Mentor Web Blocks is a ground breaking free and open source Umbraco package that further enhances the already fantastic Umbraco CMS. Mentor Web Blocks adds drag and drop website building functionality for content editors, and excellent code encapsulation for developers.
Developed by certified Umbraco developers at Mentor Digital, the Mentor Web Blocks project is the culmination of 12 months of front and back end development work. The Web Blocks system is already in use by 4 major NHS websites, FTSE 250 companies, charities and large scale membership organisations.
The Web Blocks system has been developed to encapsulate code for each block in a re-usable and loosely coupled way. Blocks can now make use of Razor scripts, XSLT scripts and .Net user controls, neatly organising your scripts into re-usable and shareable snippets. Templates can be developed to be pre-populated with blocks and also blocks can be added retrospectively to templates populating all pages using this template with the new block that has been added. For interface developers the Web Blocks system is very flexible and can adapted to work with any interface framework though at present at Mentor Digital our Umbraco Developers mainly use the 960 grid system. Read the Getting started guide for developers at http://www.mentorwebblocks.com/support/getting-started-for-developers/
The Web Blocks system provides the ability to drag blocks of content into defined areas on a preview canvas, directly from the content tree. Users can create blocks in the content tree in the same way as creating normal pages i.e. from pre-defined block/content types. Blocks behave just like any other node in the content tree and can have parameters just like normal content pages. Once created blocks can be dragged into the preview panel and re-ordered by dragging around the canvas. Once on the canvas, a block can be double-clicked to pop-up an overlay showing the parameters of that block including WYSISYG editor, media pickers etc. Read the Getting started guide for content editors at http://www.mentorwebblocks.com/support/getting-started-for-developers/
For the Mentor Web Blocks showcase visit http://mentorwebblocks.com/showcase/