When it comes to creating a good-looking page or website on WordPress, you need to make sure you have everything you need to accomplish it. The platform’s page builder is available 24/7, but you won’t be able to edit the site as often as you would like due to its size and location.
Thankfully, third-party web design plugins are there to address those woes you may often experience with WordPress’s own, and one of the most notable is Elementor. Elementor is designed to make it easy to create websites. Plus, no coding is required!
Do you think Elementor could be the right page builder for you? Are you still undecided? To answer your curiosities, we’re deeply diving into everything it offers.
Here’s a Pinky1472 video review for those who like a visual experience. You can still read our article to get an overview of Elementor.
Elementor in a Nutshell: What Is It About? What Is The Purpose Of The # In The Button Link In Elementor
Elementor is a WordPress website builder plugin. It is best known for its intuitive and visual drag-and-drop editor. This allows you to create a variety of design assets and blocks, and then see how your page looks to visitors in real time.
With an interface that’s more akin to that of popular website builders like Squarespace and Wix, Elementor lets you either opt for a ready-made professional template or create a good-looking WordPress website from the ground up. This unique platform has one advantage: all the tools that you need to create a website are at your fingertips.
What does it have to offer?
Living up to the reputation of being a very excellent WordPress plugin, Elementor provides a sleek and neat interface that lets you seamlessly go through everything it can offer.
- With Elementor, you’re greeted with an illustrious range of dynamic and attractive themes compared to the more standard and plain templates that often come with WordPress’ in-house themes.
- You get a separate and highly interactive work interface to edit your posts and pages. There’s no single sign of bulkiness associated with WordPress’s similar editor – everything is built to be silky smooth on your end.
- Elementor will work with any theme that is compatible with WordPress version 5.0 or higher. You can use the plugin to refine your dull-looking theme into a more eye-catching one.
- All the editing for your pages and sites is done from the front end. You’ll see your work as soon as your customers or visitors see it. This remarkable feature allows you to better understand what design elements keep customers coming back for more.
Elementor, as a whole, makes it easy for anyone to use when it comes to creating an impressive page. Its interface is designed to be so streamlined and filled to the brim with essential tools that even those who may need more expansive knowledge in web design can navigate through it with no problems. This has made the website builder an excellent choice for those with limited resources or who work in a small team.
Numerous similar web design plugins might offer working people a pleasant drag-and-drop experience as well as a few useful tools. Still, not all of them can live up to Elementor’s standard. With that being said, Elementor has gained a positive reputation among many WordPress users – more than three million of them have had the plugin installed on their accounts.
What makes this interesting web design platform stand out from all the rest? What other features does it offer that others don’t have? We’ll find out soon as we take a more in-depth look at what Elementor has in store for us, starting with its illustrious list of features.
Meet Elementor’s Features
Completely-packed Template Library
If you’re completely new to web design or you have basic knowledge of it but don’t have enough time to commit to it, Elementor has got your back with its library of over 150 template options to choose from. All of them make the site-building experience easy on your end, as they help turn your ideas into a product that can catch anyone’s attention immediately.
The platform’s templates are classified into two categories:
- Pages – full-length templates that only require you to do low-effort customization
- Blocks are templates that can be used to create pages for specific and individual parts. Examples of blocks include portfolios, pricing tables, FAQs, portfolios, and more.
If you wish to expand beyond Elementor’s in-house template selection, you may find them from tons of third-party sources all over the internet and import them onto the platform under the My Templates tab.
Massive Widget Selection
Elementor has a lot more than just a wide range of templates. There are many widget options available in the plugin. Widgets are smaller, more contained elements that house a wide range of content.
With a whopping total of 60+ widgets, you gain lots of insight into how you want to structure your website as well as the flexibility of doing so. These include text-related elements like headings, inner sections, media files such as images and videos, buttons and icons, as well as website sidebars. Elementor also offers testimonials, star ratings and gallery widgets as well as map widgets powered Google Maps.
You may add as many as you want to your page. As with the templates, you may also opt to import those from third-party sources to further expand your selection.
Convenient Drag-and-drop Editing
If there’s one thing that Elementor is most prominent for, it has to be its highly convenient user experience. It has been best-known for its drag-and-drop capabilities, allowing users to build and edit pages as freely as possible. Drag the widget you prefer from the left sidebar and drop it in your workspace. You can also adjust the layout of the page by moving it to another location.
