Sooo, as my business grows I’m using RW less and less - currently we have 6 projects on the go 1 is in RW. We project that by the end of 2019 we’d have stopped using RW altogether (support for existing not counting of course)… wondering does anyone here use Elementor for Wordpress (I know, I know, WP, spit),? It changed everything for us… This aint sponsored lol - just wondering if anyone else uses it.
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I’ve used Elementor and Visual Composer quite a lot. I try to avoid the page builders if possible; they add a ton of bloat. Having said that, they’re very popular and make WordPress much easier to customise.
If you use Elementor with a blank or modular theme is A LOT less bloat than RW - we ran tests to see the difference. Visual composer on the other hand is awful - wouldn’t use that for sure
True. I know that Elementor is the best for less bloat, and I think it’s the most popular. Elementor also has a lot of available add-ons from third parties.
Is WordPress your clients’ choice? Just interested in knowing why you’re moving in that direction.
I would say about 30-40% of my client work is WP.
Sure and yes, bigger companies tend to have either in-house marketing teams or use 3rd parties, 90% want to use a CMS they are familiar with, and that’s WP, with all the built-in marketing, plugins, CRM’s available. No CMS for RW can get even close… I’m waiting on Foundation 2 Total CMS2, just out of interest, but I’d be really surprised if it brings us back.
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I completely agree with you there. If there’s a blog involved, I’ll go WP 99% of the time.
Right and as for building it out every-time - no thanks. I built the Star Wars homepage in RW, just for fun but my God previewing that page, and publishing was just horrendous. Took the better part of a day, mostly waiting for it to build the preview each time I needed to see the page in a browser. It was a complicated page, using tons of stacks but even so. We then built the same page in Elementor… was a dream for start to finish and at least half the time… anyway dont want to bash RW (here anyway lol)… I just go were the tools take me. If somethings betters E - we’ll be off again!
It’s just a question of using the best tool for the job. I’d never say “never WP”. Both RW and WP are great tools to be taken advantage of.
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Right. It’s nothing personal lol.
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Just curious, Justin- are you/did you jump in to WP/Eementor with cold feet, or were there some tutorials that helped you out? I’d like to expand my horizons as well, and would appreciate any tips you might have. I looked at concrete5 and Drupal a couple of years ago- but the learning curve for both had me running back to RW. I’ve looked at WP a few times too, but it just doesn’t seem very intuitive. I tried editing someone else’s WP site (at their request), but had to call in a different web designer (now a professional photographer) to help out.
As soon as I saw what it could do I was sold. I just jumped straight in. But If you can use RW then you can def use E. There’s tons of videos online - with E themselves, or via full-time content creators on YouTube. Really big communities on social media. Also worth mentioning is E’s support is spot on.
200 odd videos via Elementor here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt9kG_EDX8zwGSC1-ycJJVA
Or start from the bottom of this channel’s playlist and work your way up ;-) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTbrc9HXDstpqc-djveSx1_Gaf5eEjmZj
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Yes, I use it and like it.
And I also like Oxygen, which is still comparatively new (and therefore limited in terms of resources and addons) but has potential.
Precisely. Horses for courses. I’ve even designed a site in Wix because that’s what the client wanted. The principles of web design are the same, regardless of the medium.
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Of course, but when a client comes to us with ‘I want a website’. Our first port of call use to be RW, now it’s Elementor. Easier, faster, and if needed the power of WP and its eco system behind it.
Nice to see people use it here too.
I’ve heard good things about Oxygen too. I know designers in this neck of the woods that only use it. Particularly developers cos I think the code it spits out is some of the best out there…
Do you know if E is GDPR compliant? I need self hosted fonts and videos and no CDNs that are loaded from third parties - it already has to be part of E .
Thanks,
Jan
I’ve been teaching all day and am quickly responding to this post before I go home.
I’m currently teaching a web design course and am using Elementor, specifically Elementor Pro. It’s affordable, it works on Mac/Win, and it does a great job: all important for my students. I still choose to use RW and I like many of the tools.
I’ve collected a few videos that seem especially good. Probably my favorite video teacher is WPTuts. He (Paul) has a full collection of Elementor tutorials and does a very nice job. I can provide the link tomorrow. But as @Justin mentioned there are a ton of tutorials out there about Elementor and Elementor Pro.
The hardest thing about Elementor, it seems, is the pace of development is amazing. Unintuitive perhaps, but your knowledge about the tool needs to also expand and be kept fresh. Great problem to have! Seems like key new features are being added every month or two. Recently they came out with their own “finder” which makes it super easy to switch from page to page in a design. (Much quicker than bumbling around with the usual WP way of going from page to page.)
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I dont know but I’m sure you can find out pretty quickly, find and Elementor group on FaceBook and ask there - but i’d be very surprised if what you need isn’t doable…
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Yes I linked to him earlier… the Welsh guy ;-)
I haven’t used Elementor yet, but I have heard and read nothing but good things about it. It certainly looks powerful and well thought out.
@Justin Interesting to hear your switch away from RW. Have you experienced any negative issues going from RW to WP/Elementor?
Hi. No not really, apart from the usual when moving into a new environment/eco system… all in all, a really smooth (and liberating) experience.
Thanks. I watched a load of the latest videos covering the new features and Elementor is obviously very similar to Blocs App. I think when Blocs 3rd party API is finished shortly it will open the floodgates to the type of add-on blocs or blocks that are available for Elementor.
The Elementor UI is certainly slick and the previewing immediate and genuinely WYSIWYG.
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