UpdraftPlus vs FrontBlocks for Gutenberg/GeneratePress

FrontBlocks is a lightweight toolkit that extends the WordPress Block Editor (aka Gutenberg) with layout controls, interactive blocks, and content enhancements. Build richer pages with the blocks you already use, without relying on a page builder or custom code. Turn Query Loops and grids into carousels, add animations and visual effects, improve layouts, and enable practical site utilities. FrontBlocks works with native WordPress blocks as well as supported GenerateBlocks elements, with optional integrations for WooCommerce, GenerateBlocks/GeneratePress and Gravity Forms. Container Edge Alignment Add custom controls to GenerateBlocks Container blocks and native WordPress Group/Container blocks to remove padding from the left or right side, creating edge-to-edge layouts. This feature only appears for containers using GeneratePress global max-width settings, perfect for creating asymmetric layouts where content extends to one browser edge while maintaining proper spacing on the other side. Carousel/Slider for GenerateBlocks Grid and Query Loop We have added options to Gutenberg blocks that enable you to create a carousel or slider using your preferred blocks. Supported blocks include GenerateBlocks Grid, GenerateBlocks Element, core/group, and the native WordPress Query Loop (core/query). To start using the carousel, go to the grid block or Query Loop block and select the ‘Carousel’ or ‘Slider’ option in the ‘FrontBlocks Grid Options’ section. Carousel/Slider attributes: – Autoplay: automatically changes the slides after a certain amount of time (in seconds). – Items to view: configure the number of items to display for different screen sizes: * Desktop (>1200px): number of items to show on desktop screens. * Laptop (992px-1199px): number of items to show on laptop screens. * Tablet (768px-991px): number of items to show on tablet screens. * Mobile ( , , , ) and event-handler attributes (on*) are stripped before saving, protecting against XSS attacks. Login Block: Add a native Gutenberg login form block to any page or post. Insert the block from the Gutenberg inserter under the FrontBlocks category. Features a toggle to switch between login form and registration form views, with fully customizable labels and styles. Ideal for membership sites or pages requiring a clean, integrated login experience without a shortcode. Post Meta (Native) — FrontBlocks PRO: Display custom field values from post meta inside native WordPress blocks directly in the editor. Select any registered meta key and output its value inline within heading, paragraph, or other text blocks — no shortcodes or custom PHP required. Useful for displaying dynamic data such as prices, dates, or any custom field stored in post meta. Available in FrontBlocks PRO. FAQ Schema (JSON-LD): Automatically generate FAQPage structured data for search engines. Enable the “FAQ Schema” toggle in any accordion block (core/details) to mark it as an FAQ item. FrontBlocks collects all enabled items on the page and outputs a valid FAQPage JSON-LD script in the footer, improving your chances of appearing as rich results in Google Search. Gravity Forms Inline Layout: Display Gravity Forms with fields and buttons on the same line. Perfect for newsletter signup forms (email + subscribe button) or search forms (input + search button). To use this feature: 1. Select a form in the Gravity Forms block 2. Find the “FrontBlocks Gravity Form Options” panel in the block settings where you can: – Enable inline layout with a simple toggle – Adjust the gap between elements (0-50px) – Responsive design: automatically stacks on mobile devices This feature eliminates the need for custom CSS to achieve inline form layouts. Stacked Images Block: Display a set of images with an animated stacking effect. Images appear layered on top of each other and animate in from a configurable direction (top, bottom, left, or right). Insert the block from the Gutenberg inserter under the FrontBlocks category and upload multiple images. Features: – Configurable animation duration and delay between each image. – Container height control to fit any layout. – Smooth entrance animations driven by CSS/JS with no dependencies. Events: Register and manage events directly from WordPress. Enable the Events feature from the FrontBlocks settings page and choose between two modes: a dedicated Custom Post Type (with its own menu and category taxonomy) or storing events as regular posts. Each event includes meta fields for: – All-day toggle – Start and end date and time – Cost – Event website URL Language Recommendation Banner: Display a smart banner that detects the visitor’s browser language and suggests switching to the matching version of the site. Enable the banner from the FrontBlocks settings page. The banner only appears when the site has a translated version matching the user’s browser language, and respects user dismissal via a cookie. Cookie