Elementor also offers right-click support, which allows users to make minor edits without having to look at the sidebar. This is something that a few WordPress web design plugins don’t offer.
You will find a section called Navigation View that provides a complete list of content, arranged according to Elementor’s page layout. We’ll talk more about that later.
Also included within the editing interface is a Finder tool to help you further navigate swiftly between pages or content elements.
Fine-tuned Control over Your Elements
For a basic WordPress page-building plugin, Elementor is surely stuffed with many design options that anyone can enjoy hassle-free. It knows that the finest of details matter when it comes to creating an eye-catching website, so it allows you the liberty to edit and fix every single design element in whatever you’re building.
You can make necessary changes to your site’s content blocks and widgets, images, text, and text. You can also change the font, sizing, and color of your text content and headings.
These are just a few of the basic editing options you have in Elementor. You can also make specific adjustments to the plugin’s content elements. The plugin offers advanced customization options that include widget positioning within columns, custom CSS settings, animation effects and exact margins and padding for numbers.
Optional Features for Your Mobile-Friendly Page
Elementor templates are all mobile-friendly by default. However, you might be curious if you can make some adjustments to your template to suit your needs. You’ll be glad to know that the platform gives you full control to do whatever you want to make your website more appealing on smartphones and tablets, as with everything else.
Just click the Switch view icon along the sidebar, and you’ll be greeted with three viewing options, each for the desktop, tablet, and mobile phone. If you want to omit a widget or limit whatever you want your clients/customers to see, you may choose any of the three and edit right away.
An opportunity to look back at the changes you’ve made
Sometimes a few ‘undo’ actions may not be enough to fix a huge design mistake. You might have encountered similar occurrences if you tried editing on any design platform.
Elementor’s Revision History tool is a great help in this situation. You can easily revert to previous pages without losing any design elements.
Pricing
The Elementor plugin is offered completely for free, letting you take full advantage of all its core web design features and elements needed to create a good-looking site or page. Elementor Pro has many more upgrades and additions than the previous version. You might be interested in one.
Elementor Pro will allow you to explore a wider range of themes, templates and design blocks, as well as custom CSS and advanced programming capabilities. You can also create forms and pop-ups in the platform’s editing interface, integrate with WooCommerce, and use the theme builder.
Elementor Pro has four main subscription plans, each designed for various individuals and/or groups. The plan also offers a website builder and hosting plans for advanced site management. All tiers are paid annually and share the same premium features; the only two factors that set each other apart are the number of website activations and customer support response time.
Elementor Pro Plans
- Essential Plan – $49/year. 1 Pro Website Activation. 24/7 Customer Support
- Expert Plan – $199/year, 25 pro website activations, 24/7 customer support
- Studio Plan – $299 for the first year, and then $499/year thereafter; 100 pro websites activated, VIP customer support in less than 30 minutes
- Agency Plan – $999/year, 1000 pro website activations, VIP customer support in under 30 minutes
The Elementor Cloud Website Builder + Hosting plan is $99 annually. You get all the features of an Elementor Pro plan, but with amazing hosting and CMS capabilities. You get a remarkable range of design assets, templates, and editing capacities, and your website is fully protected with Google Cloud Platform integration, SSL, and robust website management.
Elementor Free vs. Elementor Pro
The tricky part is: Do you feel the free WordPress plugin version is still appropriate for you, or do the Pro versions have such an advantage that you want to give it a try instead?
If you want to build a website or landing page without thinking of adding anything else to further attract your clients, you may choose to stand by the free plugin variant. Elementor Free has many features that are already impressive in retrospect. Its core tools are just as dynamic as those of other web design platforms, which offer the same level or more delivery. So dynamic that even business teams can get away from using the free version instead. What Is The Purpose Of The # In The Button Link In Elementor
Elementor Free allows you to:
- Create optimized mobile-friendly versions of your site and page
- Go through your website’s version history
- You can use fully customizable themes and pre-made templates.
- You can add or modify website blocks as you wish.
