Hi everyone. I have a small question for WP developers (something to discuss). I am currently working as full stack developer and our tech stack looks not bad I believe: we normally create ACF blocks, lots of CPTs , custom fields, we use Tailwind CSS for styling, and Alpine.js or vanilla JS for frontend logic. We use WP API sometimes. We have a complicated staging environment and github actions CI/CD pipelines for deployment.
But I can't say that we are creating websites really fast, sometimes the task is a small simple brochure-like website. And this might take 2 weeks and few devs are involved. And considering tough deadlines I just think sometimes why not use Elementor…? I believe it's possible to deliver 1:1 (visually) results with some "bloat" in the DOM but in 1 day (10-20 times faster) which ultimately means – much more efficient and cheaper. It's just extremely fast development. Isn't it? And unlikely client takes in consideration some arguments about the "architecture thing".
Yes, I understand, this is not a robust idea to store your design inside the_content() as some JSON string which depends on some plugin. But it is also true that elementor is so good nowadays and even allows us to avoid some mistakes because the developer has no significant control over the core.
I understand that this question is controversial and I don't like myself as a developer thinking about this "dark side". But also the truth is that the client doesn't really care what's behind their website and what is DOM at all… They want consistent nice design and easy-to-use content entry.
Anyway, any thoughts?
As a low-code developer, I hate Elementor.
Personal preference. No, there is nothing wrong with it. Besides their stupid $60 annual fee for Elementor Pro.
I much prefer DIVI though, especially with DIVI 5 now finally visible on the horizon.
The alpha they released two weeks ago, is not ready yet though. I tried developing a site with it and immediately ran into weird bugs and went back to using 4.
Our tech stack is similar. Personally, I hate elementor but you can get a site quickly. I recently dove into blocksy with greenshift blocks for quick site builder and its ok. I would like to move into FSE and do everything native but the nav block sucks – the columns block needs more breakpoint options and wp has no native custom field options- yet
If you guys are writing code and not just dropping blocks, try Bricks
Use bricks instead. It’s newer, less bloat and it’s great for people who are actual developers instead of non-coders. Though my own coding is pretty bad, i stil find bricks great to use
Why Shame? I love Elementor’s developer docs and flexible widget development. I always work with Elementor while developing my custom themes.
Nothing is wrong with using the right tools at the right time for the right things.
Shame to those people with herd instinct. Most of them don’t understand how things work and why one is better than other. They just want to use “hot trend” tools to make them feel “pro”.
Stick with the tools which make you productive and fit your clients. Nothing is wrong with that
I’m really interested in this discussion. Mind you I’m a graphic designer with little knowledge of wordpress (I have experience with joomla though) and I mainly lurk this forum because I’m trying to find a path to go into front end / web development.
With this context, I occasionally work with a small agency that does a lot of wordpress sites with elementor, those sites are constantly broken or slow (I’m not saying it’s because of either wp or elementor) but I’ve worked with a full stack dev to make a moderately complex landing page and it took twice the hours (between me and the dev) to put it up – the agency owner did not like that. The thing is, that landing page works great and it’s fast to load.
There’s a couple more builders for wordpress that look interesting.
If designing websites is a business and elementor enables you to deliver faster and with high quality, to me that is a better business. No shame in that.
Elementor makes sites run really slow. You can achieve the same results with native Gutenberg and the sites are lightning fast.
I have done Bricks websites, Breakdance websites, Greenshift and Gutenberg awesome stuff, Shopify stuff and you know what.
The best performing website I have ever done was via Elementor.
Code quality is irrelevant when it comes to providing something people find useful, that is it.