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WHICH BRICKS
ADD-ONS?
Hello! 👋
This is my overview map of the Bricks add-ons landscape right now.
I'll explain what the add-ons are, what they do, and why you might want to choose one over
another.
This isn't a comprehensive list of every single Bricks add-on. I'm being highly selective,
picking just the ones that I think are quality and well worth your consideration.
For a comprehensive list of every add-on: Sridhar Katakam’s Bricks Links list.
Any questions, suggestions, errors etc? Drop me a line at [email protected].
Dave Foy
April 2024
Click to visit their websites. (* = affiliate link)
Frameworks Templates Utilities
ACSS * Frames * Bricks Navigator
Core Framework Brixies Advanced Themer
Bricksmaven Bricksforge
Happy Files
Elements Gutenberg Animation
BricksExtras GutenBricks Fancy Animations
Max Addons motion.page
Bricksforge Bricksforge
Bricksable
Dynamic Code Managers Forms
ACF WPCodeBox WS Form *
ACPT Fluent Snippets Bricksforge
WPGridBuilder Fluent Forms
CSS FRAMEWORK
Automatic.css (ACSS) ACSS *
1. Fully-featured and complete framework
You don’t have to construct your own framework. It’s fully complete, with everything
done-for-you, including functionality you didn’t even know you needed.
2. Opinionated
The structure of the framework and the options that you get are set in stone. As an
ACSS user, you trust and accept the developer’s decisions. Benefit: every ACSS install
will be consistent and exactly the same.
3. Front-end workflow
You work with ACSS entirely on the front end of your site, rather than managing all your
settings in a separate control panel. That’s either in the Bricks editor UI, or on the live
front end pages of your website, with live preview and hot reload of your changes.
4. Pricing model
No free version. With a paid plan you can use ACSS in a variety of supported builders.
CSS FRAMEWORK
Core Framework Core Framework
1. Skeleton tools to build your own framework
Intentionally a bare-bones starting point, with the tools to build your own framework.
Many people appreciate this because they want this kind of flexibility.
2. Not opinionated
It doesn't provide a fixed framework structure, nor any opinions about how you should
structure your framework. It's open-ended.
3. Separate settings area
You either log into and manage your framework in your control panel on Core
Framework's website, or in your WP admin area via a plugin (I forgot to mention this in
the video).
4. Freemium pricing model
Use for free to generate CSS for any builder. Or pay one-time for a Bricks add-on for
direct integration of classes/variables/colours within the Bricks editor.
TEMPLATE LIBRARY
Frames Frames *
1. Requires ACSS
Frames only works with ACSS. The benefit of this if you’re an ACSS user, you have a very
tightly integrated template library.
2. Unstyled wireframes
Structure and layouts? Yes. Finished designs? No. Perfect for wireframing a website
and then further developing them to the final website.
3. Well structured
An insane amount of care and thought has gone into the semantic HTML structure,
accessibility, and SEO.
4. Best practice BEM naming
Frames uses correct, best-practice BEM block class naming for any reusable
components inside a section—starting back at the top-level class name again.
TEMPLATE LIBRARY
Frames
5. Regular new templates
Several new design each month. The team are really responsive to feedback and
suggestions for new templates.
6. Modular library
Most sections also have their modular reusable components as separate templates.
Any repeatable component—or BEM block—is available to use.
7. Dynamic components
A range of pre-built dynamic accessible components like switches, tabs, accordions,
sliders, and modals, and a custom menu builder coming soon.
8. Dedicated support and education
A dedicated support group and regular education in best practice in using Frames.
TEMPLATE LIBRARY
Brixies Brixies
1. ACSS and Core Framework versions
All templates come in both ACSS and Core Framework versions. Note: if you use Core
Framework, you’ll need the paid Core Framework Bricks add-on.
2. Wireframe style
Black and white, with no fancy styling. You're not having to undo and refactor fully
designed and finished templates.
3. 10 new templates a week!
That’s an astounding rate of new templates.
4. Copy and paste templates
You can copy and paste the templates from your online Brixies account directly into
your Bricks pages, which is very convenient.
TEMPLATE LIBRARY
Brixies
5. Web-based library interface
Nicer and easier to use than the built-in Bricks template library.
6. Rename BEM classes
You can rename the BEM classes in the template before you copy and paste the
template into your site. Excellent if you want to use your own BEM block naming
convention.
7. Figma files
Brixies has a Figma file available for all templates, both free and paid. All organised the
same as the Bricks templates with the same variables.
8. Dedicated support group
You can copy and paste the templates from your online Brixies account directly into
your Bricks pages.
TEMPLATE LIBRARY
Bricksmaven Bricksmaven
1. Well structured
Best practice BEM naming and structure, with great framework integration.