If the ability to build and license more than one website is what you’re looking for, Elementor Pro may be a more logical option. One of its advantage that sits above the free version is that there is a lot of value added to it. This means that you have more options and more features to help you get the most out of your software. These include:
- An expanding list of over 300 themes and 100+ premium block templates;
- Global widgets that allow you to use and edit the same widget across multiple pages without having to edit it individually;
- If you are looking for more ways to draw potential customers, there is a front-end form creator and a pop up editor.
- Integrations with WooCommerce are available, with templates blocks and widgets to help you create an online storefront.
- The ability to create your personalized theme from scratch through its Theme Builder feature. What Is The Purpose Of The # In The Button Link In Elementor
However, unless you wish to license multiple websites, Elementor Pro shouldn’t be viewed as the only way to expand the WordPress plugin. As previously mentioned, Elementor Free is already sustainable enough for most users – there are plenty of flexible themes and templates out there that can be integrated with Elementor, a notable example of which is Astra.
Using Elementor: How Does It Work?
To get the Elementor plugin to start, the first thing you will need to do is install and activate it in WordPress. After you have installed the plugin, you will see a settings panel. You can modify any content while editing. Otherwise, you may head straight to WordPress’s pages section.
From there, you will notice the Edit with Elementor button placed conveniently along the bar above the canvas. As soon as you click on the button, you will be redirected to builder interface. This image shows you how it looks. What Is The Purpose Of The # In The Button Link In Elementor
Based on the picture, here are a couple of things that you should expect as you explore the interface:
- The canvas or workroom. It takes up the largest part of the screen.
- The widgets area. It is located on the left side, next to the canvas. It contains lots of content as well as design elements that can be used.
- Settings. Symbolized by three small horizontal lines, it is where you get to access a wide range of colors, fonts, and other design assets.
- The Open Elementor widgets button. It is essentially a menu button that allows you to return the widgets list. Nine little squares are used to represent this.
- The Global Settings button. This button is represented by the cogwheel icon. It takes you to more advanced settings.
- The Revision History button. Displayed as a clock icon, it allows you to take a look at the history of previous versions of your page or website.
- Switch to another view This small monitor icon lets you convert the desktop version of your page into tablet-friendly and mobile-friendly iterations. You may use this to edit what you want your customers to see through their phones.
- Preview your changes. Once you click the tiny eye icon, you’re given a full look at the changes you’ve made to your page before you’re ready to publish it.
- The Publish/Update button. Once this shaped button goes green, that’s when you’re ready to publish. If it’s grey, it means your page is updating – this time, unlike when it’s green, you can’t click it. What Is The Purpose Of The # In The Button Link In Elementor
Structure Hierarchy
Before you can begin building, it is important to understand the structure hierarchy Elementor uses. If you’re especially new to website design, this similar framework has been abided by many experienced creators and other basic web design platforms.
In Elementor, your primary goal is to create a page. A page is a collection of sections and columns.
On the one hand, a section is a row that you can customize with plenty of design elements, such as background, colors, sizing, and more.
The columns, on the other, go inside a certain section. These are the places where widgets and content elements are located. Each widget can be customized and sized separately.
To recap, this is how Elementor’s structure hierarchy plays out:
Page > Section > Column > Widget/Content element
Designing a Page
Let’s create a page now that we have an understanding of the skeletal structure. On WordPress’s page design interface, click the Edit with Elementor button. You’ll soon notice a plus (+) button highlighted in red violet – click on that to add a new section. What Is The Purpose Of The # In The Button Link In Elementor
The next thing you must do is select the structure of your section. You may choose a single column or multiple, depending on what type of content you wish to add. From there, you may populate those columns with content elements. Simply drag any widget from the interface’s widget area and drop it onto them, be it a heading or an image. You can even adjust or rearrange them and sections and columns within the page.
Once you’re happy with the structural placement, now is the time to retune the finer details to make the page look more presentable. You can explore three main editing tabs: Style, Content, and Advanced.
It is easier to design a pre-existing theme page than it is to create one from scratch. Most of the time, you would only need to make slight adjustments in between sections, columns, or even widgets – unless you need to add a new design element. With Elementor’s drag-and-drop functions, refining some necessary changes has been made much easier than the more advanced processes done through coding.
The Disadvantages: What Else is Lacking?
