I would just like to know if using Elementor is a good idea in terms of Site Speed and functionality. I have seen beautiful and very professional looking pages/templates design
As a competent Elementor Pro user, the only reason I would say to use it vs gp premium is if you want custom animations and lots of em. anything else that elementor can do, the elements tab of gp premium can do with some added CSS. Elementor is brilliant for full page and interactive animations but too heavy for content centered site
Yes I am aware and thank you so much for your expert advice! I was just looking to use it as a landing page. Would you still recommend?
not really unless you have to. if you're using it in combination with gp or another theme or builder you'll get super bogged down. Why do you want to use it? Dont get me wrong I love the motion effects, they can make sooo much pretty happen, but pagespeeds really suffer. I use gp premium and properly formatted images and I'm still wary about pagespeeds
For my Opt-in page.. Sigghhh
Not for the animations though but for the ease of making layouts like I wanted. I also have the option of doing it through glutenberg add ons but it doesn't look half as pretty or professional as what I am getting with Elementor
Page-specific css and addition / removal of widgets with an opt in plugin is the way i would go personally. Are you trying to have the opt in page look entirely different to the rest of your site? or animated?
as others have said though, use a test site for speeds. I won't say dont play with elementor full out because I do love its lottie animations and motion effects and stuff. Don't get me wrong I have it on a clients site I just dont use it because my site is content oriented
I would have to learn how to do page specific css etc..I'm completely code-illiterate (if that's even a thing lol)
My theme does not allow me to remove the header and sidebar widgets unless I buy the pro version. So I thought Elementor would do the trick and be easier, which it is. But then Google analytics won't work if I use the "blank canvas" option. And the page speeds will plummet drastically.
I'm also not trying to add crazy animations or make it too different from my entire site. I want to use an Elementor template available from a mini course I paid for outside of WA. I just can't make anything as close to how nice that template looks using just the block editor.
Hope that makes sense?
It does yes.
I dunno, play with it on a siterubix domain and test your page speeds.
I took the advice of @TheCatherine when I started and just went with GeneratePress and then I bought GeneratePress Premium when I needed more customization.
Visually modifying your website is hard. No two ways about it. Plugins slow you down, code is hard to imagine in use.
The elementor docs are quite thorough though they can fix your header issues with the canvas mode.
if youre going the css route, install a plugin called code snippets then if you want I'll send you some css to try out to get a feel for it
https://elementor.com/help/create-headers/ can use that to have an invisible header with elementor canvas
I am asking SiteSupport to copy the contents of my main domain to a temp siterubix domain so I could test out speeds by using Elementor.
I wish I started with GeneratePress as well but now that I have a theme that I currently love, its hard to go to anything else.
Thank you for sharing the invisible header idea nd the css route. Let me play around with the temp domain first and then I will give you a shout if I decide to go the css route!
don't worry too much about the header and footer coding as either elmentor or other plugins have you sorted...
elementor can bloat your site depending on how you use it ...
if you have loads of images in a slider without optimizing the images of course it is gonig to be slow...
if you design it with speed in mind then i have a elementor site that is just touching 90 for mobile....
but there are no sliders...
it does add another level of code and you ideally need a fast lightweight theme under it and hello was designed for it....
hardly anything there...or move up a level and astra, oceanwp and generatepress are all pretty fast...
i would do as Abie has suggested and create a test site ...you can speed test it and work on the speed or ask if we can help....
do you need elementor...nope ...
if you pick a theme like astra that you can turn off the header, footer and menu ...you get a blank canvas ...then you get to design your page with hte block editor and sections...there are plugins that have many parts to play with...
so have a look around and see what you can do....
have fun
phil
wordpress is just about to have a sidebar editor added and te next iteration has even more theme edit functions ....so in the future you may not need elementor...or even a theme ...you design your own...
Absolutely excellent info and advice here Phil- thank you so much!
I am not a coder and just looking at a a line of code gives me anxiety!
My current theme is image-dense to say the least and I am always having issues with cache. For that reason alone, I have been hesitant with activating elementor.
I have asked a thousand times for help here at SiteSupport in regards to my speed and they have not been able to help. Its always a runaround. My mobile speeds never improve beyond 70 (yellow zone) and I barely have any plugins. It is super frustrating!
