David Gwyer launched his Versatile FAQs plugin a 12 months in the past by way of his WPGO Plugins website. Nonetheless, after a month of updates, the mission appeared to fall off the radar, a minimum of till earlier this week when he launched an enormous overhaul that integrates extra with the block editor.
The plugin creates a customized publish sort for managing particular person FAQ units. This a part of the plugin makes use of the traditional editor interface as an alternative of counting on the block system.
Admittedly, the expertise of the traditional editor is at all times jarring at any time when I load a plugin that makes use of it. FAQ posts should not have a content material canvas. The information is saved as meta values, so it doesn’t essentially must work with the block editor. Nonetheless, I might like to see a plugin equivalent to this one transfer its major interface over.
The administration display is identical as posts, pages, and different publish sorts, and including a brand new FAQ is easy. The plugin presents customers with a meta field for including question-and-answer units, which makes use of the TinyMCE interface for typing.
There’s additionally a FAQ Group taxonomy for categorizing FAQ posts. This could turn out to be useful for informational websites that want tighter group. The plugin additionally gives a [flexible-faqs] shortcode, which traditional customers can drop of their posts and pages. Nonetheless, others will wish to benefit from its blocks.
The plugin ships with three blocks for outputting expandable FAQ posts:
- Textual content
- Field
- Accordion
Every of the blocks permits end-users to pick a broadcast FAQ or a FAQ Group. They’ll then select a “theme,” which will be personalized.
Customers will possible must customise the FAQ theme as a result of the plugin’s output has some kinds that overrule theme defaults, significantly its colours.
The colour picker utilized in every block’s choices is completely different from core and feels misplaced. Nonetheless, customers can nonetheless choose from their theme-defined colours, apart from the border setting. For some motive, the border colour makes use of a completely completely different picker management. Regardless of that, I used to be nonetheless capable of get the output to line up with my theme.
The blocks would provide a smoother consumer expertise in the event that they leaned on extra of WordPress’s built-in block controls and elements. Utilizing the core colour and border options could be a very good start line. Nonetheless, providing entry to typography, full or wide-alignment, textual content alignment, and extra would give customers extra flexibility with the design.
I’m not at present a fan of the three-block method. From my assessments, I don’t see a motive to separate them. Every does the identical factor with barely completely different kinds. As a substitute of splitting the blocks, I want to see a single FAQ block that focuses on design controls. The plugin may nonetheless provide the three base layouts as variations which can be primarily presets of particular settings — that’s what the variation system is for.
I might drop the “theme” system altogether. Then, use block kinds for various default designs and add additional controls for customizing extra particular options.
Nonetheless, the professional model depends closely on the plugin’s block-theming system. Whereas the free copy gives a handful of themes, the industrial improve has over 100. This isn’t one thing that might be simple to backtrack at this level. Its saving grace is that consumer customizations are saved within the database, they usually can reuse these modified themes throughout the positioning.
No matter any nit-picks I’ve, the model 0.5.10 replace is leaps and bounds higher than the sooner variations. The plugin is useless easy to stand up and operating. I constructed a number of FAQ posts and dropped them into pages inside minutes.
The plugin can also be ARIA compliant and accessible. I bumped into no hassle testing it from the keyboard.
The plugin’s front-end scripts for opening and shutting the tabs don’t appear to load when utilizing a block-based theme. I’m not positive if this is a matter from the plugin or a bug with Gutenberg. It shouldn’t deter most customers at this level, but it surely must be addressed earlier than WordPress 5.9 launches with its help of block themes.
The plugin isn’t superb for each scenario. For many who have a number of FAQ pages or lists, it gives a straightforward route towards managing them. For websites with only one or two sections of questions and solutions, it’s possible overkill.
For the latter group, Jordy Meow’s FAQ Block plugin makes much more sense. It permits customers to construct a FAQ instantly within the publish or web page, but it surely doesn’t present a central location for managing a number of FAQs.