Don’t get us wrong – based on what we’ve shown you so far, Elementor is surely poised to be among the very best WordPress web design plugins out there. But, there are always imperfections in the world. There are many things we love about the world, but there are some things you might find annoying.
- Sometimes the editing interface can be a little slow. Although it’s fast, efficient, and ultimately very convenient, it can freeze too quickly. With that in mind, you might need to refresh and reopen it to get it back on track.
- Although most of Elementor’s features can be used for free, some may find them to be essential, but they are only available in Elementor Pro. This may prove frustrating for some. For instance, you can’t set site-wide styles in the free version, as you’re essentially stuck to a few pages simultaneously. What Is The Purpose Of The # In The Button Link In Elementor
- You may find that some editing adjustments don’t work as you expect. You may find that the default font and typography of certain links is what you have chosen, even if you add your own styling. You may also have trouble finding the margin value if the alignment of your design elements is not correct.
Who Should Use Elementor?
Elementor has a wealth of expert-level features and tools. The free version includes these, as well as additional useful upgrades for any Elementor Pro plan. Furthermore, most users will likely find it easier to grasp than other WordPress web design plugins.
It’s easy to see why so many people love Elementor. Elementor is both a popular DIY tool for those who don’t have the necessary web design skills and an intuitive platform that can be used by a broad range of businesses.
However, there are some specific users we have in mind that will find Elementor to be a more suited choice. These include:
- Casual internet users. Elementor offers many customizable benefits that are especially useful for bloggers and website owners.
- Digital marketing professionals. Design tools aside, most of Elementor’s features are built to be marketing-ready – from the seamless integrations to thousands of platforms using Zapier to the pop-up and e-commerce widgets.
- Site builders. If creating websites for a handful of clients is your day job, then Elementor is a great stepping stone to get you to where you want to be. What Is The Purpose Of The # In The Button Link In Elementor
Alternatives to Elementor
Elementor may have some advantages over other web design plugins, but that doesn’t make it the best choice.
Many WordPress web design plugins offer similar functionality to Elementor. Some may only offer a few. WordPress’s web design features are not for everyone. We all know this. That’s why plugins were created.
There are currently two other top WordPress web builders plugins that are comparable to Elementor in terms if features: Divi builder By Elegant Themes and Beaver Builder. Divi is able to edit your website directly from the front-end interface, just like your clients. Although it has a similar look, there is no free option. Beaver Builder is a more straightforward plugin than the others, but it packs as many design tools as you need into one platform. These tools are enough to make a website look great.
Elementor is not the only web design plugin you can use. SeedProd, Page Builder are also notable alternatives.
Final Verdict: Is Elementor worth trying?
To answer the question: yes. Elementor is a premium drag-and-drop page building tool for WordPress. It’s packed with top-quality design tools and features. Most of these core features are offered free. What Is The Purpose Of The # In The Button Link In Elementor
It’s easy to see why so many people continue to use this plugin to build websites and pages. Elementor is different than other web design plugins in that it allows anyone to create whatever they want with no restrictions. Unlike others, it doesn’t force you to upgrade to a higher plan or a paid license, ensuring there’s enough space for everyone.
Here’s some advice before we let you explore Elementor for yourself: if your job involves running multiple websites and creating them for clients, we recommend you try Elementor Pro. The free plugin for WordPress will still work fine.
FAQ What Is The Purpose Of The # In The Button Link In Elementor
Can I export or upload my templates to Elementor
Yes, you can import your templates to Elementor. You can create a new template using the Theme Builder. Additionally, you can import your personal themes to the website builder via the Templates tab.
In a similar function, you can export your templates to be used on other WordPress sites – a handy function if you work for multiple clients as a website-building professional.
What types of pages can I create using Elementor?
With Elementor, you can create homepages, landing pages, landing pages, about pages, or any mixed-interest pages under the sun.
If you’re subscribed to Elementor Pro, you can create full websites and even online stores apart from numerous pages.
Is Elementor slowing down my website?
Elementor won’t slow down your website to the point where it will take as many seconds as possible to load. However, a website that was built using this plugin may be two seconds slower than the one made from WordPress’s built-in website builder. Nonetheless, both equally bit faster than the version made through, say, Beaver Builder.
WordPress websites made with plugins can take longer to build due to multiple factors, including poor hosting, large media files and slow themes.