If you’re struggling to make your WordPress pages look less plain, Beaver Builder may be just the tool you’re looking for. This WordPress plugin allows anyone to build beautiful page layouts with almost any theme. Beaver Builder is a visual page builder — meaning you drag and drop your content elements anywhere on the page. It’s simple enough for novices and powerful enough for developers.
Personally, I’ve resisted using visual page builders in the past. I’m something of a WordPress purist, and I have no problem creating custom templates. But I have to admit that Beaver Builder has changed my view of page-building tools. I now use Beaver Builder to minimize development time and improve my productivity.
I put Beaver Builder through its paces in this short video. I also provide some caveats you should be aware of before diving in.
11 thoughts on “Beaver Builder: The Ultimate WordPress Layout Tool”
Watched this a second time and got even more excited about BeaverBuilder. As an ex- Canadian, I’m especially hooked on the name!!
Your demo fleshes out its total ease of use for non technical web site owners. It is a vote of real confidence in the plugin that you are using it yourself…especially since you haven’t been a fan of visual page builders in the past.
Now, I wonder if it can work on our (challenging) custom theme?!
Linda
Linda,
I would test the free version on your test website. It should work with your custom theme.
Note my comments on it working better with a full-width page template. If you’ve got one of those you’re in good shape. If not, it should be fairly easy to create one. Especially if your site doesn’t have sidebars.
kb
Hi Kirk. Am I write in assuming that if you use a page builder such as Beaver to “draw” your pages, it becomes a part of the page rendering process and you must leave the plugin installed to run your live site.
Can I remove the page builder once I have completed my site?
Hi Tony,
Yes, that’s correct. Every plugin is a bit different in terms of what happens to your page layout after the plugin is disabled.
Some page builders like Divi make extensive use of shortcodes. When you disable the Divi layout plugin you’re stuck with a bunch of shortcodes mixed in with your content.
Beaver Builder, on the other hand, uses standard HTML elements. Your page won’t look as nice when Beaver Builder is disabled, but it also won’t be full of a lot of unrelated garbage. And you could always add the CSS needed to patch up the pae layout.
Hope that helps.
Hi Kirk: Are you still using Beaver Builder?
Can you recommend some themes for Beaver that are mobile responsive especially in light of Googles new up coming mobile indexing strategy.
In 2015 I developed my business site with a well known drag and drop theme I liked very much. At one time had great support. Unfortunately that seems to be no longer the case.
So now i have to start over.
Thank You
Mel Williams
Hi Mel,
Yes, I still use and recommend Beaver Builder. They’ve also recently launched Beaver Themer. It’s not a stand-alone theme, but it allows you to customize header, footer, and sidebar elements that are outside of the post block. I need to make time to record a lesson on that plugin.
As far as themes go, I recommend the Genesis framework and any Genesis child theme that meets your needs. There’s a free plugin called DamBuster that allows Beaver Builder to take over the full page from edge to edge.
kb
Great video, Kirk! I’ve experimented with SiteBuilder and was looking into Visual Composer, but I’m concerned about weighing down my site with tons of excess code. This looks better.
Sidenote: for the life of me I can’t figure how to hack Genesis to place the video above content/sidebar, like you’ve done here. Is that something Dambuster can achieve?
Thanks Bob. This should be a bit more light weight than the other visual builders you mentioned. Also, it’s posssible to export the generated CSS and JavaScript, then turn off the BeaverBuilder plugin entirely.
The Genesis video page layout is custom. I’m happy to share my template, but I’m in Italy at the moment with limited access to my source code. It’ll be a couple weeks before I can share. But yes, you could also replicate, the layout with BeaverBuilder and dambuster.
That would be awesome (and so appreciated), Kirk. You’ve done a FANTASTIC job organizing and designing your sites. Love how you’ve integrated WPCourseware and made main and subdomain appear as one. Buona giornata!
Kirk, thanks for all the great instructional videos!
I just received an email from you that discusses the best ways to use Elementor with Gutenberg. However, I’ve not been able to find a similar discussion of best ways to use Beaver Builder with Gutenberg.
Does this mean you are no longer supporting Beaver Builder as a preferred page builder?
Are you planning to provide a best Gutenberg uses video for Beaver Builder?
Hi Foster,
I still use Beaver Builder on some of the sites I manage, but for all of my recent development, I have been using Elementor Pro. One reason is that Theme Builder is included as part of the Pro product, while the equivalent functionality on Beaver Builder is an add-on product (Beaver Themer).
I would also argue that over the past couple of years, Elementor has evolved more rapidly.
I’m not ruling out more Beaver Builder training in the future, but there is much more demand for Elementor training right now.
kb
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