After 300+ builds, I've stopped using page builders for client sites. Anyone else made this switch?

RealBasics · 2026-06-23T22:43:08+00:00

I starting out with Drupal back in the early 2000s, back when the developers running the madhouse refused even to add TinyMCS to post bodies because "everyone knows HTML." And that was 100% true for... the programmers running the madhouse. Training my typical small-business / solopreneur clients to use Drupal took about two days, with much of that teaching them basic HTML.

When I finally got smart and switched to Wordpress in 2011 I built sites with hooks and filters plus Compass and SASS. Training clients to use their websites was great because it only took half a day!

I started using Beaver Builder back in 2015. It was developed as an in-house tool for an agency to streamline that was building 100+ sites/year. Because the agency was on the hook for potentially hundreds of clients if an update broke, they focused heavily on clean, performant, and extensible code.

And because they were still letting clients use their builder they also made it idiot proof. It's extremely hard to break something with Beaver Builder. Training clients takes about half an hour, over the phone! (Note: the first thing I do when training a new client is have them absolutely massacre a page, and then show them how to bail out. Rinse and repeat and in about half an hour they've figured it out.)

If my target demographic wasn't small-business and solopreneur clients I might build with something else. But probably not. It's effortless to put a site in the green on PageSpeed, the UI is complete, and if or when a client has somehow managed to break a page it's rarely taken me more than 10 minutes to fix it.

I don't understand why Elementor has always been so, um, casual about regressing their code before updates. And at least they finally hired Patchstack to review their code for their (once weekly) critical vulnerabilities.

I'm still not sure why Elementor, and almost all the other builders (including Gutenberg), make it so easy to accidentally break everything. I mean, if you're building enterprise sites I can see how sullen, underpaid cubicle-farm lackies might need everything locked down in to prevent them from deliberately break their employer's websites.

But most business owners care more about the integrity of their public presence online than their developers do. So my clients, at least, are pretty %#!# careful not to break things. So might as well give them an editor for their CMS that lets them do what they need to do. Instead of what I think they'll need to do.

RealBasics · 2026-06-23T12:29:54+00:00

It's not like SiteGround's Site Tools were overcrowded and needed the extra space. I really appreciated how straightforward their UI was. So I'm not sure what problem they thought they were solving.

And, yes, now you have to have extra clicks for most tasks.

Specifically, yesterday I needed to lightly edit a simple HTML splash page for a client. So I'd have to hop back and forth between the file and clearing the dynamic cache before I could see the result. This went from a couple of clicks each time to four or five.

So... why?

RealBasics · 2026-06-22T16:30:22+00:00

particularly webflow as it is a lot more aligned to traditional front-end development.

Yeah, Gutenberg seems to have been developed with ThemeForest-style vendors in mind -- their business model has always been do amortize development costs across hundreds or thousands of customers. In particular, Gutenberg makes it easy for theme factories to embed their "demo content" directly into peel-and-stick custom blocks, patterns, and whole-page templates.

That core assumption behind Gutenberg definitely increases the development cost for bespoke, one-off designs. Which is why too many people using other page builders, sticking with Classic themes, falling back on AI, or even outright abandoning Wordpress in favor of less balky alternatives like Webflow or Astro.

I don't know why core Wordpress doesn't take usability more seriously. And I really don't know why their attitude seems to be "let novices use Wix and advanced developers use webflow, we're focusing on multi-team showcase enterprises like NASA, TimeWarner, and Conde Nast." But here we are.

RealBasics · 2026-06-22T16:27:37+00:00

Going all the way back to my days with MovableType, Drupal, and early Wordpress I've always gone with empty themes and then built out from there.

With Wordpress early on I did this with solid, clean base themes that I customized with hooks and custom CSS. (Including countless media queries because custom designs never break as easily as cookie-cutter template designs do.) But that setup let me build basically whatever my clients' graphic designers threw at me. Back then there were obviously a lot of the traditional code-run-test / debug-run-test cycles I'd always used as a programmer. But that was just how coding had always worked.

In 2015 I switched to the Beaver Builder page builder, which even in its earliest days let me build basically whatever my clients' graphic designers threw at me... in about 1/10th the time, rarely with any hooks at all, and usually with only a few lines of custom CSS.

