Which page builder? A simplest custom one or a full-featured beast?

Envato Customers Web and Code
1

Hi authors!

I’m creating a landing page theme which might benefit from a page builder. It will have couple of pre-built content blocks (like “Features” or “Partners” - with a heading, subtitle, couple of icons, an image… ).

I just want a simple functionality: to insert a pre-built block. So like there’s a button over the TinyMCE editor : ADD CONTENT BLOCK. This button will just simply paste some pre-built HTML into the the textarea. Now a user can edit it in Visual or Text mode.

Do I need a full-featured Visual Composer for this? Is it better in terms of marketing, that the theme includes this super-popular plugin?

Or am I good with the simplest solution I described above?
Please advise.

PS: Sorry for calling VC a “beast”, it is a great tool!

2

Just to follow up with my thoughts: I’ve been researching many page builders and I just want something that:

  • Doesn’t give users too much control
  • No need for column system
  • Avoid shortcode hell (plugin lock-in)
  • I just want them to insert my own pre-built blocks (widgets)
3

You can use VC and extend it with your own custom elements.

4

i can understand your feeling.

technically i will try to avoid VC and have my own blocks for such need

but many people are in love with VC and if a theme won’t have it…some people don’t even buy it.

so you have to make your own decision weighing pros and cons.

if you want to go with VC, still you can disable its features like column system

1 Like
5

You can try with ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) Plugin

6

ACF does not seem to be doing what I want - adding HTML content into the main TinyMCE content area.

7

Yes, it seems that from a marketing perspective, one would want to integrate VC. But I am still apprehensive on this route, because it goes against every point I made above.

I just want the theme to be as clean as possible in terms of back-end and content creating.

8

I don’t suggest Page builder, Page builder slow your site but buyer like Page Builder and Lot of Plugins.

9

Hi guys,

We are working on such builder which output what you want and nothing else in terms of HTML. And you can develop a theme on your own terms and no rows and columns as well.

Let me know if you are interested in such toolkit which includes theme options, metaboxes and editor with 34 field types and fast as hell from its competitor’s.

This is simple demonstration of the builder let me know your feedback.


Thanks

10

Hi! Seems nice, thanks!

But still this is somewhere in the middle - not the simplest solution and not so robust as VC. I saw it does columns, rows, accordions, etc too. Is this different from other Page Builders? The theme options are not needed from my point of view, we’ve got the Theme Customizer for it.

I am still leaning towards the simplest, perhaps a custom-made plugin, basically just adding HTML chunks and users can see the same visual as in front-end in the TinyMCE content area using editor-style.css. This would not slow the site down at all, there would be no shortcodes and no plugin lock-in happening. You just paste a colorful block with text and images and you edit it.

The question remains: how much control do buyers really want and need? How big of a deal it is for them if they don’t see Visual Composer included with the theme?

11

@Darinka Checkout this theme: https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/33495

It has a Customizer pagebuilder that saves content in the post editor.

It’s under review but you can get an idea from it…

12

Or if you want something really simple and well coded, try Tailor: https://wordpress.org/plugins/tailor/

1 Like
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Yes! This one is very neat. I like that it’s using the Customizes, has an API for theme developers and a documentation. Thank you, I will check it out more!

14

Hi,

This builder is finished and we are creating themes based on this. If you want to compare this with VC here are the details.

  1. VC doesn’t support unlimited number of inner rows level i.e. row > row > col > row > col > text
  2. VC doesn’t support accordion inside accordion.
  3. Wherenever you click to edit any element in VC it is an AJAX request bootstrapping while WordPress again and again.
  4. Default content filter like emoji, responsive image, oembed not work with VC content.
  5. The content is not searchable for wordpress search engine or seo plugins like yoast, as mostly it is shortcode or base64 encoded string.
  6. When you stop using VC it leaves the garbage only of shortcodes all content lost.

Our WpAssembler has overcome all these issues.

Thanks