Notice: Show a lightweight, configurable cookie consent banner with Accept and Reject actions. Choose between a full-width bottom bar, a boxed panel (bottom-left or bottom-right) or a centered popup, and customize the message, button labels, cookie policy page, accent color and cookie expiration. Google Tag Manager and/or GA4 are only requested and loaded after a visitor accepts — never before — and returning visitors who already accepted get the scripts on normal page load. The settings page also shows a simple accepted/rejected acceptance-rate stat (admins are excluded from the count). Implements Google Consent Mode v2, so it also holds back tracking from other analytics/ads plugins that respect it — including Google Site Kit — until the visitor decides. Advanced Cookie Management (FrontBlocks PRO): Extend Cookie Notice with separate Necessary, Analytics and Marketing preferences, a customizable preferences dialog and a reusable trigger that lets visitors update their choices later. Google Ads, Meta Pixel and Microsoft Clarity only run after the relevant category is accepted. It also supports the official Meta Pixel for WordPress plugin by holding its Pixel and Conversions API signals until Marketing consent. WooCommerce Features: Included features for WooCommerce FrontBlocks PRO. FrontBlocks PRO: FrontBlocks PRO is a premium plugin that extends the functionality of FrontBlocks. It includes additional features and improvements over the free version. Features: – Enable Gutenberg in the product editor. – Enable simple prices for variable products. – Block added after button. – Product description behaviour. – Disable zoom on product image. – Share buttons. – Custom Post Types Builder: Create and manage custom post types with advanced configuration options: * Create custom post types with a simple interface from the FrontBlocks settings page * Configure post type behavior (Post or Page style – hierarchical or not) * Enable/disable categories taxonomy for each custom post type * Add custom meta fields with multiple field types (Text, Textarea, URL, Date, File, Number, Email) * Individual settings page for each custom post type accessible from the post type menu * Delete custom post types easily with a single click – Disable tabs on the product page. – Horizontal product form layout (price, quantity, and add to cart button in one row). – Checkout Inline: Display billing/shipping fields (email + phone, address line 1 + address line 2) side by side in a two-column layout. Compatible with Block Checkout (WooCommerce 8+) and legacy shortcode checkout. – Full Page Scroll: Create fullpage scroll experiences with smooth section-by-section navigation and automatic side navigation dots. Perfect for landing pages, portfolios, and presentations. – Footer Patterns: Ready-to-use footer block patterns (3 columns, 4 columns, hero contact) for native WordPress and Gutenberg. – Login Block: Native Gutenberg block for user login and registration forms with customizable labels and …

The UpdraftPlus Backup & Migration Plugin is trusted by the WordPress community to backup, restore and migrate their WordPress websites. UpdraftPlus is actively installed on more than 3 million websites around the world. Backup with UpdraftPlus UpdraftPlus is the world’s highest ranking and most popular scheduled backup and migration plugin. Backup to your preferred storage location and restore in just three clicks. Backup to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 (or compatible), Rackspace Cloud, FTP, DreamObjects, Openstack Swift or email. The paid version also allows you to backup to Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Backblaze B2, SFTP, SCP, pCloud, WebDAV or UpdraftVault, our integrated storage option for UpdraftPlus. Backup manually or schedule to run every 2, 4, 8 or 12 hours, daily, weekly, monthly or fortnightly. Restore with UpdraftPlus Your WordPress website is vulnerable. Your site may get hacked. Something could go wrong with an update or your server could crash. You might need to reverse a change made or a mistake caused by human error. Whatever the reason, you can restore your WordPress website in just a few clicks with UpdraftPlus. Choose which components to restore (e.g. plugins, themes, database etc.), click again to restore, then click again to return to the main screen. Migrate with UpdraftPlus It’s easy to migrate your WordPress website to another web host, server or domain with this free version of UpdraftPlus. To migrate, simply download your database, plugins, themes etc. from the source site, then upload them into your destination site. When migrating, a built-in search-and-replace engine identifies old strings and replaces these to reflect the new location. UpdraftPlus saves you time and reduces the risk of broken links or missing files associated with manual migrations. Why UpdraftPlus? Writing a reliable backup and migration plugin that ‘just works’ consistently across millions