aBlocks – Gutenberg Blocks, User Dashboard Builder, Popup Builder, Form Builder & Animation Builder vs TinyMCE Custom Styles

aBlocks is the all in one WordPress website builder that lets you design complete websites, themes, GSAP animations, user dashboards, forms, Popups, and dynamic layouts — all inside the WordPress default editor (Gutenberg) With over 100 powerful blocks and deep customization control, aBlocks lets you build fully animated(GSAP-powered) websites, user login and dashboard pages, dynamic content layouts, advanced forms, pop-ups, coming soon and maintenance modes, and complete store or course websites — all without relying on multiple plugins. Every block comes with rich styling, animation, and layout controls, so you can shape your site exactly the way you want. What You Can Build with aBlocks? aBlocks is built to replace everything you need to build and scale a WordPress website. Instead of stacking plugins for design, layout, animation, forms, dashboards, performance, and launch control, aBlocks delivers one connected system inside the Gutenberg. That’s why aBlocks works as a true all-in-one website and theme builder — not just another block plugin. With aBlocks, you can build: aBlocks offers a comprehensive collection of highly customizable Gutenberg blocks to elevate your WordPress website. Whether building a simple blog or a complex website, aBlocks provides the flexibility and control you need. Fully customized websites with advanced layouts, rich design controls, and smooth animations — from simple sites to complex platforms. User dashboards for stores, courses, memberships, or SaaS-style websites, including custom login, registration, and profile pages. GSAP-powered Animated websites and landing pages with smooth scrolling, hover effects, motion sections, and interactive elements that feel modern and alive. Dynamic content layouts using loop-based templates for blogs, products, courses, listings, and repeatable sections. Advanced store and course websites with custom product pages, carts, checkout sections, course grids, enrollment pages, and student views. Coming soon and maintenance systems with fully designed pages and proper site visibility control. All types of forms, including login, registration, contact, lead collection, subscription, and multi-step forms — built with full layout and style control. Popups, modals, payments, and interactive elements to turn static pages into conversion-focused experiences. Fast, flexible layouts built with 100+ powerful blocks — each block offering deep customization, animation options, and precise control. Top-level lightweight performance with smart asset generation, where only the styles and scripts you actually use are loaded — no unused code, no builder bloat. A large library of pre-made templates, pages, and patterns, with a built-in demo importer so you can launch complete designs instantly and customize everything your way. Check our overview video of aBlocks 👇 Who aBlocks Is For Business websites: For companies that need flexible layouts, strong visuals, and fast-loading pages without design limits. Agency & client sites: Build different site types quickly, customize everything deeply, and hand over clean, manageable sites to clients. eCommerce stores: Design product pages, carts, checkout flows, and customer areas visually instead of being locked into theme templates. LMS & education websites: Create course listings, enrollment pages, student areas, and instructor sections with full layout and motion control. Membership & community sites: Build custom login, registration, profile, and member dashboards that feel like real platforms, not basic pages. User Dashboard Builder: Design frontend user dashboards, account areas, and role-based experiences directly in WordPress. Blogs & content-driven sites: Use dynamic layouts, loop-based templates, and structured designs without heavy builders. Marketing websites & landing pages: Create animated, conversion-focused pages with forms, popups, and payment actions built in. Portfolio & personal sites: Showcase work with motion, interaction, and full visual control — without performance issues. Performance-focused websites: For site owners who care about speed, clean output, and scalable performance as the site grows. Anyone tired of using 10+ plugins: For layouts, forms, popups, animations, dashboards, coming soon pages, and performance fixes — all handled in one system. Why aBlocks Is Different from Other Builders If you want visual design, you can use Elementor. If you want speed, you can choose Spectra. If you want a no-code builder, Divi can work. If you want something clean and stable, Beaver Builder is ok. If you only need landing pages, SeedProd is enough. But if you want all of these together, in one place, aBlocks is the answer. aBlocks brings visual freedom, performance, no-code building, stability, and conversion tools into a single all-in-one WordPress website builder. This is what makes aBlocks fundamentally different from every other builder. And it doesn’t stop there. aBlocks includes deep customization controls, built-in animation and effects, a powerful dashboard builder, an advanced form builder, dynamic content with loop layouts, modal and popup creation, smart asset generation for fast performance, coming soon and maintenance modes, a large library of pre-made