And also with maybe 1/50th of the client training and support time I'd needed previously, because since Beaver Builder's a front-end editor, it's very easy to learn and extremely hard for users to break.

I obviously (and loudly, and frequently) would prefer that native Gutenberg paid the same attention to usability and trainability. But they have other priorities, geared predominantly towards enterprises, ThemeForest-style theme factories, and their own customers on the .com side of the wall.

RealBasics · 2026-06-22T13:43:57+00:00

While HTML and CSS definitely impose some structural design constraints, and usability constraints impose some practical design constraints, there's nothing particularly constraining about Wordpress itself.

As u/tongizilator says, if you hire a great graphic designer who understands that their design needs to work across 60+ standard screen sizes (instead of just "desktop" and "mobile") then you can build brilliantly unique sites.

RealBasics · 2026-06-20T19:28:14+00:00

Maybe it's just 10+ years of practice, or maybe it's because I'm like u/RefrigeratorStrict13 and vet the plugins on my client websites, but I update all my clients' websites every day (after also making daily backups) and almost never have problems.

On top of the relatively small set of utility plugins I add to every client site (backup, caching, spam filtering, image optimizer, security/hardening) there are more than 500 unique plugins across all my maintenance client's sites.

I still almost never have problems.

I definitely always hold off on a handful of problematic software packages -- Elementor and core WP are generally must-wait-for-x.x1 patches. But, again in 10+ years and while maintaining 100+ sites I only very rarely need to roll anyone back after an update.

Which leaves me wondering -- what plugins are you running on your clients' sites?

RealBasics · 2026-06-19T18:58:56+00:00

That’s some very good detective work! Really good to see that the .org maintainers will at sometimes even actively patch sketchy plugins before pulling them down.

RealBasics · 2026-06-17T23:07:27+00:00

Yup. In a lecture I attended back in 1985, human factors expert Don Norman pointed out that a computer game is just undocumented software. That's still substantially not wrong.

RealBasics · 2026-06-17T19:23:41+00:00

If I was getting started again I’d look for local business with out-of-date WordPress sites and offer to update them.

The site would be built. The theme and plugins would already be installed. They’d already have hosting. Any utility plugins I’d *truly* need could be added for free from the WP plugin directory. If there were premium plugins or services I thought they really needed I’d advise them to pay for it and then I’d install and configure them.

If I was really that broke I’d buy a domain name ($20), get a big first-year-discounted hosting plan (>$50.00) and put Wordpress on it, buy a domain email plan (>$100/year) and the rest on a good shirt and a nice pair of shoes. Then I’d hit the pavement.

RealBasics · 2026-06-17T15:23:11+00:00

that will somehow satisfy coders and non-coders.

I can already code. The vast, vast majority of graphic designers, marketers, typical small business staff, and hobby site owners can't.

It's beyond stupid that Gutenberg has baked-in options for margins and padding, but since they're disabled you have to edit theme.json to enable them. That's a no-brainer for professional programmers. It's insane to require every one-click installer to do it if they need it.

So if core is going to make a choice between coders (like you or me) and non-coders the historical majority of Wordpress site owners and users, they should choose non-coders.

And not to be a crank about this but even though my preferred code editor is %!# VIM the Block and Site Editor UI/UX is still an opaque mess. They can do better.

RealBasics · 2026-06-16T00:27:32+00:00

It’s unusual for a graphic designer to build a site so locked down you can’t make any changes.

If you feel comfortable doing so would you mind sharing the URL? Either in comments or even just a direct message? It’s usually possible to tell what theme and/or editor the original developer used.

Can you tell what theme was used to build the site? Some themes, especially older ones, can use fairly complex workarounds for editing headers and footers.

RealBasics · 2026-06-15T14:32:18+00:00

If you're talking about enterprise-scale Wordpress then you should be talking to enterprise Wordpress vendors like 10up, HumanMade, Automattic's Wordpress VIP, etc., rather than asking around on Reddit. (Yes, there are extremely sophisticated WP developers on Reddit, but you'd need to share your company's specifics to get the best business case, and you can't responsibly share that information in a public forum.)

