In my previous article, I explained how my WordPress web building toolset had changed in the last couple of years and why I am now all in with the Etch builder (which they actually call a “visual development environment”).
Although Etch is quite young in the space and is still evolving towards a certain maturity that only time can bring, it already has a small but fantastic ecosystem of third-party plugins, resources and services. In this and following articles, I want to highlight a few of them that I find especially useful.
As Etch as a maturing but young product and that their prioritization of new features may not suit everyone of their users’ needs, these third-party Etch addon really bring value and help make working in Etch (and in the block/Gutenberg editor, in some cases) a better and more seamless experience.
SnippetNest
The first one I want to talk about is SnippetNest, a site that is chock full of resources for Etch as well as other products like ACF, ACSS, Beaver Builder, Gutenberg, FluentForms, WordPress itself and more. I only discovered it because Zack Pyle, its creator, is quite active in the Etch Circle community forum. Of course, I stopped using Beaver Builder many years ago and tools for that builder seem to be what Zack started SnippetNest for, but he’s now creating plugins and tools for many other use cases including Etch as well as great Etch components. Further, the pricing is very reasonable at this time and hopefully will remain so.
Two of those SnippetNest tools that get installed on any of my new Etch builds are Enhanced Pattern Manager and WordPress Menu for Etch.
Enhanced Pattern Manager (plugin)
This first plugin improves the management of Etch components (synced patterns in Guttenberg) and patterns both in the Etch interface as well as in Gutenberg itself. It makes everything clearer, enables usage tracking, per pattern descriptions, sorting, categorization, permissions and access control and a lot more.
Since I started using Etch, I’ve been using components/synced patterns/patterns a lot more than I did even in Bricks and Enhanced Pattern Manager makes this a lot easier, especially for clients for who the standard FSE and patterns management UI can be very confusing. Since Etch authors everything built inside it to custom Gutenberg blocks, the whole process is a LOT more transparent to clients than when I was working in Bricks.
WordPress Menu for Etch (plugin)
By default, Etch itself has its own way of building menus that does not use the built-in WordPress menu system. That is fine when menus do not change often and/or when clients never touch them. But, at my agency, we have all kinds of clients ranging from ones that are completely hands-off their site and we manage it for them to what I cal tinkerers… ;) You do not want clients in the Etch builder itself so here comes the SnippetNest WordPress Menu for Etch plugin.
What it does is make all registered WordPress menus available in Etch via a syntax that is very similar to the Etch loop syntax and adds special dynamic variables.
Thoses variables can be used directly in HTML code if you build your menu manually, or in the official FlexNav components or my prefered one which is Nick Arce’s Etch Menu Builder. You build your menu once in a component with WordPress Menu for Etch and your prefered Etch menu system then make your header a component and you then can use the standard WordPress menu editor to manage them.
If you use Etch every day, for me this one as well as Enhanced Pattern Manager are must haves.
Other Items
The other aspect of SnippetNest’s offerings are components. The Modal Component, Image Hotspot, Google Map, Table of Content and shape divider are notable ones as they are some of the best built ones (other devs offer alaternatives to a few of them as well as the official Etch Patterns site) but the SnippetNest ones are rerally stand outs.
SnippetNest Pricing
The SnippetNest pricing structure is qui simple and flexible. At the top is a very reasonable yearly subscription that gives you access to everything for $99 USD/year.
Then, you can also purchase individual items for varying prices and get lifetime updates for them. Zack releases new things pretty regularly so I myself chose the yearly subscription to get acess and encourage him to keep developing and improving his products as well as create new ones.
In Short…
I’ll be writing articles on a few of the services and products in the third party Etch ecosystem. I chose to start with SnippetNest because, to me, Zack’s stuff is some of the most useful to me in my builds alongside the one I’ll talk about in my next article. If you already invested in Etch and believe in its future like I do, SnippenNest really is a no-brainer…
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