Anyways, happy to learn that wordpress is going to have more theme edit functions!
Ill try to run Astra or the other themes you suggested on a test site and see how that goes.
Even if I run Elementor on just 2 pages instead of the entire site, it will still cause site bloat?
sitespeed is down to the individual...
you can spend a lot of time on getting hte speed up....believe me...
reducing image file size to a minimum before uploading is always a good thing....
70 for mobile is not too bad and you won't get any drops in rankings from google due to speed...it's when you drop into the red zone ...that's when you don't get any boost...
adding elementor to your site will activate it for your whole site...so it will affect all pages....more so the 2 pages which show more elements....
try it out on a test site and see how it goes....
Hi Family just checking in, I hope every one is doing well got to get back to my steps peace to every one take care.
Hi
I'd run with a siterubix / test site and see how things go.
It can slow sites down, you may want to utilize a caching plugin with WP rocket for example. It is a premium, with no free trial however a 100% money back guarantee within 14 days of your purchase.
Thats a great idea Abie- I will try the speed on a test site. I have been suggested WP Rocket before as well but just didn't like that there was no trial version available. So for now, I am using Autoptimize but that isn't really helping either.
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Should I be using elementor for landing pages & home page?
I would just like to know if using Elementor is a good idea in terms of Site Speed and functionality. I have seen beautiful and very professional looking pages/templates design
Thank you Catherine for your input! Are you using GeneratePress to create all landing pages?
As a competent Elementor Pro user, the only reason I would say to use it vs gp premium is if you want custom animations and lots of em. anything else that elementor can do, the elements tab of gp premium can do with some added CSS. Elementor is brilliant for full page and interactive animations but too heavy for content centered site
Yes I am aware and thank you so much for your expert advice! I was just looking to use it as a landing page. Would you still recommend?
not really unless you have to. if you're using it in combination with gp or another theme or builder you'll get super bogged down. Why do you want to use it? Dont get me wrong I love the motion effects, they can make sooo much pretty happen, but pagespeeds really suffer. I use gp premium and properly formatted images and I'm still wary about pagespeeds
For my Opt-in page.. Sigghhh
Not for the animations though but for the ease of making layouts like I wanted. I also have the option of doing it through glutenberg add ons but it doesn't look half as pretty or professional as what I am getting with Elementor
Page-specific css and addition / removal of widgets with an opt in plugin is the way i would go personally. Are you trying to have the opt in page look entirely different to the rest of your site? or animated?
as others have said though, use a test site for speeds. I won't say dont play with elementor full out because I do love its lottie animations and motion effects and stuff. Don't get me wrong I have it on a clients site I just dont use it because my site is content oriented
I would have to learn how to do page specific css etc..I'm completely code-illiterate (if that's even a thing lol)
My theme does not allow me to remove the header and sidebar widgets unless I buy the pro version. So I thought Elementor would do the trick and be easier, which it is. But then Google analytics won't work if I use the "blank canvas" option. And the page speeds will plummet drastically.
I'm also not trying to add crazy animations or make it too different from my entire site. I want to use an Elementor template available from a mini course I paid for outside of WA. I just can't make anything as close to how nice that template looks using just the block editor.
Hope that makes sense?
It does yes.
I dunno, play with it on a siterubix domain and test your page speeds.
I took the advice of @TheCatherine when I started and just went with GeneratePress and then I bought GeneratePress Premium when I needed more customization.
Visually modifying your website is hard. No two ways about it. Plugins slow you down, code is hard to imagine in use.
The elementor docs are quite thorough though they can fix your header issues with the canvas mode.
if youre going the css route, install a plugin called code snippets then if you want I'll send you some css to try out to get a feel for it
https://elementor.com/help/create-headers/ can use that to have an invisible header with elementor canvas
I am asking SiteSupport to copy the contents of my main domain to a temp siterubix domain so I could test out speeds by using Elementor.
I wish I started with GeneratePress as well but now that I have a theme that I currently love, its hard to go to anything else.
