Description

50 free Gutenberg blocks. Full-featured, and free forever.

Asteris Blocks gives you a polished, alphabetised block library covering everything you need to build landing pages, blog posts, and product pages. Every block is complete — nothing is locked behind a paywall, and the plugin never nags you to upgrade.

What you get

50 blocks — Hero, Pricing Table, FAQ Accordion (with schema), Recipe Card (with rich results), Comparison Table, Countdown, Cookie Notice, Code Block with syntax highlighter, Image Hotspots, Map (OpenStreetMap), QR Code, Before/After Slider, Table of Contents, and 37 more.
12 pre-built patterns — Hero + Stats, Pricing 3-tier, Full landing page, and more — one-click insert.
60 block style variations — Hero (minimal / split / gradient), Feature Grid (cards / icons-only / bordered / numbered), Pricing (classic / minimal / bordered / highlighted), and dozens more.
Newsletter integrations — Mailchimp, MailerLite, ConvertKit, Brevo. API keys encrypted at rest (AES-256-CBC). See “External services” below.
Schema.org markup — FAQ + Recipe + AggregateRating JSON-LD validates on Google Rich Results Test.
HTML anchor IDs on every block — link anywhere, jump anywhere.
Native typography + colour controls on every text-bearing block.
100/100 Lighthouse accessibility on Kadence, GeneratePress, Twenty Twenty-Five.

What you do NOT get

No email-gated features — every one of the 50 blocks is fully functional, free.
No nag screens, no pop-ups, no “your trial expires” timers in your editor.
No tracking. No cookies. No analytics. The only outbound connections are the optional third-party services listed under “External services” below, and they run only when you add the relevant block to a page or configure a newsletter provider.

Asteris Blocks is full-featured and free forever — funded by our other products, not by upselling you. If you ever want premium section patterns and pro-level design controls, there’s an optional Asteris Blocks Pro — but the free plugin is complete on its own and never pushes you toward it.

Why Asteris Blocks?

Built lean on purpose. Here’s what you actually get:

Tiny footprint — about 215 KB zipped, and it loads zero front-end CSS or JavaScript on pages that don’t use an Asteris block.
Only loads where it’s used — the shared stylesheet and script enqueue only on pages where one of your Asteris blocks actually renders. No site-wide weight.
No JavaScript framework — blocks render in PHP with tiny vanilla-JS view scripts; no React or jQuery dependency dragged onto your front end.
50 blocks, 12 patterns, 60 style variations — all free — nothing gated, no “premium” lock icons cluttering the inserter.
Schema built in — FAQ, Recipe and AggregateRating JSON-LD that validates on Google’s Rich Results Test, no separate SEO plugin required.
No phone-home — no tracking, no cookies, no analytics on you. The only outbound calls are blocks you choose to add (Map, Video, embeds) — each documented below.
Accessibility-minded — 100/100 Lighthouse accessibility on Kadence, GeneratePress and Twenty Twenty-Five.
GPL-2.0 — audit it, fork it, keep it forever.
No nag screens — Pro is mentioned once, never a pop-up or a disabled button.

Asteris Blocks Pro

Asteris Blocks is full-featured and free forever. If you want to go further, the optional Asteris Blocks Pro adds:

73 premium section patterns — niche page templates (photographer, music artist, conference, salon, fitness), video + audio sections, premium e-commerce layouts.
The control layer — fine-tune any block’s spacing, responsive visibility, hover states, animations and custom CSS, no code required.
AI Section Generator — describe a section and get a ready-to-edit block layout.
Cloud pattern library — one-click insert from a growing hosted collection.

Same lightweight, no-bloat build. See everything included at asterisblocks.com/blocks-pro.

External services

This plugin can connect to the following third-party services. None of them are contacted unless you add the block that uses them to a page, or configure a newsletter provider. No data is sent to us.

Newsletter providers (optional). When you configure a provider and a visitor submits the Newsletter block, the visitor’s email address (and name, if entered) is sent from your server to that provider’s API to create or subscribe the contact. You choose the provider and supply the API key.

