Hi folks,
I have a pretty clunky, slow, Frankenstein'd business website and I've finally received approval to hire a real WordPress developer to help me fix it. I'm convinced I need to go this route because this site has been "managed" over the last 3 years by people who don't know WP and now the site is super slow, needs a ton of plugins to run (55-60), and just seems….well, clunky!
Since we're an ecommerce store and everything truly depends on having a fabulous shop page and product pages, I was thinking of hiring a developer to create the "commerce" pages for me, and I can use Elementor for the content pages, so that I can easily keep my content fresh throughout the year. I know and like Elementor, plus other non-techy employees on my team know Elementor, so it's a safe bet for me, in case I ever need help loading new content.
Thoughts? Can I even combine a page builder that I like with specific, custom coded pages, or am I thinking of this all wrong? I want to make sure I'm going about this the right way. Plus, I'm sure this will not be a big shocker, but I've been given a tiny budget to fix the site (less than $5k), so I'm looking for an efficient and economical route here.
Thanks in advance!
60 plugins is really a lot. And you’re probably only using a single functionality of each one.
So, my recommendations would be, first, take more time to find robust plugins that can do more things, second, reconsider what exactly you need for your store to lower your dependency on plugins, or third, hire a developer to custom-build at least the simplest functionalities.
On the other hand, Elementor is technically fully compatible with Woocommerce
Elementor with WooCommerce is a nice combo.
But 60 plugin for a online store is a big count. So my first suggestion is identify the requirement of all these plugins & optimize that way.
Sounds like something is bound to break that thing 😭. Yeah, if saving as much money as possible is a major concern then I’d do the wooCommerce w/ Elementor or find a better page builder. Elementor has been buggy lately IMO.
If you want to not deal with the stress then there’s Shopify. Only downside is you’ll be locked into the platform unless there’s a converter tool out there that’ll let you convert it to HTML/CSS. Shopify may been seen as pricey too depending on what’s valuable to you.
You just gotta keep finding the right tools that answer your business needs and wants.
Combining custom code eCommerce with Elementor for content pages can work, but I would advise contacting a developer for optimization
Also consider removing some of the plugins as 55-60 are too many already!
WordPress + Woocommerce Will solve out Most of your issues.
Choose a Theme carefully which fullfils your main requirement like Filters etc.
Make sure You have good server Invest on it.
…..daddy Named thin pfff… Stay away from that.
Then Filter Out a Guy Who are Real WordPress dev
Not a someone Just know to place blocks and design it.
If you hire right guy That one do not need Hundreds of plugins.
Ask your Guy to optimize it for best performance
Like image Optimizing etc.
If you share the URL of your current site I can provide more Advices as I have seasoned on it for 4 years.
I’ve worked on similar projects and unfortunately you only get 1 theme to activate for your website so you can’t have a custom theme active and elementor… however this is to say there are workarounds.
You could have a developer create a brand new wordpress instance with a custom theme and deploy it on a subdomain. Then you could have your main site and you could have [shop.yourdomain.com](http://shop.yourdomain.com) where your customers are directed to when they click the right links. So 2 websites essentially sharing the same domain but separate data, should be free depending on your hosting plan.
Also yeah if you have 60 plugins you might want to just consider custom code as much as possible, there is nothing a plugin can do that a developer can’t, and honestly in my opinion it’s not good to rely on too many plugins that might be changed and break at any moment and frustrate your users. Find what’s essential.
Feel free to reach out to me if you need a consultation I love working on custom coded projects
If you can reduce the plugins by a lot, your website will load faster. If you need all the plugins to get the features you need, either go with custom development for the features or go with another website builder like UltimateWB. You don’t need any plugins with UltimateWB because it has lots of built-in features. If you go with the custom development, it is very possible that with WordPress platform upgrades, you will need more custom development for compatibility updates.
It may be easier and better for you to get it rebuild instead, if there’s no proper documentation for how the site has been tied together you need a really great wordpress expert to fix it, then it can be cheaper for you to keep the old site running while getting a new one built in the background. When the new site is ready, let it take over.
Rebuild.