A Review of KadenceWP Blocks: Extending WordPress Blocks

We continue our journey looking at block collection plugins today with KadenceWP. We’ve previously covered KadenceWP in our 12 Days of Giving giveaways last December.

If you’ve ever spent any time in the block editor, you’ll understand how limiting it can be when it comes to designing layouts. Especially when you come from building sites where you used page builder, this is one of the things I really love about the KadenceWP blocks. KadenceWP offers a number of additional blocks that allow you to expand your options for building dynamic and flexible pages.

The free version is already powerful in that it gives you the ability to create pages with complex layouts, gives you control over columns, rows, spacing, and more. However, KadenceWP also has a pro version of their block plugin. And the pro version is really the one that you’re going to want to get. 

KadenceWP gives you several pre-designed layouts that not only look good with some of the best design practices in mind. They also allow you to edit just about every single thing of each of those pre-designed layouts. 

The power of KadenceWP is in the row layout block. The row layout block gives you better control of columns for different screen sizes, plus it gives you full row editing tools like padding, backgrounds, overlays, gradients, vertical alignment and much more. Take a look at the video review below.

As I’ve been building sites with Gutenberg, KadenceWP is probably one of a small number of block plugins I install on every single site. 

The pro blocks in KadenceWP are: the image overlay block, the post grid/carousel block, split content block, product carousel block, modal block, video pop-up block, and the on scroll animation.

Key Features in Using this Plugin

One of the biggest features I like about KadenceWP is the prebuilt library. The designs are modern and allow you to build a page with just a few clicks quickly. Once you have everything you want from the prebuilt library, you get a ton of row customization options that allow you to change up the design to be your own. 

That’s the power of KadenceWP. They provide you with a number additional design features to really allow you to design just about anything you want with using a well-designed prebuilt library as a starting point.

Row Customization

KadenceWP provides you with a ton of row customization options. You have the ability to change the background with attributes like overlays, opacity, even gradients. Finally, there’s a wide range of row dividers as well.

Advanced Heading

One thing I really don’t like about block collection plugins is when they duplicate a core block. The last thing I want to have is multiple blocks that do the same thing. Especially when you pass the site over to a client, it’s too easy to have them add the wrong block.

That said, I really like the Advanced Heading block by KadenceWP. It adds a number of enhancements that could be built or added into the Heading block. The biggest feature I like out of it is the ability to use dual color headings. It’s a feature called Highlight in the Advanced Block, but can really help get the point across in a heading.

Lock and Key Access

If you are a freelancer, you are going to love this. When I build sites with Beaver Builder, one thing I always wanted to make sure that the styles (design) of the site would be applied out of the box. I wanted to make sure that when handing over the site to a client, if they were doing any updating to the site, I didn’t want to answer questions around applying styles to the site.

With KadenceWP you can do this and more! 

What Type of Blocks are Included?

The full list of blocks included with KadenceWP are:

• Row Layout
• Form
• Advanced Gallery
• Advanced Button
• Icon
• Spacer/Divider
• Advanced Heading
• Tabs
• Info Box
• Accordion 
• Icon List
• Testimonials

Price?

KadenceWP offers an extensive free version of their blocks. In fact, the only difference currently is 5 more premium blocks, animation on scroll, support, and updates. If you are looking at the pro version you can get just the blocks for $99/year.

Who Should Use this Plugin?

If you are doing any type of client work, building websites for clients, you need to take a look at KadenceWP. I have worked with all types of clients, and one thing I see the new WordPress block editor doing is giving your clients more control. That’s a good thing…after all it’s their site. But the last thing I want to do is get support requests because a client made a change to their site and now it looks funky.

KadenceWP’s lock and access feature allows me to give them what settings they should be able to change with the blocks and then lock it down, so they don’t have full control over all of the settings within the blocks. As a result, this saves me time and makes my clients happier.