Mailchimp — terms: https://mailchimp.com/legal/terms/ — privacy: https://www.intuit.com/privacy/statement/
MailerLite — terms: https://www.mailerlite.com/terms-of-service — privacy: https://www.mailerlite.com/legal/privacy-policy
ConvertKit (Kit) — terms: https://kit.com/terms — privacy: https://kit.com/privacy
Brevo — terms: https://www.brevo.com/legal/termsofuse/ — privacy: https://www.brevo.com/legal/privacypolicy/

OpenStreetMap (Map block). Adding the Map block embeds a map from openstreetmap.org. When a visitor loads the page, their browser requests map tiles from OpenStreetMap. Terms: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use — privacy: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy

YouTube / Vimeo (Video block). Adding a video embeds a player from youtube-nocookie.com or player.vimeo.com when a visitor plays it. YouTube terms: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms — Google privacy: https://policies.google.com/privacy — Vimeo terms: https://vimeo.com/terms — Vimeo privacy: https://vimeo.com/privacy

Spotify / SoundCloud (Embed block). Adding the Embed block with a Spotify or SoundCloud URL embeds that provider’s player. When a visitor loads the page, their browser requests the player and the track/episode you embedded from open.spotify.com or w.soundcloud.com. Only the public URL you paste into the block is sent. Spotify terms: https://www.spotify.com/legal/end-user-agreement/ — Spotify privacy: https://www.spotify.com/legal/privacy-policy/ — SoundCloud terms: https://soundcloud.com/terms-of-use — SoundCloud privacy: https://soundcloud.com/pages/privacy

Screenshots

Inserter with all 50 Asteris blocks alphabetised under the star ASTERIS category.

Sales page -- 50 free Gutenberg blocks, live on ww.wp.xz.cn. — Inserter with all 50 Asteris blocks alphabetised under the star ASTERIS category.

Installation

Upload the plugin via Plugins -> Add New -> Upload Plugin, or install from ww.wp.xz.cn.
Activate.
Open any page or post — type “asteris” in the inserter to see all 50 blocks alphabetically.
(Optional) Settings -> Asteris Blocks to configure a newsletter provider.

FAQ

Is this really free forever?: Yes. All 50 blocks are free, with no email-gated upgrades and no “unlock more blocks” overlays — every block here works fully, forever. We fund it from our other paid products. There’s an optional Asteris Blocks Pro for premium section patterns and advanced design controls, but it’s entirely separate and the free plugin never nags you about it.
What happens at v2.0? Will you start charging?: No. Asteris Blocks stays free regardless of how many users sign up.
Does it work with my theme?: Tested on Astra, Kadence, GeneratePress, Twenty Twenty-Five, and Storefront. Should work on any WP 6.4+ theme.
Will it conflict with my page builder?: It is built for the native WordPress block editor (Gutenberg). It will not show inside Elementor / Divi / Beaver Builder.
Where do I report bugs?: Email [email protected].

Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

Contributors & Developers

“Asteris Blocks” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Asteris Commerce

Translate “Asteris Blocks” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

0.3.15

New: one-click Starter Content importer (Settings Asteris Blocks). Builds Home, About, Services, Pricing and Contact pages from the active theme’s full-page patterns and sets Home as the front page. User-initiated, idempotent (never overwrites your edits), and makes no remote calls. Designed to pair with the free Asteris theme.

0.3.14

Listing: added a “Why Asteris Blocks?” section (tiny footprint, assets load only where a block renders, no phone-home) plus a clear “Asteris Blocks Pro” overview of what the optional paid add-on includes. Aligned the internal version constant with the plugin header. No change to any block’s behaviour or output.

0.3.9

ww.wp.xz.cn review fixes. (1) JSON-LD output in the FAQ, Recipe and Star Rating blocks now uses JSON_HEX_TAG so any “” sequence in user content is escaped — closing a script-context breakout risk. (2) The five landing-page patterns (agency, course, podcast, restaurant, SaaS) no longer reference remote placeholder images; they use the plugin’s bundled local placeholder instead — no external image calls. (3) The “External services” section now also documents the Embed block’s optional Spotify and SoundCloud players (what is sent, when, with terms + privacy links). No functional change for existing pages.

0.3.8

Performance + Plugin Check: the shared front-end stylesheet and script are no longer loaded on every page. They are now registered as handles and referenced per block (block.json “style”/”viewScript”), so WordPress loads them only on pages where an Asteris block is actually present. Clears the last two Plugin Check warnings (EnqueuedStylesScope / EnqueuedScriptsScope) — report is now 0 errors / 0 warnings — and speeds up every page that doesn’t use a block.

