What is a WordPress theme and how do I find the right one? Five tips.

4. Do you need a page builder?

Pros and Cons of Themes with Page Builder:

WordPress offers a “visual mode” and a “text mode” when creating and editing posts and pages. That is, when you create a post or page, then you can either select formatting like “Heading 1”, “Heading 2”, “Bold”, “Italic” and so on through menus and mouse clicks (“Visual Mode”) or but by entering appropriate HTML codes (“text mode”).

But a current WordPress theme now offers significantly more comfort when creating and editing pages and posts. Many themes include a so-called page builder. This is an advanced editor. This page builder is basically a building block system:

• You can add new sections and layout divisions with just a few clicks, such as “new section consisting of one-third page width and two-thirds page width.”
• You can then place ready-made elements in these sections, also with just a few mouse clicks, such as “Text”, “Image”, “Video”. Many themes also offer much more elaborate elements, such as image galleries, specially designed text areas for quotes or testimonials including appropriately placed image and link, clickable information elements or calls to action, and so on.

Such page builders can be a great relief, especially for website operators who have a basic understanding of how to use WordPress, but are neither programmers nor web designers themselves.

So check whether your desired template for WordPress includes a page builder and whether you even need such a solution.

It should also be mentioned:

• There are also independent page builders that can be installed as a plugin and used if your theme doesn’t have one. Before you commit, however, consider the cost. Some page builders finance themselves by paying for additional functions or layouts.
• Depending on the type of page builder, you may become dependent to a certain extent. Because with some page builder solutions, posts and pages that you have edited with the page builder once cannot continue to be used when you change the WordPress template without manual cleaning. The reason: The source texts of the corresponding pages and posts are then interspersed with control codes that were written in the source text in the background when using the page builder. You would therefore need to clean your posts and page of these control codes if you switch to a WordPress theme with no or a different page builder at some point in the future.

Even more convenience with frontend editing:

When working with a page builder, you see your content in a schematic view. Let’s say you’ve got your page or post almost ready for publication. Now you want to do one last check, correct spelling mistakes and similar little things. This is where frontend editing (also called inline editing) comes into play. This feature allows you to view your post or page in the exact browser view that visitors to your site see and make changes in that view. This is very convenient, and many users only discover the last small errors and potential for improvement in this view – the view that is also published afterwards.

In addition to a page builder, front-end editing is part of some WordPress themes’ scope of delivery and can make webmaster’s life a lot easier.