Hi! I was wondering if anyone could help me understand what exactly I am getting with a WordPress theme that I cannot create with your Page Builder? From this question, I am obviously not a programmer, so it’s hard for me to understand which elements are part of a theme and which are being created/manipulated by Page Builder.
Currently, I have two blogs. One is a basic spiritual reflections blog at www.jedidiahsjourney.com. The other is a community hiking blog that I hope to build up with merchandise and guided trips (www.clearwatertrekker.com).
It seems like everything works off of plugins and widgets, so what exactly am I looking for in a WordPress theme? What does the theme provide that I can’t create in Page Builder or that WordPress does not already include? Does it help to pay for a theme, or can I just start with a basic, free theme and build it up with Page Builder?
My ignorance shows in the vague quality of my question, so I appreciate your patient replies!
Hi, thanks for reaching out. This is perhaps a topic we can explore a blog post soon. We can go quite deep so I’ll do my best to answer briefly.
WordPress needs to have a theme activated. Themes handle front-end styling and an array of additional functionality. For example, our Corp theme has a sticky header, custom WooCommerce styling and a back to top button, just as a sample.
If you’re doing a lot of design work in Page Builder then you might want to opt for a lightweight theme with minimal design. On Facebook, we chatted about perhaps Unwind which is more blog orientated and Corp which is a bit more business orientated or rather has a more conventional look to it.
https://wordpress.org/themes/siteorigin-unwind/
https://wordpress.org/themes/siteorigin-corp/
Page Builder inserts content into the content area set up by the theme. The theme provides global widget areas like the footer and sidebar and decides where those go, how wide they are and what styling they have.
Hopefully, this gives you an idea.
Yes, this is very helpful. Thank you much!
I went looking for a theme expecting that what I saw in the demo would all be possible to construct from within the theme settings itself, but the theme I chose relies on Page Builder to construct it’s demos, so I began to get confused about what to expect from either. LOL.
From a noob’s point of view, it’s just a lot of switching back and forth between settings and options and pages and widgets and plugins to hack together something that looks so polished when you first preview it.
Thanks for this overview. It really helps me get a bird’s eye view of what’s happening. And I’ll check out those themes you posted links to.
For sure. If you were building from the beginning, you’d usually start in theme settings, set your chosen font or fonts, set your basic colors like link colors etc. From there you’d set up your pages and then set up your menu at AppearanceCustomizeMenus. Once that’s done, you’d edit each page, how you build each page is up to you. You can keep it simple with the WordPress core editor or use a Page Builder plugin like ours.