templates, pages, and patterns, plus a built-in demo importer — all in one system. Together, these features replace the need for 20+ separate plugins. This all-in-one capability is what truly sets aBlocks apart. If you are choosing a plugin for a startup that you plan to grow and scale in the future, aBlocks is a confident, long-term choice. It doesn’t just give you what you need today — it already includes what you’ll need as your website grows. And with every new release, aBlocks continues to expand these capabilities even further. Launch & Visibility Control System aBlocks includes a built-in system to control when and how your website is visible — without using a separate plugin. You can enable Coming Soon mode or Maintenance mode and design those pages directly inside the gutenberg. It supports SEO-safe Coming Soon pages, proper 503 Maintenance mode, and page-level visibility control, so you can launch, pause, or update your site with full control and clean structure. GSAP powered WordPress Animation & Motion System aBlocks includes a built-in motion control system inside the WordPress default editor (gutenberg). Every block supports scroll-based motion, hover and mouse effects, sticky behavior, entrance animations, floating effects, transform controls and more. For advanced needs, aBlocks adds native GSAP-powered animation right inside the gutenberg. You can trigger GSAP effects on scroll, hover, click, or interaction events directly from block settings, without writing code or installing animation plugin. Result: WordPress Gutenberg animation revolution by aBlocks Professional-grade, smooth, high-performance GSAP animations in WordPress — fully visual, fully controlled, and optimized for speed. Dashboard Builder aBlocks lets you build real user dashboards, not just styled pages. You can design custom login, registration, password reset, and account pages, then connect them into a complete frontend dashboard — fully inside the gutenberg. With role-based layout control and dynamic content support, you can create store dashboards, LMS student panels, instructor areas, membership accounts, or SaaS-style user frontend dashboards that look and work like modern apps — not confusing WordPress admin pages Performance by Design (Smart Asset Generation) aBlocks is built for speed from the core. It uses smart asset generation, which means your website loads only the styles and scripts that are actually used on each page — nothing extra, nothing unused. Every block generates its own CSS and JavaScript only when needed. Editor assets stay in the editor, frontend assets stay on the frontend. This keeps pages clean, lightweight, and fast, even as your site grows. 👉 What this means for you: – Faster loading pages – No builder bloat – Better Core Web Vitals – Smooth performance on large sites You don’t need extra performance plugins just to fix builder overhead. With aBlocks, performance is designed into the system, not added later. Forms, Popups & Conversion Tools aBlocks lets you collect data, trigger actions, and drive conversions without relying on separate form or popup plugins. You can build login, registration, contact, lead collection, subscription, survey, and multi-step forms directly inside the gutenberg — with full control over layout, styling, and behavior. Alongside forms, aBlocks includes a built-in modal and popup builder for announcements, offers, gated content, and user actions. You can also add Stripe and PayPal buttons, countdowns, notifications, and call-to-action elements to turn static pages into interactive, conversion-focused experiences. Templates, Pages & Pattern Library with Demo Importer aBlocks includes a complete library of ready-made templates, full pages, and reusable patterns. You can import an entire page, a specific section, or a layout pattern with one click, then customize everything freely without restrictions. Unlike many builders that require separate demo importer plugins or only offer partial templates, aBlocks provides templates, pages, and patterns together, with a built-in demo importer. This means you can launch full website designs instantly — then adjust structure, styling, animation, and content without adding any extra plugins. aBlocks — Blocks That Build Real Websites aBlocks includes 100+ powerful blocks designed to build complete websites, systems, and user experiences — not just page sections. Every block comes with advanced layout control, animation support, and deep customization, so you can create complex structures, dynamic content, and interactive interfaces without stacking extra plugins. Creative Blocks Image Comparison: slider-based before/after views with hover and drag control Accordion & Tabs: clean content organization with animation and interaction control Countdown & Counter: time-based and number animations for urgency and highlights Video & Player: styled video embeds with layout and interaction options Code Highlighter: display styled code snippets for docs, tutorials, or dev-focused pages Stacked Cards: create layered, scroll-driven card layouts with depth and interaction Image, Featured Image & Image Scroll: full control over display, motion, and effects Image Hotspot & Flip Box: interactive content reveal with hover and click actions Content Timeline & Progress Tracker: step-based and journey-style layouts Carousel & Stacked Cards: