Custom Template Block

maakbow

This request of course, is based on my own personal requirements. My Automad sites are all with completely my own html,css,sass as thats my skillset. I use no public framework at all and sort of have my own because its light and I understand it fully. I dont have any php skills and my sites currently are not blog like. I initially chose Automad for the ability to create my own html/css templates. Automad is simple to impliment for afront end only coder, has all the basic required functions for most any site, except blocks IMO

I love the concept of allowing a content editor to build a page with a collection of blocks and (I am apreciative of all the effort in creating the block component. I find the current implimentation very blog or story focussed but constrictive for other uses. Also having components that are tied to classes in the template framework it is difficult to use with a custom "theme" that doesnt use those classes. Sure I can gerrymander a lot of custom styles and alter the block html to make them into what i require but there a lot of future ompatablity issues with that.

Maybe I'm using the wrong CMS? But here I am and I'm comitted on a personal sites and some I'm building for free for those that cant afford to employ someone to do so.
Maybe I'm just missing something?

What I really want.
I guess what I want with a block editor is a group of controls for adding various content types that i can configure into any order or amount, within any html /css that I write. So I as the site designer/builder would write each block as a partial or snippet with some sort of Automad code for the controls.

Then make those blocks available to the content creator to add to a page, in any order or amount, and to populate content in those blocks with the provided controls.

Some of this exists with the current block editor and for say a blog article this is fine, but for other purposes I find it both too restictive as a site designer, and giving too much control to the content editor

In my previous life working in a digital agency I found many clients or content editors are not technical with even less design ability. Therefore rather than the ability for a content editor to create a class in the block editor that may or may not work, seems risky. My preference would be, as the site designer I would style a number of classes for each block that the content editor could select, to give some user choice of style where aplicable. As a site designer I want all options available to me, but if you give the ability to use any font or any colour to a content editor, they tend to excercise that ability.

Maybe this is a complete separate idea from the current block editor?

mad

maakbow Hey, thank you for the elaborated feedback. I agree in some parts. There is a big update in the making addressing this problem of balancing customization by the user and control over the design by the developer.

There is no release date yet, but it is actively worked on. So stay tuned!

In the meantime another option is to pack some custom functionality into snippets and expose them to users in order to be used with the snippet block.

Everyone

maakbow I know exactly what you mean. When blocks came to AM, I was very sceptical and at first rejected this idea completely. That was until I was approached to implement a website design, which had content spread across the viewport in a blocky fashion. At first glance I knew that implementing it just with variables alone would be a nightmare, as would be editing it.

That's when I exersized the block editor again and found it to be very helpful, in fact, I would not be able to make said website without it. Because of AM's block editor the template count can be kept at minimum and changes in content layout don't require the help of a coder.

I know well that having to use someone else's stuff instead of one's own trusty set of familiar tools that one understands feels restraining, that was the exact same issue I had with AM's block editor, but rather fighting it, I looked at the benefits and decided to embrace it instead. From my experience there are two ways that you can do that:

Easy way - get familiar AM's flex grid used by block editor and just use it along right next to your tools
More elaborate way - replace AM's CSS with your own, with AM's syntax being secondary to yours.

There's also the third way - don't use block variables in your layouts and just stick to basics with some Markdown maybe. Keep in mind though that for better or worse, the PhrasePush (name intentionally mangled) CMS opened the Pandora's Box with its Gutenberg block editor, raising the bar on content edition possibilities and expectations from website designers. The world followed with tools like Editor.js and since, whether we like it or not, PhrasePush is somewhat a trendsetter, block editors will probably become the anticipated norm.