Page Builder or Content Builder as Standard

  • thyon

    (@thyon)


    12 years, 12 months ago

    I am used to the Contao CMS which includes a very nice Content Builder that builds blocks of content. Standard Content Elements included are:

    • Headline
    • Text (Headline+image+text)
    • HTML
    • List (ol/ul)
    • Table
    • Accordion
    • Code block
    • Hyperlink (text/image)
    • Toplink
    • Image
    • Gallery (with lightbox)
    • Slider (sliding other elements)
    • Video/Audio
    • Youtube
    • Download (single)
    • Downloads (multiple)
    • Include Content Block (link to another block or article)
    • Include Form (Form Generator forms)
    • Include Module (similar to widgets)

    As you can see these are typical basic content building blocks for most CMS use cases.

    I’ve noticed that WordPress used as a CMS lacks any kind of Content Builder (sometimes called Page Builder). I have found some nice plugin ones, which work similar to Contao CMS’s Content Builder, but also adds easy drag/drop blocks into column splits that allow users (e.g. clients and web developers) to easily add content pieces in a much more visual way. This allows a much faster way to build content for pages.

    Most of these integrate at the Page Content level, and adds another tab:
    [Visual] | [Text] | [Page Builder]

    http://ww.wp.xz.cn/extend/plugins/siteorigin-panels/
    http://ww.wp.xz.cn/extend/plugins/aqua-page-builder/
    http://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/elegant-builder/

    It would be great if such a framework could be included as standard (such as that in Contao CMS), because in that case, developers can build blocks support and include standard ways of building content and it will work across all themes as there will be a way to integrate it. I have written quite a number of my own custom blocks for the Content Builder and this makes creating customer sites very easy.

    This makes it also very beneficial for developers to include basic blocks and sell premium blocks. This will also allow themes to be easily constructed from blocks, rather than all this shortcode and widget “mess” that I see most of my pages contain, just to make content visual.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Greg – SiteOrigin

    (@gpriday)

    12 years, 12 months ago

    I was at a small WordPress meetup in Cape Town and briefly spoke to Matt about a page/content builder for WordPress. He gave a rough guess of WordPress 3.9 being the time when they’d look at including this sort of drag and drop Page Builder functionality in the core. That would still be over a year off given the current release cycle.

    It still has a long way to go, but I’d like to get my page builder plugin mature enough to be considered for inclusion in the core.

    Thread Starter thyon

    (@thyon)

    12 years, 12 months ago

    I think your usage of only widgets is the best WordPress-like solution. Most existing users will quickly identify this widget approach.

    I do think that more standard widgets then have to be written and they have to be more visual to kind of show a preview of the widget, so that its easier to build content visually.

    I do recommend that your columns should somehow snap to some preset values, so that 29.678 should snap to 33.3% to make thirds, or perhaps you should have some toolbar buttons to create certain presets, legal thirds, fourths, fifths up to twelves. Either that, or I haven’t found these options.

    Thread Starter thyon

    (@thyon)

    12 years, 12 months ago

    I see now that double-click does a reset to the default column split, but perhaps a kind of snap can be integrated into the drag, so you can easily create layouts with 2 columns but the split is onethird (33.3%) | twothirds (66.6%).

    Also a preset row of columns might make things easier to build, e.g.
    [onethird | twothirds] or [onequarter | threequarter ] or [threequarter | onequarter]

    Maybe using half, thirds and quarter combos we have a nice set of “default” column splits.

    Also dragging the blue bg should be possible, as many people will want to drag that as well as the button. Possibility to make drag possible on iPad (using touchdown event)

    Then, where are your “default” blocks on your plugin screenshots:
    Heading, Button, Call to Action
    or are these widgets you’ve installed from the plugins library.

    Another thing I find quite annoying with WordPress, is that the image and gallery uploader is so great, but the entire system lacks a universal auto-thumbnail generator (not just built-in present sizes), but allowing you at image insert and gallery insert to customize the sizes exactly. In widgets the image widget and the gallery widgets should be easier to use, similar to when you click on “edit” in gallery. But upon completion of the edit, it should show small thumbnails of the gallery and allow rearranging of the order. Perhaps this is just a widget thing, rather than a wordpress thing (as I’m still a newbie).

    PS. All this pasting URLs is just a nightmare to me, because if your urls change, it breaks all the links. That won’t happen in Contao, as everything is hyperlinked to an internal DB code which is expanded to the local URL on rendering, making broken links a thing of the past.

    Thread Starter thyon

    (@thyon)

    12 years, 12 months ago

    This is the best Page Builder I’ve seen so far. It’s visual and provides the best content editor:

    http://demo.wpbakery.com/?theme=visual-composer

    dnp_theme

    (@dnp_theme)

    12 years, 12 months ago

    Greg’s code is quite nice, all widgets work. Some of my impressions:

    * the widget system is amazing, I can use all possible widgets within, no problemo
    * the drag to resize is good but takes tooo much js to power up and uses no grids, Bootstrap grid would be favorite for large no. of people
    * the loop is another cool thing, perhaps adding some control to it would help alot: items per page, number of columns, and perhaps options to extend
    * the front-end has too many nested divs, I don’t think we need so many

    Maybe these changes can be applied to the plugin or at least have the possibility to change/override them within our themes.

    Great work.
    DNP

    Thread Starter thyon

    (@thyon)

    12 years, 12 months ago

    I tried tinyMCE widgets and their toolbars don’t load, so you can’t eadily create rich content.

    I’ve been using Contao for clients to update content themselves and they love it, not sure how I’m goin to explain to them they have to kne HTML now with wordpress..

    Shahjada

    (@codename065)

    12 years, 10 months ago

    you may also try this too http://ww.wp.xz.cn/plugins/page-layout-builder/

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

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