of different WordPress deployments is hard. UpdraftPlus is relied upon to do exactly that. We’re trusted and actively deployed on more websites around the world than any other WordPress backup and migration plugin. UpdraftPlus: Backs up, migrates and restores Offers a huge number of remote storage locations Allows you to schedule backups, so you can ‘set and forget’ Is comprehensive and easy to use Is proven to work on over 3 million sites. UpdraftPlus Premium The free version of UpdraftPlus will back up and migrate your website perfectly well. However if you need more features and options you can purchase our Premium version. Backup and Migrate with UpdraftPlus Premium, and: Get automatic backups before updates. Restore the very latest version if a WordPress or plugin update breaks your site. Backup Incrementally. Changes are added to the master, saving server resources vs repeatedly backing up in full. Get more remote storage options including Microsoft OneDrive, SFTP, Microsoft Azure, WebDAV, Google Cloud, SCP, Backblaze and pCloud. Get 1GB of integrated storage with UpdraftVault for 99.999% reliability, redundancy and scalability. Get more control over how many backups are stored in a specified interval. Restore from other backup plugins including BackWPup, BackupWordPress, Simple Backups and more. Run backups at set times e.g. during periods of low traffic. Backup to more than one location for added protection. Get detailed reports. Includes cryptographic checksums so you can verify the integrity of the backup files and more. Get Premium migration. Migrating to the destination site is more direct and can be done from the source site. Get Multisite / multi-network compatibility. Backup non-WP files and databases e.g. tables belonging to your e-commerce store or customisations to WordPress core. Get database encryption. Manage your backups and migrations from the WP-CLI. Get Premium Support. Find out more on our comparison page. UpdraftPlus Premium is available for purchase here. Managing multiple websites? UpdraftCentral is a powerful remote control dashboard for WordPress that allows you to manage your backups, as well as updates, users, pages, posts, plugins and themes from one central location. Choose between: UpdraftCentral (free, self-hosted) UpdraftCentral Premium (paid-for, self-hosted) UpdraftCentral Cloud (paid-for, fully-hosted) Optimize your sites centrally by combining the power of WP-Optimize and UpdraftCentral or manage your backups centrally by combining the power of UpdraftPlus with UpdraftCentral. Need to create a temporary clone of your site? UpdraftClone makes it quick and easy to create a temporary sandbox for changes you want to try out. Simply select the versions of WordPress and PHP that you want, and we’ll do the rest. More about UpdraftClone The full suite of plugins from Team Updraft and friends UpdraftPlus. Backup, migrate and restore. Rated 5* on the plugin directory and trusted by more than 3 million WordPress website owner WP-Optimize. Clean the database, compress images and caching. Optimize your WordPress website. 5* user rating. 1 million + active installs. All-In-One Security (AIOS). Secure your WordPress website. Comprehensive, feature rich and easy to use. 5* user rating and 1 million + active installs. WP Overnight. Quality Extensions for your WooCommerce store. 5* rated invoicing, order and product management, customer management solutions and more. Easy Updates Manager. Take control of updates. Lots of features for free, and a Premium version with even more – over 300,000 users. Internal Link Juicer.Boost your SEO. Automate internal links within your WordPress website. Save time and rank higher in the search engines. For other useful, free plugins see our lead developer’s profile, here. Are you multilingual? Can you translate? Do you want to help people that speak your language to backup, migrate and restore their WordPress websites? The UpdraftPlus backup, migration and restoration plugin is ready and waiting. The translation process is easy, and web-based – please go here for instructions: https://updraftplus.com/translate/. Or, if you’re already an expert WordPress translator, just pick out the .pot file from the wp-content/plugins/updraftplus/languages/ directory – if you scan for translatable strings manually, then you need to get these functions: _x(), __(), _e(), _ex(), log_e(). Many thanks to our existing translators. License Copyright 2011-24 David Anderson This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA Non-English translators are provided by volunteers, and wordpress.org does not give plugin developers control over their translations; thus relying on them is at your own risk; UpdraftPlus cannot guarantee that translations from the original English are accurate. We recognise and thank those mentioned at https://updraftplus.com/acknowledgements/ for code and/or libraries used and/or modified under the terms of their open source licences.