How to Use This Glossary
When you’re new to Bricks, the hardest part isn’t building — it’s understanding what people are talking about. Forums, YouTube tutorials and docs all assume you know what a “frame” is and why “dynamic data” matters. This glossary collects the terms you’ll actually meet in your first month, in plain English, with links to the deeper guides on this site when one exists.
It’s grouped by theme. Read it front to back once, then keep it open in a tab for the first week.
Core Concepts
Bricks Builder — A WordPress theme and page builder in one. Unlike Elementor or Divi (plugins that sit on top of a theme), Bricks replaces the theme itself. You design your whole site — header, footer, templates, single pages — inside one visual editor. See our intro guide.
Theme Styles — Bricks’ global design settings: global colors, typography, spacing and breakpoints. Anything set here cascades into every element on the site. Set it once before building pages, and consistency comes free.
Template — A layout Bricks applies to a group of pages: a single-post template, an archive template, a 404 template. Instead of editing every post by hand, you design the template once and content flows in.
Section / Container — The two main layout elements. A section is a full-width band on the page; a container (often called just “container”) is the content wrapper inside it that holds the actual layout. You’ll almost always use containers for structure and sections for full-bleed backgrounds.
Frame — Bricks’ reusable layout system. A frame is a saved combination of structure, styling and dynamic data — think of it as a building block you can drop anywhere. Frames are the closest thing Bricks has to a component library out of the box.
Elements and Structure
Element — The basic building blocks: text, image, button, icon, video, map, and so on. You drag them into a container and style them.
Nestable Structure — The modern Bricks way of building: containers inside containers, each with its own flex or grid layout. This replaces the old “one big column grid” approach and is what makes responsive design manageable.
Breakpoint — A screen-width threshold where your layout changes. Bricks defaults are 1280, 992, 768 and 480 pixels. You can set different styles per breakpoint — a 3-column grid on desktop becomes 1 column on mobile.
Dynamic Data — Content that comes from WordPress (or a plugin like ACF) instead of being typed by hand: post titles, featured images, custom fields, current date. Bricks has a dynamic data picker in almost every field, which is what makes templates work.
Query Loop — A Bricks feature that pulls a list of items from WordPress — latest posts, products, custom post types — and renders them with a card layout you design once. See the Query Loop tutorial.
Dynamic Content
Custom Post Type (CPT) — A content type you define beyond posts and pages: “Products”, “Testimonials”, “Team Members”. Bricks’ query loop and dynamic data work naturally with CPTs.
Custom Fields (ACF / Meta Box) — Extra data fields attached to a post: a price, a part number, a location. ACF and Meta Box are the two most common plugins for this. Bricks reads their fields through dynamic data. We compare them in the tools section.
Conditional Logic — Rules that show or hide elements based on conditions: “show this block only if the custom field is not empty”, “hide this button for logged-out users”. It’s how one template serves many situations.
Filter — Bricks’ built-in front-end filtering for query loops — let visitors filter a product grid by category, price or custom field without a separate plugin.
Design and Styling
Global Colors — Named colors defined once in Theme Styles (e.g. “primary”, “surface”, “muted”) and used across the site. Change one global color and the whole site updates.
CSS Variables — The underlying mechanism behind global colors and tokens. Bricks outputs CSS variables, which is why styling stays maintainable and why the Color & Style Manager works the way it does.
Style Manager — A Bricks feature for saving and reusing style combinations as tokens — “card”, “button-primary”, “eyebrow”. A style token bundles typography, colors and spacing into one named thing.
ACSS (Automatic CSS) — A third-party CSS framework layer that gives Bricks a utility-class workflow and a design-token system on top of Theme Styles. Popular with agencies building many sites.
Local Fonts — Fonts served from your own server instead of Google’s CDN. Bricks can localize Google Fonts in one click — better privacy, one less third-party request, and it satisfies GDPR concerns.
The Ecosystem
Add-on — A third-party plugin that extends Bricks: Bricksextras (components), BricksLabs (tips and snippets), Automatic CSS (workflow), and others. The ecosystem page lists the ones we actually use.
Frames Library — Community-shared frame layouts for Bricks, similar to a template library but built around the reusable-frame system.
Dynamic Content Tags — Bricks’ shorthand syntax for pulling dynamic data, like {post_title} or {acf:field_name}. They look like code but are just pointers to data.
Staging — A copy of your site for testing changes before they hit production. Not Bricks-specific, but it’s the habit that keeps every other tool on this list safe. See the maintenance checklist for why.
Where to Go Next
Start with the installation guide to get Bricks running, then come back here when a term stops you in your tracks. When you’re ready for depth, the Query Loop tutorial and the Color & Style Manager deep-dive are the two highest-leverage pieces to learn first.