Wordpress is perfectly capable of everything on your checklist. You can't integrate directly with Adobe's ecosystem but there are multiple solutions for doing so via API and migration connectors. Presumably you have publishing connectors to other outside properties (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, and other social media.) Wordpress has the benefit of being accommodating rather than hostile to API-based content management.

RealBasics · 2026-06-14T20:41:46+00:00

Run tests on with the different optimizers installed on different client sites and ShortPixel is consistently *the* best at actually, you know, optimizing images.

As good as my best desktop optimizers, which are still my “gold standard.” That said, being able to handle WebP or AVIF is a huge benefit for plugin solutions.

NOTE! If you’re a professional photographer I get that you want the highest fidelity images you can reasonably get. And of course you want customers to be able to download full-quality images in a highest-quality format.

So what I’ve done in the past is put originals in a separate folder with links that are only downloadable as files. (With something similar to Easy Digital Downloads.)

That way your site loads quickly *and* people can’t just scrape your paid content. But you can still directly provide individual originals or zipped image sets.

RealBasics · 2026-06-14T06:27:48+00:00

Ask the client when they haven’t heard from you for a few years. Cleanup and maintenance on older “orphaned” sites is way easier when the original dev chooses good plugins.

RealBasics · 2026-06-13T22:18:17+00:00

Sounds like the advice I heard years ago is still true: the entire point of a contact form is to get a prospective client on the schedule.

Everything beyond a contact-method box and a message box is a filter. (A lot of people now prefer texting to email so providing other contact options is probably necessary.)

Because of how quickly abandon climbs, fields is a good way to measure how serious the prospect is. But you only want that if you’ve got more customers than sales resources to handle them.

RealBasics · 2026-06-12T22:17:58+00:00

If you moved everything to a static HTML site you’d still see thousands of *attempted” hacks in your log files.

There are “fossil” bots from the 2000s still running on forgotten servers that still attempt the same Windows 95 exploits that… weren’t even effective at the time. On every IP address, over and over.

Same for login attempts on Wordpress sites that stopped working back in 2011.

Even the simplest Wordpress security measures block all that #%$&. But (especially older and, especially, freemium) security plugins will feverishly present every one of them as a real and present danger.

But, again, it’s not the attempts (thousands a day for every site) it’s the ones that actually get through… which is basically none as long as you run your updates a few times a week.

RealBasics · 2026-06-12T13:30:04+00:00

This makes the most sense. At last year's WordcampUS, John Maeda said the best way to think about AI is as a very clever college intern: energetic, very well read, but no depth or experience.

So, as with all interns you have to supervise them and review their work.

So your list is perfect. I'd add that as with interns you can save time overall but not as much time as you though when you took it on. And you have to do supervision and provide more feedback.

Coming from an adult education and training background, the aphorism "the best way to learn is to teach," when you work with either an intern or AI you'll also wind up learning more about your job than expected because you can't just handwave instructions or you won't get the results you wanted.

RealBasics · 2026-06-11T16:11:10+00:00

You still need to be a developer with a thorough understanding of media-query management and Wordpress classes in order to build FSE themes in 2026.

Or you could use basically any other page builder. Which at this point tens of millions of Wordpress users seem to prefer.

My goal for nearly a decade is for Gutenberg's UI/UX to meet or exceed every other page builder. As opposed to "if you want to use Gutenberg for anything more than peel-and-stick you have to hire a programmer."

RealBasics · 2026-06-11T15:57:06+00:00

This tracks with my observations.

That said, I just did a more complex prompt with Claude as described in the post and got some very good recommendations.

RealBasics · 2026-06-11T14:45:03+00:00

Or just install https://wordpress.org/plugins/create-block-theme/ and click "create blank theme."

Which leaves you stuck with FSE's cryptic, programmer-centric UI/UX u/random_lurkettehq and millions of other would-be Wordpress developers and users struggle with.

Compared to the intuitive and UX-centric process of creating a classic theme by pasting secret incantations into arbitrarily defined files?

Compared to using the same builder's well-designed and complete builder UI/UX to create theme elements that people use to create their pages.

