Blocksy review
I have two websites and one staging site to test new themes, blocks, and plugins.
In the sea of reviews, it can be difficult to determine the quality of a WordPress plugin without testing it first.
A few days ago, I tested the Blocksy theme which, from its name alone, did not indicate that it was any different from other themes.
I was surprised but in a good way.
This WordPress theme is visually appealing, and efficient, and comes with all the features of some paid options, even in the free version.
But let’s start in order.
Main panel
When you install the theme and enter the editor on the main panel you will have standard options-header, footer, sidebar, colors, and performance.
Color options
In color options, you have already defined many pallets.
You only need to choose one of them.
Of course, you can always make your pallet if you want.
Typography
In Typography options, you select different fonts for titles, buttons, blockquotes…
But some user fonts and Adobe fonts will be available only in the pro version as well as saving fonts locally for better speed.
Post Types
Under the Post Types, although it doesn’t look like that at first glance, you can define almost anything.
You can define the layout of any page or post including a single post, archive, categories, an author page with social icons, and even a search page!!!
For example, if you open Blog Posts you will have more options.
Categories Structure
Categories Structure allows you five main options for your blog landing page: Simple, Classic, Grid, Enhanced grid, and Gutenberg.
Card options
Another subcategory is Card options where you can define Card Type: Simple, Boxed, and Cover with the picture that covers the entire card.
Of course, there are options for defining the number of columns and the number of posts on the archive page.
In Card Elements, you can add or remove Featured Image, Post Meta, Title, define Except, Read More Button, Post Meta even add Divider under the cards.
With additional parameters, you will adjust the Cards Gap and Card Inner Spacing including Content Vertical and Horizontal Alignment.
No, we are not done with the cards yet.
For every card, you can select Meta font, Meta Font Color, Card Background Color, or if you want to have a Card Border, Card Shadow, or Border radius.
Isn’t that amazing?
Blocksy Companion
After the installation of the Blocksy theme, you will be offered the option to install Blocksy Companion.
Blocksy Companion will integrate into WordPress and will allow you to install various useful plugins that are an integral part of the Blocksy theme.
Cookies Consent
No, you don’t need another plugin if you want to add GDPR consent to your web page.
Just enable an option in Blocksy Companion and in the theme, customizer edits how the Cookies Consent will look.
Breadcrumbs
If you want breadcrumbs on your website, turn on that option.
But if you use the Yoast SEO plugin then select if you want Blocksy or Yoast breadcrumbs and define how it will look like.
Performance options
In Performance, block choose options that work better for you.
For me, Inline loading of CSS files works better than the File option.
If you don’t use emojis, simply turn off the emojis script to improve loading performance.
And you can also determine if you want a lazy load of your images.
Sometimes that option can speed up your website but that is not always the case.
In the Pro version of Blocksy in the same place, there will be an option to save fonts locally.
Form Elements
No, I didn’t find that option even in many Pro themes.
With Form Elements, you can customize the comment form as you want.
A big plus for Blocksy!
Social Network accounts
On Social Network Accounts you can add your social networks links.
All important social networks are included here (although they are not visible in the picture).
Visitor Engagement
In Visitor Engagement, you can add a Google Analytics or Google Analytics 4 code if you don’t use another plugin for that purpose.
Remember that the old Google Analytics will only work for a while.
In an extension of the same panel, you can turn on IP Anonymization for enhanced privacy.
You can also include Schema.org Markup if you don’t have a plugin like Yoast to do that.
With OpenGraph Meta Data activated your posts shared on social networks will look as you wish.
Another plus for Blocksy.
Export and import Customizations
With General>Manage Options you will open a panel for Import, Export, or Copy theme options.
From the Blocksy webpage, you can download the Blocksy child theme and test new options before transferring data to the parent Blocksy theme.
Then in Copy Options select Copy From child Theme.
Socials
Blocksy has Social Icons integrated.
That means you can add Social sharing in the header or footer or on any page or post.
You just need to add the social platforms that you want and define the size of the icons.
It would be preferable to enable the options “Open links in a new tab” and “Set links to nofollow“.
On-page or post option
On every page or post (in the block editor) in the top right corner you can find the Blocksy icon.
When you press on that icon a panel with a whole range of options will open.
From settings, you can disable or enable: header, footer, related posts, featured image, post tags, author box, share box, post navigation, and title.
These options can be extremely useful for affiliate marketers in creating landing pages.
Starter sites
From Blocksy Companion you can add predefined sites if don’t want to start from zero.
When you choose a template Blocksy will offer to install plugins necessary for the website to work properly.
Blocksy page Speed test
In this picture, you can see the speed of my main blog page with six posts measured on Google Site Speed.
I must mention that the webpage is on shared hosting, still uncompressed (no GZIP or Brotli compression), and has no cache or some acceleration plugin for now.
Conclusion
In the end, I need to mention that Blocksy is:
In the following posts, I will describe some other WordPress themes that I have tried.
Recommended reading
The Blocksy theme is a great combination with the Spectra blocks. More about Spectra blocks: