All web sites need to get updated now and then. Styles change, content gets old and the direction a business takes may not be served by its current site. Not to mention that old design and development techniques may be holding back what the site could be.

For all of those reasons and more a few months ago I began the process which will radically transform this web site when I’m done. This site I’m overhauling – and which you maybe familiar with – was largely made about 3 – 4 years ago. It was build on the back of a Genesis Theme – Elevate – which has been so dramatically changed it would be unrecognizable to Elevate’s creators.

In the ensuing years WordPress itself made a revolutionary change with its introduction of Gutenberg, the block editor which is now the default method by which web pages are made. While Gutenberg is very much WP’s present and future I stayed with the Classic Editor for the life of this site.

Until now.

But I chose to go a different direction. I made the game changing decision to use Elementor, the leading WordPress page builder which is better thought of as a web design system. I had first seen Elementor at its birth, five years ago and did a few client projects with it back then. Fast forward where I found myself using it on a large project all the while thinking, “Hey, why not use Elementor for a new Joy of WP site?” To be sure, the choice was not easy. Yes, I could make a mixed site using Gutenberg for some pages and Elementor for others but I didn’t want to go that way.

I started to realize that Elementor was in graduate school while Gutenberg was in first grade meaning the former was a full feature system while the latter is very much undergoing growing pains. I needed a polished page builder and not one that is not there yet. I believe it will get there but its feature set is several years behind where Elementor is now.

And What About A Theme?

That’s one of the beauties of Elementor (and eventually Gutenberg). The choice of a theme is not nearly as important as it once was. That’s because, as I mentioned, Elementor is a web design system. Within it I can set the typical design elements of my site – layout, color, fonts irrespective of the theme.

For the record, I am using GeneratePress, a wonderful, multi-purpose theme which can easily step aside and let Elementor take over or work perfectly well with Gutenberg.

What This Means For You

During the period of renovating some of my pages are going to look like a mess. Hopefully this will not last long and that you’ll at least have access to the videos and other content during the rebuild. Remember, this is a huge overhaul and there are likely to be some broken links, broken images, broken anything as I work through this.

“Why not just take the site offline and work on it.” you may be thinking? Oh, if it were that easy. The problem is that this is an active site and that the user data (people enrolling for the free content or making comments) change all the time. If I take the site off line to re-build and then in a few weeks replace the site that means all the user data created in those ensuing weeks will be lost. I didn’t want that.

And For Me?

Once the rebuild is finished I will be able to rapidly create new content and efficiently manage this site. I’ll have far fewer plugins that I do now as many plugins I’m using are just built in features of Elmentor.

That’s enough from me. Time to get back to remaking Joy of WP.