Hello,
since today I´m new to Bricks and quite excited. I worked with Divi for a couple of years and was never really happy. So I looked at the other pagebuilder guys that are around…and Bricks really catched me from the first moment.
To be honest, I have no experience with Bricks right now, but already came across stuff like ACSS, Adv. Themer, OxyProps, Bricksforge and whatnot.
What are your recommendations - which tools are sort of a must have? And which are good combinations?
I thought of something like OxyProps, Bricksforge and whatever AddOn that could complete those…
Any other combination that helped you, would be a great suggestion.
I´m not from a programming background, more from the design. So I tend to like tools that make non-programmers the life easier
Use Bricks first, then you’ll realise what (if anything) is missing for your workflow. You’ll realise you either need more advanced elements, or you’ll struggle adding complicated scroll effects and may be want a tool to speed up the process, or perhaps you want to build your sites with a pre-built framework, or maybe you want to more easily create your own framework.
Most addons/plugins are built because they fit a gap. To make something quicker to build, or easier to manage. But there’s lots of different workflows and everybody will have different opinions on what is more useful, or saves the most time, depending on skill set.
But really you’ll only find out by using Bricks and then realising what you either can’t do, or it’s taking you too long, and then the addon/plugin will just make natural sense as it will solve the exact problem you’re facing.
I think a question that might get you more useful answers is how many people out there use Bricks add-ons, which ones, and why.
I haven’t found the need to use any yet, although I do sometimes wish Bricks came with an extra feature or two. However, I do believe many of the features I want will be coming eventually (perhaps within a year). See the Idea Board.
Thank you for your answer - and that´s a great way to look at it. I´ve played a little bit with Bricks yesterday and I really like it, the interface is so great from my point of view and makes so many things easier (coming from Divi).
Of course there is much to learn now and I really like to understand the strategy and process how websites are build with Bricks…still looking for some good, compact resources.
As said, coming from Divi, you might tend to search for addons. I´m not into programming, so some bits, pieces and addons might help.
But it would be very interesting, which addons, frameworks, etc. you guys use - even with an individual point of view and approach (more programming, more design pov).
I don’t really use a lot of different Bricks elements so adding more elements might not be useful. I mostly use basic elements like section and container, with headers and the advanced text element. Images, too, of course. Sometimes I use dynamic data in elements. The only plugin I’ve used for Bricks has been the pods plugin, to add content dynamically throughout a website.
I’m also not a programmer but willing to learn.
I’m of the same mind as wplit: use and lots of Bricks alone (for the first few months I only had ACPT and Bricks Navigator).
At the beginning without experience it’s easy to want everything you see and many of these addons are well made, by good programmers and also very useful but the question you have to ask yourself is how many times will you really use all the features they offer?
I’ll give you two examples:
I bought BricksForge because I was attracted by the animation control, Mega Menu and various elements but today I use a lot (and I’m in love with it) Global Classes Backups, Pro Forms Steps, Form Calculation, Global Classes Creator.
Initially I was undecided whether to subscribe to acss then I really wanted to take oxyprops (really useful) and then AdvancedThemer came out and I threw myself into it… a new world opened up to me with bricks.
I know, they are completely different tools, but with BricksForge-AdvancedThemer-HappyFiles Bricks reaches a higher and complete level FOR ME (apart from some things concerning Woocommerce still to be fixed).
But only you know what you’ll need everyday!!!
What you need depends on what you do. Do you build basic sites, or complex ones… shops or memberships… and so on.
I used Divi years back, it was awful. What Bricks brings is a huge amount of functionality with much less bloat. You already have sliders, animations, interactions (e.g. hover over X and Y appears), a complete theme builder, dynamic content, query builder… you can make virtually any portfolio/ecommerce site.
If you need more advanced stuff, that’s when you get plugins/add-ons. I needed to build a document library, so got Advanced Custom Fields (actually ACF has been a core plugin for years - long before Bricks existed). https://bricksextras.com/ has been amazing - worth the money for the dynamic table alone.
I really wanted BricksForge - but I know me, I’ll get lost in pointless animations and never use half of it. So I got AdvancedThemer instead. It allows much easier fluid typography and some helpful bits for controlling how my customers can use Bricks.
Bricksable offers a few free addon blocks and I’ve found them good.
The only other thing I’d add is that ‘I’m not a programmer’ bit. Neither am I, but I can build basic functions and some script (and ChatGPT can do a lot now). You don’t need to be a programmer… but the more you understand CSS, HTML, PHP etc. the more you see WHY Bricks works as it does, and the more you become able to see solutions to website builds.
It’s like art… the more you understand paints and brushes, the better you can paint. Bricks allows a lot of ‘colour by numbers’ - but a little more knowledge can be very helpful.
Happy Files: because i can structure all assets.
ACSS: because it makes designing much faster for me.
ACF: to have data fields for clients and to have related fields.
WS Form: to make forms.
WP Codebox: to add additional code – SASS, php, JS
I’m not a fan to have too many plugins. Often i try something in my playground, just to throw i away after a short time. Most times i only would need 1 feature of 20 useless ones. And many things can also be achieved with Bricks Interactions and Bricks Conditions.
Bricks is very open to modifications in JS, PHP and CSS. You can do a lot of things with Bricks itself. Sometimes it takes more time to do it, if you do everything yourself and not use addons or plugins. But the pro is that you understand how it works.
I use Codebox, because all code can be organized in one place. If i use the Bricks functionality i have to assign the code to each element. I know that Bricks has also the option to put CSS code in the settings area, but the editor isn’t that nice. To me Codebox has the better UI and user experience with things like Emmet and so on. Also i can write SASS. So i like it better.
Yes, just in the first hours of use, I enjoy Bricks so much more than Divi and it´s clunky interface (not talking about the speed of the core…)
I do totally agree on your paint and brushes analogy. The tools are one thing, but you need to know how to use them - and with knowledge you can achieve more with less, than one with many tools but limited to none idea about the basics.
I went through Divi and Ox as well. now happy learning Bricks.
Look up Kevin Geary Automatic.css Creator (works great with bricks). He has an inner circle forum and is a great teacher. The people of the inner circle are very knowledgeable and very helpful to us noobs. It’s a great place to learn more about Bricks and more re web design.
Coming from Divi, do you have a solid understanding of css concepts like classes, flexbox and cssgrid? If not, then you will want to spend at least a few months learning it as a priority before looking at extending this.
thank you