This might come off as a bit of a rant, but I get a bit demoralized when trying to finalize sites with Cwicly.
It’s kinda hard to put my finger on it, but I just cannot seem to get this down to a quick and efficient process.
I’ve spent 2.5 hrs this morning just trying to refine the header and footer and the off-canvas (modal) menu. It’s still not 100% what I want it to look and feel like, but it’s close enough so I’ll just go along with it for now.
With modals, what’s the expected behaviour? As a container, how different is it from a div? It just feels like a completely different beast in some fundamental aspects which I’m just not anticipating. It likely works as intended, but whatever that is, my brain isn’t quite getting it.
An example being the off-canvas menu I’m building has quite a few blocks inside, so will need to scroll. I also want to add some margin to the top of the blocks so they don’t fall under the header. Simply adding margins and paddings just doesn’t quite get it done. Took a lot of trial and error to figure out where to add margins/paddings to get the effect.
Building the rest of the site is fairly straightforward. Pages are easy. Dynamic elements are great. But the experience working with headers and footers just has a lot of friction.
Maybe it’s just me, and we can write this off as mostly user-error. It’s possible I’m making my builds too complicated, but then that just leaves me without a resolution.
How soon will we have headers and footers added to the library? I’m clearly not doing this right, this isn’t efficient, and I would prefer just being able to take ones that the team has already built and editing to suit. Building from scratch is just taking me too long as I am trying to deliver production sites to my clients (who are getting a bit annoyed at me at the moment).
May I ask you why you didn’t ask for some help when getting stuck?
There is the amazing support channel and there are 2 community platforms.
I know it can get very frustrating as soon as something doesn’t work out as intended. Trying too long to make it work often leads to even more frustration.
Developing a feeling when additional help is required (after I tried enough) is something which helped me a lot to avoid such situations.
Regarding your issue, modals (the container where you place your content) are regular divs which you treat as always, except the block specific options inside the primary tab. You need to keep in mind that there are transitions/transforms applied. So in case you want to apply these properties to the modal, make sure to wrap your modal content inside another div.
Padding, margin and scrolling will most likely start to work as soon as you apply overflow:auto to the modal block.
I assume there was simply not enough space available to make margin/padding work because of the lack of scrolling ability.
So, it was actually only one line of information which was required to fix your issue. Not a big deal, right?
It seems you are enjoying the general workflow with Cwicly. You are not the only one who get stuck here and there.
Just ask for some help next time to avoid frustration and losing valuable time. When it comes to design stuff, one or two applied/adjusted options inside the block editor are sufficient in most cases.
In principle, you’re not wrong. What is “enough” attempts to troubleshoot different from person to person. I’d not want to come with an issue I hadn’t thoroughly tried to solve first. As you said, it’s often just one setting or other that’s off. It takes a lot of tweak-save-refresh, tweak-save-refresh, to get to a solution.
To be sure, there are a number of small bugs with the builder. Louis is doing a great job of fixing them as they come up. I do run into many “bug or dumb user?” moments. Those I try to troubleshoot in various scenarios to try to narrow down. This, you will agree, eats up time.
Regarding the workflow, it’s not quite there yet. To the point where I need to hire help, but I don’t know how to integrate another person into my development process yet. It would do no good to have someone come and just do what they’re used to, which might just make maintenance a headache down the road.
I’m getting there, and I’m finishing up the work now, but it has taken many more hours than I wanted. I’m willing to allow time to develop the efficiencies that come when you’re used to a tool, but in the interim, it’s a tough slog.
I definitely can relate here, I’m kind of the same person in that regard.
Well, what’s “enough”?
Either developing a feel or sensitivity for it over time, which depends on various aspects like inner calmness, persistency, general knowledge about the current topic, etc.
Or just proceed according to a specific scheme, like:
Which amount of time are you able to invest to solve the issue?
Asking for help in case you were not able to solve the issue in time
Move to other tasks until some feedback is rolling in
It’s like with any other tool. The more time you invest, the better you can handle it.
Trial and error is an important part of the learning process. More very useful advice here.
In my opinion, Cwicly supports and teaches the user actively during that process, just by the way it is built.
But that might also depend on various factors and won’t apply to everyone.
I think the design library will play a crucial role in that regard as well, which you already pointed out in your original post.
Checking out how elements are built will also improve your knowledge and workflow, but that’s totally optional.
Don’t hesitate to post your future issues here, rest assured that other users will profit from it as well.
I’m no stranger to trial and error. I’m a “learn by doing” kind of person.
Around this time 2 years ago was when I ditched Elementor and started to learn Oxygen (and CSS) because I just felt restricted in what I could accomplish. Fast forward to now, and I’m writing hundreds of lines of CSS to make my sites look and feel exactly how I want them.
I actually moved away from Oxygen because I wanted something that was simpler to use, and that I could hand off to clients. Cwicly still isn’t that, but I still have the control (which I like), with a bit less backend builder friction.
The design library has been a big help so far, and I can only look forward to when it’s mature enough that I have a robust library, myself, as well as being able to tap into some of the work done by the community. Until then, we’re pioneers, and the land is fertile, but needing a LOT of work.
I have new sites to share, which I’ll do in a separate post.