If you wish to have a code-free WordPress development try Elementor Page Builder-the ultimate kith and kin of WordPress developers. This intuitive and user-friendly tool empowers WordPress developers and agencies to create stunning designs effortlessly. No more navigating through complex interfaces or struggling with limited functionalities.
No wonder why Elementor empowers 8.8 million websites worldwide and over 10 million active downloads. But, more is needed when it comes to using this mighty page builder to create stunning website pages.
Even the best horse needs a good rider. In today’s blog, we’re diving deep into the secrets of mastering Elementor and turning your website into a head-turning masterpiece.
Table of Contents
Overview of Elementor Page Builder
The Elementor page builder is an intuitive way to build WordPress sites. This page builder plugin comes with a visual drag-and-drop editor that enables users to create pixel-perfect WordPress sites without getting bogged down with code writing.
Through its user-friendly interface, Elementor page builder enables WordPress developers to build pages for dragging and dropping various content elements, such as headings, images, buttons, videos, and more.
Below are a few key features of Elementor that make WordPress developers fall in love with this page builder.
- Developers can fine-tune the WordPress page appearance according to different devices such as desktops, tablets, and mobile phones.
- Elementor enables users to track changes made to the pages and revert to the previous version.
- For those comfortable with code, Elementor allows you to add custom CSS directly within the layouts.
- Developers can have full control over the accessibility of the Elementor content, which is useful for multi-author or team-based websites.
- Through its vast library of pre-designed templates, agencies & developers can design without hassle.
- Elementor has a large and active community of users and developers, providing support, resources, and inspiration for designers.
Looking more than what you have got with Elementor? We have some best Elementor alternatives to recommend.
Setting Up Your Elementor Workspace
Ready to touch the highs of WordPress development through Elementor? Well, hold your horses and start with setting up a WordPress staging site. This is crucial to ensure that you’re able to understand the key functionalities of Elementor and bring them to action the right way.
Now, choosing any random staging site will not make things doable as standard stage sites:
- Are not customizable
- Are not secured
- May not have roll-back features
- Will fail to fully replicate your WordPress sites
This is why agencies and developers need a buddy like InstaWP. Its staging site feature provides real-time staging with functionalities such as:
- 1-click login
- Test changes in real-time before going live
- Full customization
- Auto-sync to ensure the updates made are reflected in the live site when published
Here is how you can use InstaWP staging sites to set up Elementor.
- Go to InstaWP Dashboard and click on ‘Add New’.
- Customize the configuration of your staging site. You can change the PHP and WordPress configuration settings. Once everything is sorted, click on ‘ Next Step’.
- InstaWP allows you to build staging sites from scratch, using templates, from stores, and using AI.
For this guide, we’re building staging sites from scratch and selecting Elementor from the ‘Page Builder’ section. Click on ‘Create Site’.
- Wait for a while as the staging site is getting ready.
- The staging site is ready. Click on ‘Magic Login’ to go to the WordPress dashboard of the staging site.
- In an instance, you will be directed to the WordPress dashboard of the staging site.
- Go to the ‘Plugin’ section and you will be able to see the ‘Elementor’ pre-installed.
Configuring Elementor Settings for Optimal Performance
With some basic tweaks and editing, you can get great results from your standard Elementor subscription. This is what you need to do for performance optimization.
Enable Lazy Load Images and Videos
To keep the file size optimal and increase the load time of your media-heavy website, enabling lazy load for images and videos. Doing so will strip out the unwanted spaces and comments in the code.
This is easy to do. Just go to Settings>Performance and enable the option from there.
Disable Unfiltered File Uploads
You must limit the upload of any file on your Elementor-based website to keep security risks at bay. Elementor has the option to enable or disable unfiltered file uploads. Disable this option from Advanced Settings.
As you do so, Elementor will sanitize the unfiltered files and remove the malicious codes and scripts.
Reduce DOM Elements
While Elementor is a great tool to have, its ability to generate excessive DOM or Document Object Model elements is a major drawback as they lead to slower pages and high resource consumption.
For websites built using Elementor, which often involve multiple layers of sections, columns, and widgets, optimizing the DOM is crucial to enhancing user experience and performance. Here is how you can do it.
Go to Settings>Features.
In this section, you must activate Flexbox Containers, Nested Elements, Optimized Control Loading, and Element Caching.
By activating all these elements, you will be able to streamline and culture-free DOM for your website, resulting in improved performance.
Key Add-ons and Plugins to Enhance Elementor
We agree that Elementor is powerful on its own. But, things can be better than they are supposed to be through the wise use of some robust Elemntor add-ons such as:
- Elementor Pro– It extends the functionality of the basic plan and provides you direct access to advanced features such as custom headers, dynamic content, footers, and a variety of premium widgets. If you need to gain more control over design elements, this Elemnetor add-on is a must-have.
- Image Optimizer– For those who have a media-heavy website, the Image Optimizer Elementor add-on is a blessing in disguise as it can compress PNG, JPEG, GIFs, and other formats to WebP and AVIF in bulk.
- JetPlugins- JetPlugins by Crocoblock is the right Elementor add-on for dynamic websites, featuring mega menus, booking forms, and dynamic content. It lets you create custom post types, taxonomies, animated text, and even complex booking systems directly in Elementor.