animated content sliders and layered visual sections Info Box & Filterable Cards: structured content blocks with dynamic filtering SVG Draw & Lottie Animation: vector and motion graphics with smooth animation Marquee & Text Path: moving text and curved text effects for creative sections Chart & Table: visual data presentation with layout control Simple & Mega Menu: advanced navigation layouts for complex sites Loop Builder & Dynamic Text: dynamic content layouts powered by real data Breadcrumb, Scroll To Top & Logout: UX-focused blocks for navigation and user flow Frontend Dashboard: interactive dashboard layouts built visually Content Blocks Heading: advanced typography, multi-color text, animations, and link support Paragraph: rich text styling with spacing, animation, and layout control List: styled lists with icons, spacing control, and clean content flow Advance Lists: feature-style lists with icons, alignment, and visual emphasis Button: fully customizable buttons with hover effects, icons, and animations Dual Button: two-action buttons with balanced layout and interaction control Toggle: switchable content blocks for clean, interactive layouts Icon: scalable icons with color, size, hover, and animation control Star Ratings: visual rating display for reviews, products, and feedback Table of Contents: auto-generated navigation for long pages and articles Search: styled search layouts with flexible placement and design control Container: advanced layout wrapper with spacing, alignment, and responsive control Spacer: precise spacing control without breaking layout flow Divider: styled separators with size, color, and layout control Taxonomy Listing: dynamic display of categories, tags, or custom taxonomies Form Blocks Form Builder: one flexible system to create any type of form with full layout, style, and logic control Login, Registration & Password Forms: user access flows built visually — login, signup, reset, and account actions Contact, Newsletter & Lead Forms: simple to advanced lead collection with full design and field control Single-step & Multi-step Forms: clean forms or guided step-by-step flows for better completion rates Conversational, Survey & Quiz Forms: interactive, question-based forms that feel natural and engaging Order, Payment & Donation Forms: collect orders, payments, or donations directly from the page Feedback & Custom Forms: fully customizable forms for any custom workflow or business need Academy Blocks Course Grid & Course Search: dynamic course listings with filters, layouts, and real-time data Enroll Form & Enroll Content: custom enrollment sections with full layout and style control Student Registration & Instructor Registration Forms: role-based onboarding flows built visually Login Form & Password Reset Form: custom access pages connected to your learning system PDF Embed & Course Media: lesson materials, videos, and documents displayed cleanly Course Curriculum & Course Description: structured lesson layouts with flexible presentation Course Instructor & Additional Info: instructor profiles and metadata shown dynamically Course Reviews, Reviews Form & Reviews List: collect and display feedback inside your site Certificate Builder: generate and display course certificates with custom design eCommerce Blocks Products, Product Summary & Product Description: flexible product layouts with full design and content control Add To Cart, Continue Button & Checkout Button: conversion-focused actions designed to guide users smoothly Cart List, Mini Cart & Cart Sub Table: real-time cart views with clear structure and easy customization Checkout Form, Billing Info & Shipping Info: fully customizable checkout sections without theme limits Order Details & Order Info: clean order summaries that improve post-purchase clarity Product Filter & Coupon Form: smarter browsing and promotions to boost conversions Product Review & Cart Notice: trust-building feedback and timely user messages Pro Controls Display Condition: show or hide content based on user role, login state, device, page, or rules Motion Effects & Scrolling Effect: animate elements on scroll with smooth, controlled movement Mouse Effects: react to cursor movement for interactive, modern UI Sticky & Floating Effect: keep key elements visible or floating while users scroll Tooltip: show contextual info on hover without cluttering layouts Group Image Effect: apply shared motion and effects across multiple images aBlocks Replaces Multiple Plugins aBlocks is designed to reduce plugin dependency, not increase it. Instead of stacking different tools for design, animation, dashboards, forms, popups, performance, and launch control, aBlocks brings these capabilities into one connected system — built to work together from the start. With aBlocks, you can replace the need for: Page builders – visual layouts, advanced blocks, responsive control Theme builders – headers, footers, templates, dynamic layouts Dashboard plugins – frontend user dashboards, login, account pages Animation plugins – scroll, hover, motion, GSAP-powered effects Popup & modal plugins – popups, modals, notices, interactions Form plugins – login, registration, lead, payment, survey forms Coming soon plugins – coming soon & maintenance modes Performance helpers (partially) – smart asset generation and optimized loading The result is a cleaner setup, faster sites, fewer conflicts, and easier scaling. Instead of managing 10–20 separate plugins, you build everything inside one flexible builder that grows with your website. 🔥 WHAT’S NEXT If you like aBlocks, then consider checking out our other WordPress Plugins for FREE: 🔝 Academy LMS – eLearning and online course solution for WordPress 🔝 Easy Content Manager – Powerful Custom Post types, Fields, Taxonomy & Settings Builder 🔝 StoreEngine – Complete eCommerce Solution with Memberships, Licensing, Affiliates & More 🔝 ZenCommunity – Real-Time Community Plugin with Messaging, Feeds, Live Chat & Support System 🤝 Join the thriving aBlocks community today! 👉 Join Our Community 👉 Our Official Facebook Page 👉 Follow us on Twitter 👉 Connect in our Linkedin …

