So, I am pretty competent with html, css, js, reactjs, and php. I have just started using wordpress recently and I developed a full site using elementor and I hated it. There is waaay too much redundant code, and since most features that are actually useful are paid, I found myself just coding most stuff because I am very particular about the sites I make.
My plan going forward is to build my own library of components/bricks that I can easily reuse and edit to suit different themes. Anything that will bring me toward this goal is what I’m looking for.
So now I am doing lots of research on what path to take forward that would save me the most time while also providing lots of flexibility. But wow, there are a lot of options and a lot of conflicting opinions.
Page builders are attractive because they save time spent on repetitive aspects of development. The most recommended page builder is Bricks, and it is tempting because it seems lightweight, developer-friendly, and comes with a lifetime plan. It is a significant investment so I’d like to make sure it is worth it. Whatever I use should also have good compatibility with Tailwind because that saves a lot of time messing around with CSS.
At the same time, I am considering no page-builder, since there are many ways to speed up development without them.
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I’d really appreciate any advice, thanks.
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Why don’t you create your own theme? I mean, from what you said, you have the skills to do so. Just include a full-width template that will be used if someone needs to use a page builder. For the css libraries, you can include whichever one you prefer. I know that tailwind can be easily included in the source folder of your theme and be compiled to a dist folder with postcss. As for components, you can create your own blocks using react or acf pro and reuse them as you please.
Have you looked into Advanced Custom Fields?
The agency where I work uses it’s own theme scaffold. It’s a barebones theme that is setup to start coding with no additional setup. We’re still using Gulp to compile because nobody has had the time to change to something better (and it works, so…) but overall we compile the Block css and js together with the theme’s stuff. In all our test, two files was more performant than containing it all in separate blocks.
We’ve build up a healthy library of custom blocks to the point we don’t have to make any from scratch any longer and so we find it very productive. We leverage a plugin called Advanced Custom Fields which handles the editor interface for you and allows to do any kind of data modeling and customization you want. Create an empty directory in your theme named `acf-json` and you can migrate the ACF stuff with your git repo. (It’s a little more complicated than that, but not much)
I am starting to move away from using ACF blocks in favor of building Blocks within a plugin structure instead and leveraging Svelte (I just prefer it over React) to build the front-end and editor interface. I personally don’t like having the block code being tied to the theme. That way, say down the road when the client changes the theme without our involvement it won’t break everything.
You don’t find it, you build it.
Carbon Fields (which is like Bricks or ACF, but free), Unsemantic, and Flex Box is pretty much all you need.
Check out Bedrock and Sage
https://roots.io/
We’ve built Tailwind and Vite into our FSE starter.
Take a look at Presswind or TailPress. Frost is a great, lean FSE starter.
At work we will see sage from roots ecosystem as our starter theme. You could also look up flynt WP.
Page builders are too bad when it comes to speed.
I am not coder,
Till now I used only Elementor since 2018
But since I am working in SEO, I am more liking HTML websites.
You are coder, so is it not possible to build a platform where one can add all elements which are present in elementor but output of website should come as HTML zip.
After using elements as drag drop method