’s just one of many now.
Nice site, only checked on my iPhone 11 so far and it all works fine until you get after the cartoon drawings where the text starts dropping off the right hand side, needs the width adjusting