Thank you for sharing the invisible header idea nd the css route. Let me play around with the temp domain first and then I will give you a shout if I decide to go the css route!
don't worry too much about the header and footer coding as either elmentor or other plugins have you sorted...
elementor can bloat your site depending on how you use it ...
if you have loads of images in a slider without optimizing the images of course it is gonig to be slow...
if you design it with speed in mind then i have a elementor site that is just touching 90 for mobile....
but there are no sliders...
it does add another level of code and you ideally need a fast lightweight theme under it and hello was designed for it....
hardly anything there...or move up a level and astra, oceanwp and generatepress are all pretty fast...
i would do as Abie has suggested and create a test site ...you can speed test it and work on the speed or ask if we can help....
do you need elementor...nope ...
if you pick a theme like astra that you can turn off the header, footer and menu ...you get a blank canvas ...then you get to design your page with hte block editor and sections...there are plugins that have many parts to play with...
so have a look around and see what you can do....
have fun
phil
wordpress is just about to have a sidebar editor added and te next iteration has even more theme edit functions ....so in the future you may not need elementor...or even a theme ...you design your own...
Absolutely excellent info and advice here Phil- thank you so much!
I am not a coder and just looking at a a line of code gives me anxiety!
My current theme is image-dense to say the least and I am always having issues with cache. For that reason alone, I have been hesitant with activating elementor.
I have asked a thousand times for help here at SiteSupport in regards to my speed and they have not been able to help. Its always a runaround. My mobile speeds never improve beyond 70 (yellow zone) and I barely have any plugins. It is super frustrating!
Anyways, happy to learn that wordpress is going to have more theme edit functions!
Ill try to run Astra or the other themes you suggested on a test site and see how that goes.
Even if I run Elementor on just 2 pages instead of the entire site, it will still cause site bloat?
sitespeed is down to the individual...
you can spend a lot of time on getting hte speed up....believe me...
reducing image file size to a minimum before uploading is always a good thing....
70 for mobile is not too bad and you won't get any drops in rankings from google due to speed...it's when you drop into the red zone ...that's when you don't get any boost...
adding elementor to your site will activate it for your whole site...so it will affect all pages....more so the 2 pages which show more elements....
try it out on a test site and see how it goes....
Hi Family just checking in, I hope every one is doing well got to get back to my steps peace to every one take care.
Hi
I'd run with a siterubix / test site and see how things go.
It can slow sites down, you may want to utilize a caching plugin with WP rocket for example. It is a premium, with no free trial however a 100% money back guarantee within 14 days of your purchase.
Thats a great idea Abie- I will try the speed on a test site. I have been suggested WP Rocket before as well but just didn't like that there was no trial version available. So for now, I am using Autoptimize but that isn't really helping either.
See more comments
Hi everyone! I have been struggling with planning my posting schedule across social media platforms and am wondering what is the best tool to streamline this process? I came ac
isn't that a plugin to share blog content?
I was enquiring about a tool that helps in planning a posting strategy. Sorry for the confusion but thanks for the suggestion!
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Best tool for planning content across social platforms?
Hi everyone! I have been struggling with planning my posting schedule across social media platforms and am wondering what is the best tool to streamline this process? I came ac
isn't that a plugin to share blog content?
I was enquiring about a tool that helps in planning a posting strategy. Sorry for the confusion but thanks for the suggestion!
See more comments
Hey WA family,
Does anyone know how I can remove my "about me" post from randomly showing up on my blog roll? I know there is a really simple click somewhere, but for th
By making it a Page instead of a post. You will need to copy the text of the post and create a new page. Paste the information there, and save. Then you can delete the post. It is best to use a redirect from the old post to the new page if your About post has any traffic going to it.
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How do I remove my "about me" post from blog roll?
Hey WA family,
Does anyone know how I can remove my "about me" post from randomly showing up on my blog roll? I know there is a really simple click somewhere, but for th
By making it a Page instead of a post. You will need to copy the text of the post and create a new page. Paste the information there, and save. Then you can delete the post. It is best to use a redirect from the old post to the new page if your About post has any traffic going to it.