2. Support for NO framework
Bricksmaven has support not only for ACSS and Core Framework (and BricksProps
now), but also plain CSS as well. Which is the perfect option if you don't use a
framework at all.
3. Copy and paste templates
Like Brixies, you can copy and paste Bricksmaven templates directly into Bricks without
hooking it up to the Bricks remote template library—though there is that option too.
4. Dedicated support group
Bricksmaven has a support group where the developer is really responsive and helpful.
UTILITIES
Bricks Navigator Bricks Navigator
Bricks Navigator is a completely free little utility that makes it much easier to navigate
around Bricks.
It’s made by Sridhar Katakam, who’s a well-known and respected contributor to the
Bricks community. He’s also the guy behind the excellent BricksExtras elements library
and BricksLabs tutorials.
UTILITIES
Advanced Themer Advanced Themer
Advanced Themer is best described as a ‘quality-of-life’ utility. It adds extra
functionality to the Bricks builder UI to make your life easier, make you more efficient,
and increase your productivity.
Is it a framework? A small part of its feature-set are some lightweight framework
capabilities. Which leads to confusion about if Advanced Themer is a framework, and
whether it can replace the other more dedicated framework add-ons.
Yes, some people are happy using AT’s lightweight framework features alone, and
don’t bother with a separate framework. However, Advanced Themer is NOT in
competition with framework add-ons, but is intended to work alongside them (or
without any framework at all).
If you’re a Bricks newbie, you likely won’t appreciate a lot of its functionality till you’ve
used Bricks for a while. But once you have—like, you’ve spent a lot of time adding
elements, working in the structure panel, adding and managing classes, etc—then
you’ll wonder how you managed without it. It’s SO good.
UTILITIES
Bricksforge Bricksforge
Bricksforge is a Swiss Army Knife tool that has a huge amount of functionality. It’s fair
to say it’s aimed more intermediate-to-advanced users.
Whereas Advanced Themer focuses on one category of features—workflow and user
experience enhancements—Bricksforge is more like a collection of about 5 or 6
completely different add-ons, bundled into one.
If you like your plugins to do one thing, then Bricksforge isn’t for you. But, it does all the
things it does very well indeed. And many people happily pay for Bricksforge even
though they’re only using one or two of its features.
Utility features:
Builder Customiser—customise the Bricks interface based on user roles.
Import CSS code—it’ll add those classes into Bricks for you (similar to AT).
A lightweight framework.
Bricksforge panel and Terminal—developer tools that allow you to do more complex stuff.
UTILITIES
HappyFiles HappyFiles
Developed by Thomas Ehrig, the developer of Bricks.
HappyFiles allows you to organise your media, files, posts, pages, and custom
post types in folders.
With Bricks, that means being able to organise Bricks templates in folders too,
which is very handy on larger sites with a lot of templates.
Just $59 one-time for use on unlimited websites.
ELEMENTS
BricksExtras BricksExtras
My number one recommendation for additional Bricks elements. The developers—
Sridhar Katakam and David Browne—are superb devs.
BricksExtras is a library of very high quality elements with lots of functionality you don’t
have to code yourself.
Very often people ask questions in the community about how to achieve certain
functionality, and very often BricksExtras has an element in its library that does the
trick.
You can create a free playground to test out the elements before you buy.
ELEMENTS
Max Addons Max Addons
Max Addons is another library of well-coded Bricks elements, with a focus on
performance.
I’ve never used Max Addons myself, but they’re often highly recommended by people I
trust.
ELEMENTS
Bricksforge Bricksforge
As well as the range of utility features, Bricksforge also comes with a whole library of
extra Bricks elements.
There’s a particular focus on nestable elements, for maximum flexibility. If you’re
familiar with the native nestable elements in Bricks (like nestable nav, tabs, slider) then
you’ll appreciate what this means
ELEMENTS
Bricksable Bricksable
I haven’t used Bricksable personally. But I’m told by people I trust that the elements are
very well coded, with a big focus on performance.
But the big news here is that these elements are…. FREE! Weirdly, the website doesn’t
even mention this.
However, free, in this case, definitely does not mean poor quality.
GUTENBERG
GutenBricks GutenBricks
GutenBricks is a superb one-of-a kind plugin that allows you to create Gutenberg
blocks with Bricks.
This means clients you can provide pre-designed Gutenberg blocks for your clients to
add to their posts and pages. They can edit the content of those blocks. But they can’t
edit the design—the layout, the styling, the colours.
YOU control the design of each block from one master template, sitewide. Update any
block in the template library, and the layout will update instantly in ALL places the
client has added that block across the site—but their content will remain untouched.
