M Asif Rahman discusses WordPress 6.2's new global styles and full-page color options that narrow the gap with page builders like Elementor. The update may force redesigns for existing Gutenberg sites and create compatibility headaches, but Elementor's focus on stability could keep it competitive as Gutenberg continues rapid changes.
Chapters
WordPress is in a really weird place right now.
This is a pivotal moment for anyone that uses WordPress.
You've been seeing a beta tag in the editor area and that will be gone. Will Gutenberg replace page builders? And my answer today we have with us Asif, the founder of WP Developer. They are definitely up there with the largest contributors to the next version of WordPress. WordPress 6.2 is really upon us. It does seem like they are making significant progress. But the question in everybody's mind, where does this leave Elementor and other page builders? Are we talking about the demise of the page builders as we knew it and everything getting consumed into Gutenberg? He knows Gutenberg and Elementor as well as anyone can. He has possibly the most important plugin in the Elementor ecosystem.
Let's just consider why people are very excited in 6.2. It's mainly because in 6.2 you are getting like full page color and front options where you could apply color palette kind of things for the full page. Like how long ago Elementor has this feature? Because this is very core of making any landing page. Gutenberg took like that long time to bring such a very trivial feature. So if you have built your page with Gutenberg maybe one year ago now, after 6.2, either you have to actually redo the page design or you will not be able to have all the new features in the new page.
The site will not break. But if you're trying to do something new, the site may be added, a new content or new landing page and you can get stuck very much what you're describing is almost antithetical to what WordPress has been about. They've been in WordPress for such a long time. They go to such great lengths to make sure that your sites do not break when you update.
I feel like Gutenberg is not learning from WordPress.
Wow, that's a big statement.
For past few years. We are moving very fast for the goal to become the main page builder of WordPress is actually breaking things so fast. So you never know like what will happen in next version or breaks down in next version. So a lot of those features that are coming right now in the next version probably change dramatically. And if you build something on top of Gutenberg, like we are building essential blocks, you have to redo the whole work. So that is one of the core problem.
Does Elementor face the same shortcomings? And if it does not, do you think that's the reason why Elementor is here to stay for much, much longer time?
Elementor has made a lot of mistake in terms of the page loading speed and a lot of different aspect. Elementor was always very focused towards user, how user are giving feedback, how their ecosystem is evolving. So Elementor is very controlled. At the same time it's actually listen to people. Elementor evolved in past few years and now they're focusing more into integrations, more into having a ecosystem where no other parts could break any user's experience. So it's completely the opposite directions where like Gutenberg is going. Elementor is not going to break things. Elementor is going more into stability.
Who's the user of Elementor? Who is the user of Gutenberg?
So if you look from agency perspective, Gutenberg could be like experimental choice if you have like engineering power to go back and forth after few updates. But if you are looking for stability, Elementor is easy choice. Also a lot of things are ready made. I do not feel like Gutenberg is directly a real competition with Elementor right now. I think people will build more on Gutenberg, but probably not just yet.
Gutenberg has come a long way, but next couple of years Elementor still is going to be strong.
