WordPress Visual Editors, Hanging with Troy Dean & Freedom Papers WPCP: 106

This episode is sponsored by Sitelock. I've been thinking about doing an in-depth post on WordPress Visual Editors (besides Thrive Content Builder & Beaver Builder, which of course are still my favorites!) for a while now. I'm still planning on it, but thought I would do a podcast episode first to gauge the interest as it's probably going to be a pretty time-intensive piece of content (which is O.K. too, but nothing like getting a little validation first). There are a LOT of WordPress Visual editors on the market now and I expect we're going to see more. I'm going to skip any of the visual builders that have shown up in JV Zoo during the past year because I have no idea if they're going to be around or supported (not that I can guarantee this with the rest of these plugins, but more they'll more than likely be here longer than the JVZoo products). What's interesting is that I've had this conversation a few times now (I think I've talked about this on the podcast before), but with the amount of new tools and options that are starting to show up I thought it was time to revisit this. We'll start by addressing the elephant in the room. Which is whether or not you should use page builders. Obviously you know my answer, but before you write them off, let's talk about when and why you would want to use a page builder. If you look at why the team at Beaver Builder created their awesome plugin it was simple. They wanted to find a way to be more efficient with their client work. They were repeating tasks/work on their client projects and wanted to deploy the sites quicker. So they built the solution they needed. Less time on a project does NOT mean it has less value. You're still providing the client with what they want and you're doing it quicker. I know there are arguments out there about it not being as clean (referring to code here) or as light on the site... but I think we should look at this from the bigger picture. First, most of these tools are getting better and better. Some use the WordPress customizer (for some reason this still isn't my favorite option... I don't know why. I probably need to spend some more time using it, which I will be with one of the latest tools, Elementor). Whether you're building sites for clients or for yourself, here are a few things to consider when deciding if you want to use a page builder: That being said, here are the page builders I'm going to talk about today. Keep in mind this isn't a full list... it's simply the ones I've looked at, used or currently use. If you guys want me to do a full post / video review of these tools let me know. It will take a decent amount of time to complete it, but I'll make it as complete as possible. Thrive Content Builder: O.K., I won't go into details here on this because I've written about Thrive a handful of times and am about to publish a new post with 4 videos on Thrive for you (which I'll link to as soon as it's published, but in the meantime you can checkout a recent post I did where I explained why I use Thrive & Beaver Builder). I primarily use Thrive for landing pages (sales pages, squeeze pages, webinar pages, etc.). But in the post I'm about to publish I used the Thrive Content Builder for the first time in a standard post. Pretty awesome! Beaver Builder: See above. :-) I'll do an updated post on Beaver Builder in the coming months, but in the meantime you can checkout the recent post & video I did on why I use Thrive and Beaver Builder. I use Beaver Builder for creating site pages. One of the most amazing things with Beaver Builder is the community support. There are a lot of 3rd party developers creating add-ons (keeping the core plugin lighter and more streamlined). What I love about this is that the Beaver Builder team is completely supportive and is active within the Beaver Builder Facebook group. Elementor: This is the newest page builder to hit the web and I have to say, I'm LOVING it. Oh...