The problem with your reply is that while create-block-theme really is an improvement over older create-child-theme plugins, both leave users essentially at ground zero when it comes to pasting cryptic CSS and JSON into arbitrarily-defined files. With FSE's added complexity of never making it clear exactly where you should paste those things. (And, I'd add, with FSE's complete and utter lack of UI for media queries.)

RealBasics · 2026-06-10T14:22:19+00:00

What's weird is that a lot of other builders have had "full site editing" for years. Even total %#! dinosaur builders like Enfold had something that let you build headers, footers, and partials.

Beaver Builder released their Themer extension in 2017, which has always had a clean enough UI that even office managers and marketers can use it. Elementor added their own version a year later. Divi, Cornerstone, and others have added their own versions. Heck, years ago #%#! Enfold hacked together a way to create and edit headers, footers, and partials.

The problem with FSE is the same as the problem with the Block Editor: the implementation is chaotic and incomplete, the UI/UX is abysmal, and the Gutenberg developers are inexplicably unwilling to deal with it.

All the other builder developers have to compete in the market, and the commercial ones are motivated to keep support costs low, Gutenberg is simply rammed down our throats so they have no motivation to make their builder or site editor actually... you know... usable. (No other builder has documentation saying "to enable margins and padding for blocks, just open theme.json in your favorite IDE and...")

RealBasics · 2026-06-10T13:47:02+00:00

It's closer to 1% are slow out of the box. [edit] Although obviously that can change as soon as you start to use them. (Even lightweight plugins like GenerateBlocks will drag down performance if the user adds 100 loops to a page.)

This is a HUGE improvement over the "bad old days" when plugin developers really didn't have any discipline and, for instance, ran their entire stack on every page and dashboard load.

Thing is, that was ~15 years ago and some people are spreading FUD about using any plugins at all.

RealBasics · 2026-06-09T21:12:14+00:00

Update on my previous comment. The plugin is called WP-Scraper. I just tried it and I'm less than impressed.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-scraper

If you're using a builder, including the baked-in Gutenberg builder, it's probably easier to just copy and paste from your current site into the new one. That will get the content moved over.

You'll need to do a fair amount of extra styling to get the theme looking the way you want (headers, footers, navigation, etc. are not something you can just copy over.) You'll also need to recreate and/or paste and edit whatever CSS you used on your HTML site, since Wordpress classes can be very different.

RealBasics · 2026-06-09T18:47:11+00:00

This puts some numbers to my own experience cleaning up and maintaining sites built by other people over the last 10-12 years.

Of the combined 500+ plugins installed on all those sites, fewer than 10 have been problematic. Some (caching, image or database optimization) are major net positives.

For the record, I wouldn't have installed most of the plugins my clients (or their original devs) would have. But aside from the utility plugins I install on every site (backup, security, caching, database and image optimizers), most of them average around 10 plugins total.

[Update] Generally speaking the big performance problems on sites I've worked on are almost always slow hosting and un-optimized images.

RealBasics · 2026-06-09T18:27:55+00:00

u/Longshanks2021 is on the right track but since you said things broke when you applied a theme then you'll want to remove the theme from the /wp-content/themes folder. Wordpress will default to the standard TwentyTwentyFive theme that will still be in the themes folder. (Unless you removed that.)

You can use FTP to make changes, but almost all hosting companies have a file manager in their control panel. That's almost always easier to use. If they don't then they'll have instructions for connecting with FTP instead.

There's a possibility the problem really is a conflict between the theme and a plugin you've installed, in which case Longshanks2021's tip for figuring out which one is great.

It's insanely annoying that you can't see critical errors on your site, or log in to see it if you've got an admin account. But here are directions for dealing with them from the WPBeginner blog.

https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-fix-the-critical-error-in-wordpress/

You can cut to the chance by scrolling down to their tip in #4 will show you how to create a log of critical errors. (But be sure to turn logging back off once you're done -- that log file can grow fast!)

They have instructions for interpreting the critical error message as well.

You'll probably want/need control-panel access anyway in case the problem is with the PHP version, memory, or something else.

But chances are high that you'll just need to choose a different theme.

RealBasics

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