Please someone take over maintaining this plugin, or it will get abandoned – with over 9.000 active installations. I’m now 69 and although retired, all my time is taken up with other projects, while I still have the energy for them. Why you might want to take it over? It’s really useful: Make your editing experience as simple and good as possible by improving the way you work with the TinyMCE visual editor (including Gutenberg Classic block). This plugin adds custom CSS file(s) to the frontend and to the TinyMCE editor; and it allows you to populate TinyMCE’s ‘Formats’ dropdown with your own styles. The features in more detail: 1. Installs two CSS stylesheet files into your chosen location (so you can still do updates of the active theme and this plugin and even switch to another theme). In general you will need to fetch the auto-created stub files via FTP, edit them locally and upload them, overwriting the previous versions. editor-style.css is used for styling your TinyMCE Editor editor-style-shared.css is used for styles to be used by the frontend AND in your TinyMCE editor (so you do not have to copy) To use this feature, you have to write your own CSS code into these files. 2. The main feature of this Plugin is to offer a Backend-GUI to create custom styles for TinyMCE (‘Formats’ dropdown) dynamically. Easy to add, change and delete styles No editing of source code required (excepting the CSS stylesheets) Allows you to add block- and inline elements which are not provided by TinyMCE, e.g. , , etc. The plugin’s backend page contains a lot of description and some links to help you define your styles correctly Note that each style can have both CSS Classes and/or CSS Inline-Styles. The latter (excepting color) will even be applied to the Formats dropdown menu items. However, I do not recommend inline styles as they are inserted into the text of the post/page and remain unchanged if you later alter the style in the plugin settings – so in general stick to Classes! How the two stylesheets are applied The shared style sheet file is enqueued to be included on frontend pages (via the usual tag in the area) using the standard WordPress function wp_enqueue_style. So, as with most other stylesheets, the statements in it will automatically apply to the whole HTML page. So define class names which will not collide with any already in use by the theme – and do not define styles for HTML elements without a limiting class name unless you want them to apply to all elements of that tag type (including in header, footer, sidebar…). Both stylesheets are passed to TinyMCE by calling: add_filter(‘mce_css’, …) What this causes to happen is that they are linked in to the HTML document which is the source for an , which is the editing area of TinyMCE. So they should definitely only apply to HTML in the iframe – although I have heard that some situations, e.g. a cache plugin, may break this mechanism. Gutenberg classic blocks As of version 1.1.1 this plugin works for the Gutenberg classic block. WordPress MultiSite Although it does not check for MultiSite, the plugin works in the MultiSite environment, since WordPress uses a separate Options table for each MultiSite. You can reuse the same CSS files (by supplying the same custom directory in each Site), or add separate ones for each Site. Current Languages – en_US – de_DE (Tim Reeves) Background Information Then and Now This plugin was originally written by David Stöckl in 2013 – long before Gutenberg had been conceived, and at a time when several different plugins all tried to enhance the TinyMCE editor in different ways. It was abandoned a year later by David and I forked it in 2016, renamed to TinyMCE Custom Styles” (“TCS”). Most of those other TinyMCE-related plugins, notably WP Edit, are now abandoned; apart from this plugin, only TinyMCE Advanced, now also handling Gutenberg and renamed to Advanced Editor Tools (abbreviated hereafter to “AET”) seems to still be notably active in this area. AET is a great plugin – you can also check out its companion for developers Advanced TinyMCE Configuration. I use AET myself on most websites – but there are a few things it’s not designed to do, and that’s where this plugin fills the gap. You can consider it as AET’s sidekick 🙂 TinyMCE and the WordPress theme The goal is to configure the TinyMCE backend editor so that its ‘Visual’ tab displays content as closely as possible to how it will look on the content area of the actual website. To this end, WordPress has for years provided a feature which can be used by themes, called ‘editor styles’. This allows a theme to make known to WordPress