Hi,

I need some wisdom from more experienced developers.

I need to create some wordpress websites for a project. I have some basic knowledge of html and css and I'm pretty good with WebGL.

So my co-worker and I are having an argument, I believe that it's better to spend the time necessary to hand code the themes, while he believes that we should buy a licence for either Visual Composer or Elementor.

I have heard that the reason why page builders are not liked is because the short code system slows the website down significantly and other issues.

 

I read that Visual Composer is built in ReactJs and is very different from the WP Bakery Page Builder. 

I have seen a lot of people say that creating a theme from scratch is the way to go, but I'm still not sure.

 

As far as time goes, I have at least 3 weeks free and a subscription to LinkedLearning and Skillshare

 

Oh and sorry for the noob question

Edited April 9, 20206 yr by okozlovski

None of the above.

Just go get an off the shelf theme and use that.

Dont use elementor or bakery, both are useless.

Yeah don't use any page builder, it doesn't matter what it's built in, all of them are terrible. I would build your own theme if you have the knowledge to.

I don't understand the hype around page builders, it's significantly slower to build pages and add content with them, than it is with a properly structured CMS. Even if you don't come across this problem initially, you will at some point.

If I had to add a block, a row, a column, padding, a background etc for every element I needed to build a page out of I would lose my mind. It's no wonder it takes forever to add a page and even then they never look consistent. People adding content typically aren't designers, so it's ridiculous to put layout tools like this in their hands and expect a good result.

Also, the site will become slow because they overload your code with style tags and HTML markup. It also messes up your database because page builders typically store everything inside database tables. This also has the downside that you can never do a migration of your content to another CMS or system, or do any reporting, without first having to strip all of the page builder markup out.

The other problem with page builders is they all start with desktop layouts. People add all their content, make it look pretty and forget that many if not most will be using their phnes to browse the site.

The simpler the layout the more effective it often becomes.

Use wordpress blocks to create your pages. You can then easily switch themes and not be reliant on plugins for anything.

22 hours ago, Jack said:

I don't understand the hype around page builders, it's significantly slower to build pages and add content with them, than it is with a properly structured CMS. Even if you don't come across this problem initially, you will at some point.

Thanks for your reply, basically you confirmed everything that I was thinking. 

I understand the hype, it's all about the fact that you can create a website without knowing how to code, so essentially you are a web designer (without having to code a single thing).

From what I have seen is that a lot of people get excited about Themeforest themes built with WP Bakery Builder. But the problem is that the demo content is built around the theme, to look good (all paragraphs the same size, etc.). And that's where many people get lost, if you take any of the best selling themes and you take out the demo content and the carefully selected stock images, you are left with something that looks like crap.

So if I understand correctly, it's divided as follows:

Html/Php is responsible for the structure.

Css/Javascript is responsible for the look of the site.

And the database stores all the data.

When you use a page builder, it stores all of the information about the look of the site in the database, thus screwing it up in a way, but definately making it bigger than it should be.

So it's better to keep the look and feel of the site, separate from the database, correct? 

On 4/9/2020 at 1:06 AM, fisicx said:

None of the above.

Just go get an off the shelf theme and use that.

Dont use elementor or bakery, both are useless.

A lot of the themes that are available on Themeforest or Envato Elements come with WP Bakery, so I'm guessing you are saying that I should find a boiler plate theme and just write my own css to make it look the way I want to.

I have heard that Visual Composer is very different to the WP Bakery Builder in a way that it's built in React and it doesn't utilize shortcodes, but I'm guessing it's the same thing. Even though it's faster than Elementor or WP Bakery builder, it's still much slower than a theme that doesn't use any builder.

1 hour ago, okozlovski said:

So if I understand correctly, it's divided as follows:

Html/Php is responsible for the structure.

Css/Javascript is responsible for the look of the site.

And the database stores all the data.

Sort of.

In its purist form the structure is HTML and the layout is CSS.

PHP functions are used to get content from the database and manage items like menus and comments.

JS isn't required at all.

Page builders use JS for building the page which is then rendered into HTML/CSS for the outputs. They tend to nest divs and add endless classes to each element and create horrible code. Run a speed test on any of them and you will see how bad they are.

1 hour ago, okozlovski said:

A lot of the themes that are available on Themeforest or Envato Elements come with WP Bakery, so I'm guessing you are saying that I should find a boiler plate theme and just write my own css to make it look the way I want to.

Yes. I avoid anything from Envato because their themes are filled with junk.

You can build really fast themes if you strip out all the caggage. Each template only needs to call header.php and footer.php and put the loop in the middle. Your functions.php looks after all the custom elements and everything else is in styles.css.

The actual content is what you generate in your pages and posts. This should be independent of the theme and any plugins you install.

On 4/10/2020 at 9:26 AM, okozlovski said:

From what I have seen is that a lot of people get excited about Themeforest themes built with WP Bakery Builder. But the problem is that the demo content is built around the theme, to look good (all paragraphs the same size, etc.). And that's where many people get lost, if you take any of the best selling themes and you take out the demo content and the carefully selected stock images, you are left with something that looks like crap.

So if I understand correctly, it's divided as follows:

Html/Php is responsible for the structure.

Css/Javascript is responsible for the look of the site.

And the database stores all the data.

When you use a page builder, it stores all of the information about the look of the site in the database, thus screwing it up in a way, but definately making it bigger than it should be.

So it's better to keep the look and feel of the site, separate from the database, correct? 

Yeah that is a common issue, the content is always in the ideal format with good imagery. Things go south pretty quick when people can't produce good content.

Regarding data, that's also correct. You want to keep the data you're storing as clean as possible and not tie it into things like the look and feel of the website. Otherwise it's very difficult to redesign the website or migrate it away.