Yes, Bricks is about to release a Components feature, which is similar. Think like
testimonials, where you control the design of the testimonials from one place, but you
can change the content of each testimonial per-instance. The difference is, Bricks
components will very likely be for the Bricks editor only, not Gutenberg.
I made a GutenBricks video walkthrough and tutorial.
ANIMATION
Fancy Animations Fancy Animations
An excellent CSS animation framework. A very lightweight script, with superb
performance that won’t slow your pages down.
Think, nice page interaction animations, with CSS only.
ANIMATION
motion.page motion.page
Rather than using CSS, Motion.page uses the GSAP javascript animation library.
This lets you create interactive animations that are far in advance of anything you can
do in Bricks natively or with CSS.
It’s not a Bricks add-on as such, but it works with any WordPress page builder or
theme.
You don’t need to know javascript. No code required.
DYNAMIC
Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) ACF
ACF allows you to create custom fields, which are pretty much essential for dynamic
websites, as well as more complex stuff like relationships, options pages, etc.
You can now also create your custom post types with ACF as well.
Some people recommend MetaBox for this particular kind of functionality, an ACF
alternative. Nothing wrong with MetaBox, but:
a) I think their attractive lifetime deal a while ago might have something to do with
that, and
b) MetaBox always allowed you to create custom post types, whereas ACF did not,
until relatively recently.
ACF has really stepped up since then though and for me, ACF beats MetaBox.
DYNAMIC
Advanced Custom ACPT
Post Types (ACPT)
I haven’t used ACPT. But as far as I know, it does most of what ACF does, but it’s less
expensive. For example, it’s $99/year to use on unlimited sites, whereas ACF is nearly
$250/year for the same.
DYNAMIC
WPGridBuilder WPGridBuilder
With Bricks 1.9.6 came new experimental features for front-end filtering, sorting, and
live search functionality. But before this, we turned to WPGridBuilder.
And WPGridBuilder’s feature set is still more comprehensive than what Bricks currently
provides. I don’t think Bricks ever intends to match all of WPGridBuilder’s features.
CODE MANAGERS
WPCodeBox WPCodeBox
You’ll often want to add snippets of code to your website. Tracking code, global CSS,
PHP functions, etc.
If you’re able to code, and are comfortable working directly with files on a server, then
you’d definitely want to manually add extra code like this into a child theme.
But if you’re a non-coder, it’s so much easier to use a code manager plugin like
WPCodeBox.
Add HTML, CSS (including compiling SCSS), Javascript, and PHP. Organise your
snippets with folders. Share snippets across all your WP websites. Load CSS and JS
externally or inline. Live reload CSS changes on your front end pages.
WPCodeBox is an annual subscription.
CODE MANAGERS
Fluent Snippets Fluent Snippets
Fluent Snippets is a free code manager plugin.
All other code snippet plugins, including WPCodeBox, save their snippets in the WP
database. This is slower, and introduces a small potential security risk.
In contrast, Fluent Snippets saves your snippets in text files on your server.
This means Fluent Snippets is very secure and as fast as you’ll get.
You can disable and even uninstall the plugin and put your code snippets in
standalone mode - which means if you really don’t want an extra plugin running, or
you’re worried about plugin vendor lock-in - no need to worry.
The only downside I can see vs WPCodeBox is the CSS doesn’t have the option of
compiling SCSS. So if you want to use this to write SCSS, you’re out of luck.
FORMS
WS Form WS Form *
I personally find Bricks’ own native forms so basic that I always use a 3rd party form
plugin.
WS Form is a seriously powerful and brilliant forms plugin from a brilliant developer,
Mark Westguard. The range of functionality is vast—I defy you to find a forms-related
feature that WS Form can’t achieve.
It integrates very nicely with Bricks, and also integrates with a massive amount of
other services. For some of those integrations, you get them bundled in anyway
depending on which level of package you buy.
I use WS Form for all the opt-in and registration forms on my own website. I really
appreciate the advanced server-side validation, and rate limiting to stop spammers
hammering my sign-up forms.
If you're an ACSS user, ACSS integrates seamlessly with WS Form, so styling your forms
uses your site's typography and spacing defaults.
FORMS
Bricksforge Bricksforge
Advanced forms functionality is another major reason people use Bricksforge.
You get way more advanced form functionality way beyond native Bricks forms.
If you already use a 3rd party forms tool like WS Form, then I don’t know how much
extra Bricksforge brings to the table—it depends on what your needs are.
But many people cite the forms as being THE reason they love Bricks Forge so much.
So if you're using it already, Bricksforge is a great choice for forms.
FORMS
Fluent Forms Fluent Forms
I've never personally used Fluent Forms.
But I’m including it here because it’s often highly recommended in the Bricks
community, when people are asking for form add-ons recommendations.
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