Hey everyone! I’m a graphic designers and I started making websites for my clients as it’s really difficult to sell just graphic design. I did learn how to use html and css and I’ve used every CMS/platforms as Shopify, cargo collective, wix, etc.. till starting using WordPress which is the one I’d like to master.
Right now I’m using page builders (I’ve started with elementor that I did hate) and then I switched to oxygen which, in my opinion, is slightly better.
I had a major issue btw with oxygen as not every plug-in is compatible with it!
I think it’s now time to learn more and become more professional, so my question is: how do I avoid page builders? I recently heard someone speaking about child themes with bootstrap integrated but I didn’t really understand how it works and didn’t find many resources (maybe I didn’t have the tools to make a better research).
But yes, basically I’d like to have any suggestions about how to achieve to build a website on WordPress without a page builder or Gutenberg and code a more professional website, and know which learning path I should follow to do that!
Thanks in advance
How do I avoid page builders?
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I believe you’ll need to learn to code your own theme if you don’t want to build with a page builder.
at minimum, you’d have to learn basic PHP and JavaScript. You’ll need to bookmark the WordPress docs and codex. And because of Gutenberg, if you wanna build custom blocks, you’ll need to learn basic React.js as well.
You can purchase WP Theme development courses (e.g. Udemy), or find a few youtube tutorials. (I know Freecodecamp’s channel has a few different theme development videos).
You’ll need to learn some PHP (at least some of the basics), probably some JS in addition to the HTML/CSS you already know, and follow one of the many tutorials available online on developing a WordPress theme (as well as following the [official documentation for theme development](https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/), which is also very helpful).
If you just search something like ‘how to develop a wordpress theme’ on YouTube, you’ll find plenty of tutorials to follow.
Pretty much the only way you’re going to be able to escape the world of page builders.
You are graphic designer, so I guess custom designs is what you are looking for.
There is only one way on wp. Learn to code, especially doing custom themes. Don’t use bootstrap. There’s no need for it unless you are doing dashboard or some massive themes and even then it’s better not to. Blank theme with tailwind is probably for you to start with.
You can also try webflow. It’s great for giving designers option to convert what’s in the brain to html without much hassle. You cannot do large websites in it, but it’s great for small.
Apparently the [Bricks Builder](https://bricksbuilder.io/) is good : no design limitations, as close to coding by hand (there’s toggles, options, etc. for a lot of CSS properties).
Otherwise I recommend you give Gutenberg a second chance, it’s actually pretty powerful combined to custom stylesheets written by hand.
If you really don’t want to use a builder, build your sites from scratch with a barebones starter theme + [ACF](https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/) and Custom Fields Types + glue everything together by writing your own code.
You can use MetaBox Premium with the Twig template engine. It is based on PHP, but much simpler and you can use WordPress functions through a proxy.
An alternative would be ACF with Timber, but I have no experience with that combo.