- PowerPack for Elementor– Agencies and freelance developers working on advanced content display and WooCommerce customization using Elementor must have the PowerPack Elementor add-on. Through its unique 70+ widgets, displaying advanced content, adding a timeline, and customizing the checkout process is a piece of cake.
- Yoast SEO– The Yoast SEO Elementor add-on is here to make sure that the SEO game of your website is on point. From optimizing meta content to the images, this add-on will assist you in everything related to SEO and will boost the overall ranking of your website.
Leveraging Elementor’s Core Features
Let’s learn how to leverage the core features of Elementor to build fully optimized and high-ranked websites.
Click on ‘Create a Page’ to get started. Then, go step-by-step.
Templates and Blocks
With Elementor, building a fully-customized website is doable as you will have a wide range of pre-designed templates and blocks at your disposal.
Elementor’s template library offers pre-designed pages for various purposes (landing pages, contact pages, etc.), allowing you to easily create polished designs with minimal effort.
You can add blocks for sections such as testimonials, galleries, and CTA as per the design guidelines. You can save the templates or blocks to maintain design consistency across the site.
Advanced Typography and Color Settings
With means like custom fonts, Google Fonts Integration, and Global Colour Settings, Elementor allows you to customize the look and feel of the site.
Customizing Responsive Designs with Elementor
Elementor’s responsive design features make it easy to ensure your site looks great on any device. You can easily preview your site’s appearance on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices and even set custom breakpoints.
Advanced Techniques for Stunning Designs
Here’s a quick rundown of a few advanced techniques that will help you create stunning designs using Elementor.
Dynamic Content
Elementor Pro allows you to increase dynamic content such as custom post titles, custom files, images, and many more without any coding. You can also use ACF with Elementor to display dynamic custom fields, ideal for showcasing portfolios, real estate listings, or user-generated content.
Using Popular Third-Party Tools
By simply integrating Elementor with a variety of third-party plugins, you can have more site-building power and functionalities at your disposal.
For instance, try integrating Toolset with Elementor to display complex layouts with custom fields and taxonomy. For eCommerce sites, combining WooCommerce with Elementor lets you design custom product pages, category layouts, and more.
Using Motion Effects and Animations
To make the content more visually appealing, you have parallax scrolling, 3D rotation, and horizontal scrolling features to use. Entrance animations can make any widget stand out, making your content appear with style as users scroll.
Using Theme Builder
Leverage the highly flexible theme builder of Elementor to gain control over headers, footers, archives, and more. You can design unique header & footers, custom layouts, and global widgets to achieve a consistent design look and feel.
Best Practices for Performance Optimization
Mastered the Elementor and think the job is done? Well, there is a lot more to learn when it comes to building stunning websites. Here are some hand-picked WordPress-optimized tips for Elementor users.
Ensuring Fast Load Times for Elementor Sites
To ensure that your Elementor-based webpage is not sluggish and pulling down the ranking, try:
- Enabling Elementor asset loading optimization to load only the necessary widgets on every page and boost the page load time.
- Using CDN for offloading the delivery of the staging content including CSS, images, and JavaScript.
- Using caching plugins such as WP Rocket or any other to store static assets in the browser. This is crucial to minimize the service requests and improve the site load speed.
Optimize Image
Not-compatible images are like slow-poison for your WordPress site, killing it from inside. Hence, it’s crucial to optimize the images used and these tips are worth a million in this regard.
- Compress images without sacrificing quality using tools like TinyPNG or Smush.
- Try lazy loading to ensure that images and videos are loaded only when required to minimize the page load time and boost the performance of media-heavy pages.
Optimize for Mobile
58.67% of global traffic comes from mobile and if you’re not optimizing your sites for mobile, you’re digging your grave. For mobile optimization of Elementor websites, try:
- Reducing DOM size by keeping the number of nested elements as low as possible.
- Disabling unnecessary scripts on mobile to increase the responsive time of your mobile pages.
- Use touch-friendly designs such as adding sufficient padding around buttons and links for easier navigation on small screens.
Host the Right Way
If you’re not hosting Elementor the right way, this feature-rich tool can become highly resource-intensive and have a snail-like performance. A robust managed hosting with adequate server resources is crucial to:
- Load the media-heavy pages
- Manage traffic spikes without any crashing
- Avoid lags while editing pages or loading the frontend
InstaWP Live is one of the best bets to make for Elementor Page Builder users. This fully managed WordPress hosting offers built-in CDN, security firewalls, automatic backups of core and plugins, a fully integrated migration tool, and expert support to take care of all your hosting woes.
With its scalable nature, ensuring continuous performance delivery even during the traffic spike is a piece of cake. The real-time failover mechanism of InstaWP Live will keep server failure at bay by switching to a backup server automatically.
Wrapping Up
Elementor is as good as its user is. You need to learn the art and science of maximizing its efficiency. For new users, a staging site is the best way to get familiar with its key functionalities and learn the know-how.
In addition, deploying best practices for performance optimization will ensure the around-the-clock availability of your Elementor website. While you do so, don’t forget to take the InstaWP onboard.
Through staging environment, managed hosting, and many other WordPress-specific workflows, this tool makes page building with Elementor a smooth sail.
