Blicks adds a set of blocks for building page layouts in the block editor — sections, boxes, stacks, grids, headings, text, buttons, images, icons, spacers, and dividers.
All blocks share one design system. Instead of a fixed colour or font size baked into each block, Blicks reads your active theme’s theme.json and uses those settings in the block controls and in the front-end CSS. Change a value once and it applies everywhere.
Works with your theme
Blicks tokens (--blicks-*) map to WordPress preset variables (--wp--preset--*, --wp--custom--*). Colours, type scale, and spacing come from whatever theme is active, not a separate default set. Built for block themes and full site editing.
Output
Token values become utility classes. Custom values become CSS custom properties on the element, and per-instance rules — pseudo-elements, container queries, keyframes — are collected into one stylesheet rather than repeated on every block.
What’s included
- 12 layout and content blocks, all in one Blicks inserter category
- A design system admin screen for editing tokens, type roles, breakpoints, and custom keyframe animations
- Named design themes — save a set of token values, switch between them, or reset back to your theme’s defaults
- An HTML importer that turns pasted markup into Blicks blocks, mapping the inline styles it recognises onto block controls
- No jQuery and no bundled front-end framework — blocks render as plain HTML and CSS
External Services
Blicks uses no external services. It contacts no third-party server, loads no remote fonts, scripts or styles, and sends no data anywhere. Everything it renders is served from the plugin itself and from your own theme’s settings.
The only exception is one you control: if you set a background image to an address on another site, the visitor’s browser loads that image from wherever you pointed it. Blicks itself makes no such request.
Source Code
The JavaScript and CSS in the build/ directory are compiled. The full, human-readable source they are built from — TypeScript, SCSS, the block definitions and the build configuration — is public at:
https://github.com/blicks-dev/blicks
To rebuild the plugin from source you need Node.js 20+ and pnpm:
git clone https://github.com/blicks-dev/blicks.git && cd blickspnpm installpnpm build— writes the compiled assets tobuild/.
The PHP in src/ is shipped as source and is not compiled. Blicks has no production PHP
dependencies and bundles no third-party PHP library — the vendor/ directory in the release holds
only Composer’s own class autoloader. Composer is otherwise used just for the development tools
(PHPUnit, PHP_CodeSniffer), which are never shipped.
Third-Party Licenses
Blicks includes a curated icon registry generated from Lucide icons. Lucide is licensed under ISC; some Lucide icons derive from Feather icons, licensed under MIT. Full notices are in licenses.txt and in the generated icon registry metadata.
Screenshots
The Blicks admin: an overview of what is registered, the design system screen where token values are edited, and the presets that repaint the whole set at once.
Theme Settings in the editor. The colours, type scale and spacing come from the active theme's theme.json, so they are the same values the front end uses.
Block controls, split across three tabs: Settings for what the block is, Style for every property at each breakpoint and state, and Advanced for visibility and custom attributes.