Website editors and builders. What are they?
Are you designing a website? Divi, Elementor, Woocommerce, CSS-Hero, Gutenberg… industry terms are full of forums, but are these mystery tools needed for anything? Isn't WordPress alone enough?
The answer is: yes is needed and not enough. Namely, anyone who is planning to create a stylish website under the WordPress publishing system will face a selection task right from the start, whether they like it or not. Once WordPress is formatted and you should start creating your website from scratch, you will immediately notice that WordPress in its standard format does not offer very sensible design options, nor any other tools that can conjure up a beautiful and colorful website.
This is hardly a surprise to anyone familiar with the field, as WordPress is basically a blogging platform, meaning it mainly favors article-based text wrapping in its basic format.
Of course, with a full-fledged WordPress, you can create a web page that works out in a roughly desired way, the font has been changed and the image has been composed in the middle of the text. But is this enough for most website creators? The answer is obviously no, because various builders and editors are wacky and are also widely used. Elementor, Divi, Oxygen, Visual Composer… all have their own tools, logic and functionality, with pros and cons.
However, in this article we will focus only on the Elementor (Pro) add-on, as it is one of the most popular builders in the world, offers one of the best and most logical user experiences, and is very much “wysiwyg” and “drag´n´drop” in nature and thus easily approachable. In other words, it’s also easy for a novice to obey, if only to be familiar with tools and column management.
Elementor. Is it a good option?
In principle, the answer is a resounding yes. Elementor's fur coat template is free and does not require registration, and can be downloaded right inside WordPress in the add-ons download field. The free version already offers plenty of tools and treats to make a nice website; motion effects, various image overlays, galleries, edge rounding, globalization of fonts and colors, etc.
So it's a good idea to download Elementor as a first add-on and get to know the Builder's features and interface. And best of all, even if you have Elementor enabled, you can still edit the pages you want without it, if the page requires it. Many large third-party entities (e.g., course platforms and other closed environments) often do not properly play with Elementor as such, so they want their own page templates. Or they work with a short code placed on the page that can't be accessed directly in any way. However, even such pages can usually be edited with CSS formatting or with the plugin's built-in editor. In addition, pure HTML and JavaScript code can always be embedded in the pages if no tools are available for the desired formatting or function.
All in all, Elementor is truly a universal editor for creating professional websites.
What is the theme with Elementor?
WordPress always includes a “theme”, it comes standard with installation and is mainly for those who do not have dedicated editors in use. For example, a theme may have a black background, some form of its own form systems, and a little more often negative content. Some themes, on the other hand, are missing something essential, and you'll need to use the add-on to reactivate it. The heavy-duty theme is like bloatware, which always wears on the surface when editing, thus preventing effective designs.
If you use Elementor, you don't usually need unnecessary formatting through the theme. Elementor works best on as empty a base as possible, so choose a light “Hello Elementor!” before starting edits. Of course, there are others that can be used, but we at Vepi always use Hello, as it has been found to interfere the least with Elementor's design functions.
Elementor Pro. What is it?
Website developers often have complex visions for the site. That is why he should definitely consider the Pro version of Elementor. Pro comes with some essential design options, for example templates, template libraries and a few extra tools. Multi-page websites in particular benefit from templates that can be repeated on every page. For example, "Header" and "Footer" are such repeated models, in Finnish they are perhaps better known as "Lä- ä- og footerutstensi". Some false jaws also call these by the names "upper and lower liner".
Through the templates, the same block can be repeated on multiple pages, where they will be positioned at the desired location automatically. The navigation menu at the top and other blocks of this nature should be placed inside the models.
In addition, Pro comes with tools, but very similar ones can be found on the add-on for free anyway.
So what is the difference between the hair coat version of Elementor vs. the professional version? Check out the differences in specs about this, as Elementor himself reports: https://elementor.com/help/elementor-pro-vs-free/
Does the Elementor custom page work on my phone?
Elementor's editing modes also come standard with responsive features that emulate the view on different devices. So you can customize the view provided by the site for mobile and tablet resolution separately. In practice, these prospects are mandatory, after all, the share of mobile users is already very significant. Elementor's beta features also offer multi-resolution editing modes, but you can usually manage in three different modes, unless you have such special composition solutions that even the percentages tied to the width of the view don't give the right look to Pentti-papa's Doro phone.
And if for some reason you want to edit your upcoming page, you can even do it surprisingly smoothly on your phone. Of course, we do not recommend it, but the emergency fixes for the site can be done even without a desktop computer.


Elementor and Woocommerce
Elementor also works well on the pages of the online store (mostly Woocommerce), albeit with slightly limited functionality. Some items (mainly the shopping cart and checkout page) cannot be directly edited with Elementor because they are imported into the box with a short code. In this case, a small-scale CSS exercise is necessary if the button or field of each e-commerce site must be consistent with the design language of the web pages. More about CSS formatting (and CSS-Hero) in future articles.
The disadvantages of Elementor
Elementor is not perfect - there is no other competing editor. It is constantly evolving, but a few things need to be understood in its use. First, it is reasonably heavy to use. Each time in edit mode, the program initializes itself for several seconds. The actual page saving (updating) is a reasonably fast process, but overall it's not the fastest editor.
Elementor runs and works on most websites, but if the PHP memory limit is set too low at the hosting end (e.g. 64Mb), the toolkit will often run gray. Fortunately, this is not a problem with most web hosting packages, but it can materialize if there are other heavy editors or plugins on the same website.
There will also be more mouse clicks in the design phase than the law allows, but this longer frustrating work is more tied to the WordPress architecture than the Elementor itself.
What does Elementor Pro cost?
Elementor recently renewed its pricing, and the price of the paid Pro version is already reasonably valuable when purchased for a single website. At Vepi, however, we have bought a perpetual membership in good time, which includes almost unlimited websites. You can buy Elementor Pro from us -integration, and tweak your own pages using the tools in the Pro version. Veppi is nominally the admin of the page and is responsible for the licensing and integration of the Pro version, but you can work on your pages however you want. Pretty good and sensible teammate, isn't it?

Summary
As a final cassette, Elementor (Pro) is an easy-to-adopt and recommended editing tool that will be taught to anyone with a basic knowledge of computer use. Its in-depth features still remain foreign to most basic users, but that doesn’t stop you from successfully creating and editing sites. Specifying a percentage-bound size in particular can be difficult and also requires a little thought about how the site will behave on different screens.
At Vepi, we always provide basic training to our customers. If you buy a website from us, you can always be confident that you will be able to make content changes yourself, without the additional cost of hourly billing in the future. Of course, Elementor contains a lot of functions that only a trained web designer can control, so it is worth leaving the special effects and others on the shoulders of professionals.
Buy Elementor Pro and other essential accessories from us!
Veppi also sells Elementor Pro do-it-yourself package with all the essential editing add-ons baked in. I recommend!
The text was produced by Vepin Art Director Matti Kataja