Atomic Blocks: tips for new users

StudioPress customers have basic videos to watch

If you bought your theme directly from StudioPress login to your my.studiopress.com account and watch your starter videos before moving on to more advanced stuff. But, whether you’re a new user or an old hand, these Atomic Blocks tips for new users will come in handy.

If a block is too wide, put it inside a container block or an advanced column block

Some themes have very wide pages. If you place a block such as the Accordion block in one of these very wide pages, it looks silly. The block needs a much narrower container.

The solution is to put the block you want to display inside a container block. Then set the inner width of the container to a width that looks better.

1. Place a container block in your page.
2. Stack some accordion blocks in the container.
3. Choose 750 for the container’s inner width setting.

Building complex layouts with a background color or background image

Most of the time you’ll build your pages and posts by adding blocks one below the other.

If you want to put two or three paragraphs side by side, use the columns block.

If you want a wide paragraph at the side of a narrow paragraph, use the advanced columns block.

If you want to place a background color behind a grid of blocks. Such as a headline, a row of paragraphs and a button. Place those blocks inside a container block and give the container block a background color.

This is one of those simple but very practical tips for new users

Making blog style listings

You can make lists of blog posts and display them in a grid or list layout. You can choose which category to display in these post grids. And you can show or hide the featured images.

But! Although you can use the post and page grid block to display web pages, you have very little control over which pages will be displayed in the grid.

So if you use the post and page grid block, populate the grid with posts, not pages.

You can select the category that displays in the blog listing, such as tips for new users, etc.

The email newsletter block

You can easily add a Mailchimp signup form to your page. But you need a free Mailchimp account first. You must have your Mailchimp API key ready before you can add the block to the page.

If you want to add a background color to your newsletter signup box, place the newsletter block inside a container block. Then give the container block a background color.

Pricing tables

Making a basic pricing table is easy. Styling the pricing tables takes longer. Take the time to learn how to style the individual blocks inside each column of the pricing table. You’ll soon be able to make professional looking pricing tables.

The Call To Action block

If you want to make sure your readers notice a very important link, put it in the call to action block. The call to action has a headline and paragraph of text above a button.

When you’ve typed your headline, paragraph and button text, wrap the whole call to action in a background color or background image.

Your call to action will really stand out. Your readers can’t fail to notice it.

Beware the paragraph size option

The paragraph block has a font size option. You can choose from …

• Normal
• Medium
• Large and…
• Huge text.

Why could this be a problem?

If you have a theme that uses a small font size for the main body and paragraph text. Increasing the font size of a few important paragraphs can draw attention and make those paragraphs stand out.

But what if, at some point in the future, you change to a theme that uses a larger body and paragraph font size.

In your new theme the font size of these altered paragraphs could look out of proportion with the rest of your page.

One of my best tips for new users is, never use anything fancy on more than a few pages on any site. That way, if you have problems you’ve only got a few pages to fix. Not an entire site.

Start with a Layout then add Sections and blocks

The easiest way to build a great looking homepage is to start with an Atomic Blocks layout.

Add page sections to that layout. And then fine tune your page layout by adding individual blocks inside that layout.

These are ready made page sections

You can add page layouts and page sections to your page with just one click.