0.3.7

Plugin Check: each block’s server render template now runs inside a scoped closure, so its working variables are truly function-local instead of file-scope. This clears all remaining PrefixAllGlobals warnings (report is now 0 errors / 0 warnings) and hardens the templates against accidental global-scope pollution if a file is ever included directly. No functional or output change.

0.3.6

Tidy: removed the Docs / Support / GitHub meta links from the Plugins-screen row. No functional change.

0.3.5

Plugin Check: cleared the remaining actionable warnings. Newsletter rate-limiter now unslashes + sanitises the client IP at the source ($_SERVER reads), the two read-only admin-screen GET flags carry justified nonce-exemption notes, and the redundant load_plugin_textdomain() call was removed (WordPress 4.6+ auto-loads translations for .org-hosted plugins). No functional change.

0.3.4

Plugin Check: cleared all reported errors. Block render output is now explicitly escaped (wp_kses_post around wpautop, tag_escape on dynamic tag names, esc_html/integer casts on counters and star strings, esc_url on the newsletter form action, sniff-named ignores on trusted inline SVG and inner-block HTML), and every placeholder string now carries a “translators:” comment (coupon, hotspots, QR, social share, star rating, team). No functional change.

0.3.3

Privacy: the QR Code block is now generated entirely in your visitor’s browser (bundled MIT qrcode-generator library) — it no longer calls the api.qrserver.com third-party service, so the QR data never leaves your site.
Compliance: added an “External services” section documenting every remaining optional third-party connection — newsletter providers (Mailchimp, MailerLite, ConvertKit, Brevo), OpenStreetMap (Map block) and YouTube/Vimeo (Video block) — including what data is sent and links to each service’s terms and privacy policy. Corrected the privacy summary accordingly: these run only when you add the relevant block or configure a provider.
Packaging: the patterns directory is now included in the distributed build, so all block patterns register correctly.
i18n: pattern titles/categories are registered with literal strings (no translate-with-variable), for a clean Plugin Check pass.
Docs: Brevo is now listed in the feature description (four newsletter providers).
Housekeeping: stable tag, plugin header version and changelog aligned; build excludes dev-only files.

0.2.4

Fix: PHP 8.1 deprecation notice (“strip_tags(): Passing null”) that appeared on activation when the welcome page rendered. Hidden welcome page now registers under a real parent (options-general.php) then hides itself from the submenu, instead of using the deprecated empty-string parent slug.

0.2.3

Security: Social Share block now sanitises $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’] before passing to home_url() (wp_unslash + sanitize_text_field). Defence-in-depth — downstream output was already escaped, but sanitises at the source per ww.wp.xz.cn review guidelines.
Compat: Tested up to WordPress 7.0.
Docs: Screenshots section expanded to cover all 10 .org submission images.

0.2.2

New: Brevo (Sendinblue) — 4th newsletter provider.
New: 5 industry landing-page patterns — SaaS, Agency, Course, Podcast, Restaurant.
Phase 4 audit: early-return guards added to Coupon, Pullquote, Author Box, Team Grid for empty-state safety.
Test: Unicode, RTL, emoji, 10K+ character strings, 500-item arrays — all render cleanly.

0.2.1

New: Plugin row Settings / Docs / Support / GitHub links.
New: Post-install welcome screen.
New: Test Connection buttons on Settings page.
New: Privacy policy declaration (we collect zero data).
New: Editor preview CSS for block style variations.
New: Pattern viewport widths for cleaner inserter previews.
Security: wp_unslash on all newsletter inputs.
Fix: Newsletter REST email param now sanitised after unslash.
Asset: LICENSE file (GPL-2.0+) added.
Asset: plugin icon (128/256), banner (772/1544), OG image generated.
Asset: uninstall.php cleans plugin options + transients.
i18n: load_plugin_textdomain wired; .pot template included.

0.2.0

New: 60 block style variations across 14 blocks.
New: 12 pre-built block patterns in 7 categories.
New: Newsletter integration adapters — Mailchimp, MailerLite, ConvertKit.
New: AES-256-CBC encryption for API keys at rest.
New: Honeypot + per-IP rate limiting on newsletter REST endpoint.
New: CTA Banner background image + overlay opacity.
Refactor: Code Block copy-to-clipboard reads from

pre> instead of data-copy attribute.

0.1.0

Initial release — 50 blocks, alphabetised inserter, schema.org markup.