Thinking of moving to Blocs, a few questions of features

General Discussion
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Hi there, well it has been sad news for Stacks/Foundry users this morning that Foundry will be discontinued. This has now led to a dilemma, without Foundry I’m pretty screwed for my own website and the few websites I’ve made for others as I love Foundry, and importantly I use the partner Stack Alloy as a blogging mechanism (update through web browser not app) and a number of other Stacks I use.

Elements isn’t option for me as I don’t like their business model and the ever-changing stance at the company on what their products mean for people with reliability and licence etc. Wordpress I gave up many years ago after problems with conflicts with auto updates of plugins etc (and MySQL databases, just not keen on those anymore).

I’ve been keeping an eye on Blocs for sometime, wondering what it could mean for me. The initial pull that sparked interest was Volt CMS, it would answer a lot of problems for me by enabling the few websites I’ve created for others that constantly ask if they can update their own text and content themselves. I’m not keen on any CMS systems that have to report home for licence verification, it leaves me in a sticky wicket of the third-party verification process, if that has a failure or fault that I’m out of control of, then it’s a difficult situation I have to deal with, Volt seems to answer that problem and something I would purchase with Blocs.

So back to Blocs, I’m more than willing to financially invest in what is needed to get me running if I switch, what I’m wanting to know if anybody can help is the core features I would be looking for with Blocs or what the alternative solution could be if any lovely Blocs users could help, apart from my hundreds of Stacks I have accrued, these are the key ones or features I’m after trying to replicate:

  • Aria tags for accessibility and screen readers, is this an inherent functionality of Blocs? Or would they need to be manually added with code?
  • I use PageSafe Stack to password protect a page whilst I am developing it, is there a Bloc/Bric (not sure yet the difference) that would enable this?
  • I use Mega Menu Stack by 1LD, am I able to create my own bespoke mega menus with native Blocs or is there a third party Bloc/Bric that would enable this anybody could reccomend?
  • Is there a Bloc/Bric either native or third party that would enable me to add SVG code that if I set my SVG to 100% size as opposed to pixel size will it scale within a container/SVG bloc/bric in Blocs?

I’ve searched many other things I need and have found answers such as SEO Helper add on etc, the ones mentioned above though I am struggling to find an answer for.

Sorry for such a long post, it is a bit of an “arrrgh!” moment I’m trying to resolve.

Many thanks

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Hey @SpookyDoo,

Welcome to the Blocs community. Sorry to hear one of your essential tools is being discontinued, hopefully Blocs can offer an alternative.

The forum members who use Blocs every day will likely be able to give you more detailed help regarding comparisons between Rapidweaver / Stack and Blocs.

  1. Blocs has a custom data attribute feature which you can use to implement aria tags, however some of the more complex interface components (carousels etc) already have these tags implemented.

  2. I think Bill (known as Stack-Its in the RW community) offers a Bric at the Blocs Store. I’ve not used it personally, so can’t comment on its features.

  3. You can do most of this with the built in features of Blocs, I think @Eldar may have a video on this is his amazing Blocs Master training.

  4. We have this free Bric, or you could simply use the Code Widget Bric for more detailed control.

I hope that helps.

Norm

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Thanks Norm, playing around with the demo this morning I was guessing it might be the Page Attributes, that’s good to know. Sorry one more question, you say ARIA labels are added though to some components such as Carousel, is there a way to tell if it is already applied, would it be a case of checking in the code?

Stack-Its Page Lock looks spot on what I am after.

That’s great to know that these things can be achieved with standard Brics. I’ve just been playing around in the demo and after reading your reply I looked further and found the Primary Menu can also include extra custom menu drop downs so had a play with that and feel comfortable what I’m after can be done. Thanks for that.

Just had a look at the Inline SVG Bric, yes spot on what I’m after.

I must say, I’m only on the surface with the demo, but have met quite a few nice surprises of ways to do things. Also I really like the templates feature on open, that has been a great way to deconstruct things to see how things work in the settings.

Great stuff, thanks for your reply. I’m just at that frustrating stage where I’m discovering things and hunting around for settings itching to get to that ‘muscle memory’ stage of knowing where everything is :grinning:

Thanks again, I’ll keep playing around with the demo, looking great though.

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I’m afraid so. We use many of the pre-made Bootstrap html structures and if they have included aria tags they will be present.

The Blocs demo never runs out, so you can play around with it as much as you want and come back to it whenever in the future, so no rush to buy etc.

Anyway, hopefully you have some fun along the way.

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Again that’s great to know, I get what your saying if it is a Bootstrap structure then it is included, it’s no great shake, it’s just good to know, saves time trying to figure it out.

Yes still playing around with Blocs, really, really liking it.

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