See more comments
Hey guys! Just wondering something : Do we need an additional plugin to lazy load the images on our website? or is Kraken Image Optimizer good enough? Should I deactivate it an
I tried Imagify to convert images to Webp format but I think it has issues with my theme. Now I manually compress images on tinypng.com just so I don't have to download another plugin(the less, the better). I also found that resizing images to 640*425 can make a huge difference in file size
Kraken does not perform lazy loading, I.e. deferring of images. You will need another plugin for this. If you can either keep Kraken and find a Lazy Load plugin, or you can replace Kraken with another image optisation plugin that also performs lazy loading. The choice of plugin will depend on the Theme you're using, the other plugins you have installed and whether you want to keep Kraken or not.
so, now I have installed Smush to lazy load my images and am running it in conjunction with Kraken. I checked the speed of my site and it has improved since I installed Smush. Now I am just not sure if I should still keep Kraken or delete it? What would you suggest?
If you have configured Smush to also Optimise and not just to lazy load, then yes, you can deactivate Kraken. You can always test it for a week or so before you fully delete it. Make sure you're happy with the settings etc.
thanks, Chrystopher. Smush free version only allows for lazy load. If I want optimization, I have to upgrade to pro version which is $7/month after the 7 day free trial period. Just putting this info out here, in case anyone else is wondering.
What exactly does Kraken do? I feel like it's supposed to optimize images, but yet when I use PageSpeed Insights, it shows all my featured images as "opportunities" where I can reduce image sizes.
I am using GP and create 1024x536 featured images. I run them through http://reduceimages.com, save them as JPEG before I upload them to WP. Typically I get them down to about 100kb.
I am not sure how Kraken fits into the picture. Do I need to activate something within Kraken? I also don't seem to be able to "Krak 'em all" to do a bulk compression.
Sorry that you never got a reply!
FYI- I deleted Kraken and installed Autoptimize. This is working a whole lot better.
Oh and I also always use SiteContent to upload images as they optimize/compress images before posting to WP.
This is working well so far for me. I was going crazy with trying to improve my page speeds. Finally figured out a way.
Hope this helps you out too.
See more comments
Is kraken image optimizer enough for lazy loading images?
Hey guys! Just wondering something : Do we need an additional plugin to lazy load the images on our website? or is Kraken Image Optimizer good enough? Should I deactivate it an
I tried Imagify to convert images to Webp format but I think it has issues with my theme. Now I manually compress images on tinypng.com just so I don't have to download another plugin(the less, the better). I also found that resizing images to 640*425 can make a huge difference in file size
Kraken does not perform lazy loading, I.e. deferring of images. You will need another plugin for this. If you can either keep Kraken and find a Lazy Load plugin, or you can replace Kraken with another image optisation plugin that also performs lazy loading. The choice of plugin will depend on the Theme you're using, the other plugins you have installed and whether you want to keep Kraken or not.
so, now I have installed Smush to lazy load my images and am running it in conjunction with Kraken. I checked the speed of my site and it has improved since I installed Smush. Now I am just not sure if I should still keep Kraken or delete it? What would you suggest?
If you have configured Smush to also Optimise and not just to lazy load, then yes, you can deactivate Kraken. You can always test it for a week or so before you fully delete it. Make sure you're happy with the settings etc.
thanks, Chrystopher. Smush free version only allows for lazy load. If I want optimization, I have to upgrade to pro version which is $7/month after the 7 day free trial period. Just putting this info out here, in case anyone else is wondering.
What exactly does Kraken do? I feel like it's supposed to optimize images, but yet when I use PageSpeed Insights, it shows all my featured images as "opportunities" where I can reduce image sizes.
I am using GP and create 1024x536 featured images. I run them through http://reduceimages.com, save them as JPEG before I upload them to WP. Typically I get them down to about 100kb.
I am not sure how Kraken fits into the picture. Do I need to activate something within Kraken? I also don't seem to be able to "Krak 'em all" to do a bulk compression.
Sorry that you never got a reply!
FYI- I deleted Kraken and installed Autoptimize. This is working a whole lot better.
Oh and I also always use SiteContent to upload images as they optimize/compress images before posting to WP.
This is working well so far for me. I was going crazy with trying to improve my page speeds. Finally figured out a way.
Hope this helps you out too.
See more comments
For me any page builder slows your site down
Thank you Catherine for your input! Are you using GeneratePress to create all landing pages?
i am now i have just transferred my main site to GP. I was until last week using Divi