one or more CSS files, which should contain a subset of the theme’s styles, those which apply to the display of content in the content area (i.e. excluding styles applying to headers, sidebars, footers, archives, comments, …). If the theme provides this feature, that CSS file (or files) are loaded to TinyMCE to achieve the goal. The default location is one file named ‘editor-style.css’ in the theme’s root directory. In fact, WordPress seems to find this file, if present, even if the theme does not register it. All good modern themes provide this feature. Advanced Editor Tools The really good plugin ‘Advanced Editor Tools’ (“AET”, from and maintained by Andrew Ozz, a WordPress core developer, now attributed to Automattic, the company effectively behind WordPress) helps with one of the problems noted above: It gives you complete freedom to select which buttons and dropdowns are displayed in TinyMCEs header – in particular you can just drag the ‘Formats’ dropdown into one of the bar areas, exactly where you want it. AET also has a number of other options, for example to prevent TinyMCE from removing tags and minifying the text in the ‘Text’ tab, which is very useful when you need to look at the HTML and do any manual adjustment. Shortcomings in the standard setup There are some regrettable weaknesses in the unenhanced situation: Any custom CSS which you set in the WordPress Customizer is not applied to TinyMCE (it is written out as direct styles in the of each website page). The styles which the theme provides for TinyMCE are applied to the HTML displayed by the editor. This is fine with fixed styling of elements like , or . But a theme may also include optional styles to change or enhance the display of an element – e.g. ‘.small’, ‘.screen-reader-text’, ‘.beforelist’, ‘.hilitebox’ and so on. In this case, and without help from any plugin, there is no way to select any of them from the menu or toolbar of TinyMCE in order to apply them to an element, so a user would need to know the style names and apply them manually in the ‘Text’ tab – not good. See below ‘importcss’, but note that it overwrites anything other plugins have put in the ‘Formats’ dropdown. In the standard configuration (i.e. without enhancer plugins) TinyMCE is not even configured to show the ‘Formats’ dropdown, which we need to apply custom styles to elements in the text. The TinyMCE Formats dropdown Internal name: ‘styleselect’. By default, this dropdown is not displayed. You can add code e.g. to your theme’s functions.php, to have it shown. Its default contents are 4 entries with corresponding submenus: Headings, Inline, Blocks and Alignement. TCS always registers the ‘Formats’ dropdown to TinyMCE’s second toolbar, this does not seem to be a problem for AET. It is in this area that TCS is really usefull: It allows you to create named styles, so you can name them descriptively, e.g. to show if the style is a block or inline style, if it uses the Wrapper option, and so on. Basically you will be adding styles to the dropdown which are defined in a stylesheet from the theme, or in your ‘editor-style-shared.css’, to allow you (or your customer) convenient and understandable access to them while editing. The TinyMCE JavaScript plugin ‘importcss’ When the AET plugin is active, it offers an option “Create CSS classes menu” (subtitle: Load the CSS classes used in editor-style.css and replace the Formats menu). When checked, a TinyMCE JavaScript plugin called ‘importcss’ is loaded to the frontend, which parses the CSS loaded to TinyMCE (i.e. from your theme’s ‘editor styles’ and this plugins ‘editor-style.css’) and populates the ‘Formats’ dropdown with a selection of those styles. Styles applying directly to HTML elements without a class name are skipped. Styles applying to a tag and containing a class, e.g. “h1.page-title” will be included and work as expected. But for classes not limited to a tag, it has no way of knowing if the class is intended to be applied to a block element or as an inline element, nor to which tags it should apply or should use, so it simply offers them as inline elements, which may or may not be their intended use. Styles with a pseudo-class or pseudo-element (e.g. ‘:hover’, ‘::before’) will be omitted. The bottom line is, that however good the themes editor styles are, we end up with a sub-optimal population of the Formats dropdown: It will be too long (including many styles we don’t need or don’t understand), and some valuable styles will be missing or wrongly classified as inline styles. Given all these shortcomings, I have not found this feature to be of much use in practice. Credits This plugin is a fork of TinyMCE Advanced Professsional Formats and Styles which has been abandoned by the original author. Initially I just fixed a JavaScript bug so that it worked again, and cleaned up the code and messages a bit. Since then, a number of further improvements, see the changelog. I was born in 1954 and would be glad if someone else would now take over this plugin and further improve it. Translations are also very welcome. David Stöckl, Vienna, the original author. Many thanks! The plugin icon (Der Bitkönig) was drawn by Gabriele Meischner, muchas Gracias! Rawrly for providing security updates. Report Security Bugs Please report all security bugs found in this project by following the vulnerability disclosure process.