Requirements
Build a WordPress site with a popular site builder.
Solution
As of 8-21-2023 I’m working on this site in my spare time. Coming soon here.
According to my research, Elementor might supply the best option to test out a site builder – lots of free templates and widgets!
My first impression after installing and using Elementor was negative. Its slow to load and update in my browser. I haven’t set up a local development environment for WordPress because my personal needs have never justified the effort. If doing so will make Elementor’s added lag bearable a local dev environment will be in my near future, but for now it is development in the browser for me.
My second impression is that Elementor is going to save a designer a lot of work. Elementor’s unavailable “Pro” widgets made me sad until I found the ElementsKit Lite plugin which has enough widgets to keep me busy for a while. And then there are all the professional templates, free and paid, available for this site builder that allow a designer to focus on business needs and styling instead of the nuts and bolts of coding a website.
I felt a little cheated that this wasn’t going to be harder. And coming from a developer background, using WordPress, and Elementor, and widget plugins, and templates, frankly feels like cheating as well.
Guilt aside:
What is left to do here?
- Ensure all the business and site maintenance functionality is met – contact forms, live chat, reservation, e-commerce, payments, ads, Anti-spam, SEO plugins, traffic monitoring, permalinks
- Creating, sourcing, and editing media and design assets
- Producing meaningful, coherent, on brand copy
And now I don’t feel like I’m cheating anymore! There is a ton of work to complete. I will focus on the first two bullets and do a minimum on the third. I am not a professional copywriter but I can certainly update some of the text to work better with my imaginary construction company and lorem ipsum the details.