Blocksy is one of the best free themes available for the block editor right now and is rapidly growing in popularity. CreativeThemes, the Romania-based company behind the theme, released an update to Blocksy this week, along with a new starter site for charities.
The concept of “starter sites” is an interesting new twist on “starter templates,” which essentially allow users to import the content from a demo. Theme makers for products like Blocksy, Astra, and Go use this approach to help users implement different types of websites by importing the content from a pre-built demo site. The demos use the same base theme but vary widely in how they are customized.
Blocksy’s starter sites are a one-click XML demo import that automatically brings in the pages, images, and theme options. This puts all the blocks in the right place so the user needs only to customize the demo, instead of trying to find the right settings to match the demo.
The new Charity starter site is built with the Stackable plugin’s page builder blocks. It joins four other free starter sites designed specifically for blogs, apps, travel, and e-commerce. The design can be imported under the Blocksy menu in the WordPress admin.
According to the theme’s beautifully designed and user friendly changelog, Blocksy can now automatically detect Custom Post Types and add their appropriate options. The update also adds a sizing option for related posts thumbnails, a new Twitch social icon, and improves compatibility with WooCommerce product display and miscellaneous extensions.
Blocksy Pro Version Coming Soon
When we first reviewed the theme in January 2020, it had 1,000 active installs and 58 five-star reviews. Over the past six months, the theme’s user base has grown to more than 4,000 active installs and a perfect five-star rating on WordPress.org from 191 reviewers. It is currently maintained by a team of two – Sergiu Radu and Andrei Glingeanu.
Blocksy’s creators have been working on custom projects and random jobs to support the time they spend developing the theme but they plan to launch a pro version as early as this summer.
“We plan to add more features in the premium version, more demos, and also offer better and faster support,” Radu said. “I hope after we release the premium version we will be able to take on a few more people in our team to help us, at least with support so we can concentrate better on development.”
Radu said the pro version will include some premium starter sites as well as additional functionality for the base theme. They are aiming to include the following features in the first release:
- Multiple conditional headers
- Multiple conditional footers
- Multiple conditional sidebars
- More header elements
- More footer elements
- White labeling
- Custom fonts extension
- Adobe Typekit extension
- Hooks (conditional)
- Sticky header
In a second round of updates for the pro version, Blocksy creators plan to include features like custom color palettes, AMP, LearnDash, and EDD integrations, along with extensions for ads, mega menus, and portfolios. In the meantime, Radu says they do not plan to add more features to the free version – only improvements and new starter sites.
