/
Page builders are a funny thing. At first glance, you most likely think that they will make your life easier as a website owner. The fact that you can design your site however you want with a beautiful drag and drop interface.
But in reality, many of these things are causing some harm to your site. Nothing that is irreproachable of course. But some, more than others, can not only confuse you in your WordPress experience but can also cause an immense amount of work down the road.
In this episode, we touch on the topic of page builder plugins for WordPress.
Joke of the day:
Why shouldn't you steal from someone holding a camera? Because they have a photographic memory.
Referenced Links:
Shoutout
Very informative podcast! I LOVE this podcast. It’s very informative and provides actionable insights. Highly recommend!
Transcription:
Transcription was done by Rev.com, using their AI (artificial intellegence) generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar, and other errors, and is not a substitute for watching the video or listening to the episode.
Why shouldn't you steal from someone holding a camera because they have a photographic memory. He, this is Scott Wyden Kivowitz and you are listening to episode one Oh five of the WordPress photography podcast. Today I am going to share my opinion on something. Now, this is not necessarily the opinion of Imagely as a whole, but this is my personal opinion and one that I am a strong believer in and think that everybody listening should consider paying attention to. Now here's the thing. There are so many page builders out there and there are some popular ones, some not so popular ones. The ones that you probably are already familiar with as a photographer are Elementor Devi, Beaver builder, probably the page builder inside of the pro photo theme, and maybe even the one in flow themes. And here's the thing, I don't recommend any of them. I don't. I used to use Elementor before were press 5.0 came out before WordPress had its own page builder built in to the core of WordPress itself.
The new block editor is a page builder. Now, it may not look like every other page builder that you're used to in either a theme or plugin, but it is a page builder and the plugins that add extra functionality to the block editor, adding additional blocks, enhance this page builder type feel that we're press has in core. And the best part is that it does not deviate from WordPress, meaning that if you add cadence or code blocks, it is not actually making your WordPress experience feel like something else. It is making it feel like WordPress, but giving you even more features and more control than what WordPress itself on its own has to offer. And that is the main reason why I prefer using either core blocks or like the cadence plugin for example. But there's other reasons. If you are using the Divi theme, for example, not just the Divi page builder plugin but the Divi theme one, like I just said, it does not look like WordPress at all, but too if you're using the theme, you are now officially locked in to using the Divi theme forever or you're going to have to deal with a giant mess of cleanup.
If you ever change themes, sure you could install the Divi page builder plugin and switch to another theme and you can get away with that, but if you go to leave the Divi page builder plugin, again you are left with a mess of that of cleanup to do afterwards.
Elementary does a little bit better job as does BeaverBuilder does a little bit better job of converting your page builder content to default WordPress content if you leave their plugins, but DV is a different thing because Devi uses something called short codes for every aspect of its page builder. Then there's also themes like pro photo and flow themes. While they are absolutely beautiful and they function well. They are again built into the themes. Flow themes does have an additional plugin for their page builder. I think it's called flow box and while again, while it is beautiful, it is such a deviation from core WordPress that is actually misleading you as to what we're press is and how WordPress works and how easy WordPress can actually be if you stay using products that keep you in the WordPress ecosystem, but once you use something like a DV, a Beaver builder and Elementor, a pro photo theme, a flowed theme, you are so far away from what WordPress is and now you are probably led to believe this is what WordPress is when really it is not, or if you're using the theme and you're used to one settings module and then you go to use a different theme or a different plugin, you're going to be so confused because you're not used to it.
You're going to be thinking everything is broken, that everything does not work. Right. That is ugly. That is this, that is that, that whatever your comments will be, you will have some sort of comments. So I'm a firm believer in sticking with themes and plugins that utilize WordPress. How were presses intended, not stuff that deviates so far from it that it confuses you. Back in episode 33, I recorded an episode called WordPress and misconceptions and confusions and this kind of goes back to that. It kind of goes back to that episode. So if you want to listen to more about this topic in particular, listen to episode 33. I'll link to it in the show notes for this episode, but I am a firm believer they used to stick to where press Corp type content themes, plugins.
I highly recommend avoiding page builder plugins or page builder themes that will lead you to believe WordPress is something. It is not. That is that the user interface is something that it is not or to confuse you more than you already. You might confused, you stick to products that keep with the WordPress ecosystem is how it as to how it's designed, you're less likely to begin fused in the future and your learning process will flow from one product to another. That's my small little rant for this episode one Oh five and I, I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm happy to take an argument. If you feel the complete opposite way, please comment at the show notes and let me know because this is just my opinion and you probably have a completely different opinion and that's perfectly fine. The show notes for this episode can be found at imagely.com/podcast/one zero five I look forward. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it. Thanks for listening.
