WordPress Website Development: Should You Choose Elementor or Gutenberg?
Getting Started
First, let's explain why there are so many page editors in the WordPress world. Before WordPress 5.0, the default editor in WordPress was the "Classic Editor." The Classic Editor was a very simple tool, sufficient for writing articles and news. In terms of design, the solution primarily came from theme developers. They built beautifully pre-designed sections within themes that could be directly used to create pages (please refer to the World Intangible Cultural Heritage Croatian Lace website developed by our studio: www.croatialace.com ). This allowed the creation of attractive websites, but there were limitations due to the low number of sections provided by the theme, and the difficulty of changing certain layouts within sections. As a result, for a long time, page editing tools had limited functionality.
Unleashing the Soul of Web Design
Because design required more freedom, page editors were born.
Page editors were great because users were no longer dependent on a limited number of theme sections; they could design entire pages according to their own preferences. It was a revolution that unleashed the soul of web design, leading to the development of many page editor plugins, and even theme developers created their own page editors. With each passing year, page editors continued to improve, introducing more sophisticated blocks and stunning templates. However, they were not perfect.
One major drawback was that page editors tended to be "bulky" and "resource-intensive" plugins, containing a substantial amount of code that inevitably led to increased loading times. Additionally, the HTML code they generated could become excessively long. For instance, even a simple section with text and images might end up with hundreds of lines of code, significantly slowing down the page loading speed. The complexity of the page directly correlated with the surplus code generated by the page editor. Despite these concerns, the advantages they brought outweighed these relatively minor issues, and thus, they were widely embraced.
It was a revolution that unleashed the soul of web design, and many page editor plugins were developed, even theme developers created their own page editors.
However, the WordPress team had other ideas. Thus, Gutenberg was born.
Unlimited Creativity
The first step was the release of Gutenberg, a block page editor. Although Gutenberg had much better features than the Classic editor, it still had shortcomings when it came to creating complex designs. But some developers (clever ones who saw the future of WordPress) created design tools (plugins) to extend Gutenberg's capabilities. Through these extensions, Gutenberg became powerful enough to create pages as beautiful as those with page editors. More importantly, Gutenberg is simple, and it is the default editor for WordPress. As a result, it is much lighter than any page editor plugin and generates shorter code, significantly improving website loading speed compared to page editors (e.g., Elementor pages). Refer to the homepage of the studio's official website: www.omahoung.com , and another website case: www.ician.co Yu Shang Construction.
Compared to page editors, Gutenberg's only drawback lies in its interface not as "user-friendly" as page editors, and the process of developing pages with Gutenberg may be more complex and time-consuming.
Now people using WordPress are confused. Because they are accustomed to using page editors and have limited knowledge of Gutenberg, they still use and recommend page editors. Sometimes, this may also be due to clients' requests for quick website development or website companies having to rapidly digest work due to a high volume of projects, leading to time constraints. Companies do not have time to develop with Gutenberg, so they use Elementor or other page editors to speed up development, sacrificing website loading speed.
The Era of Blazing Fast Websites
However, a turning point has emerged: the rules of the game regarding Google's search engine. In the online realm, faster is always better, and slower simply won't cut it. Therefore, Google recently changed its website evaluation methods, placing a much higher emphasis on loading speed than before. This turning point has led to a growing realization among many that Gutenberg offers distinct advantages over traditional page editors. As a result, the recommendation and adoption of Gutenberg are on the rise.
This trend is expected to grow further in the future. If any WordPress-related development company wishes to thrive, it will have have to embrace Gutenberg. For example, Crocroblocks, renowned for producing popular and advanced plugins for Elementor, is gradually re-creating their plugins for Gutenberg. Moreover, some developers in European and American regions even speculate that all these page editors might eventually fade away. While the outcome remains to be seen, one thing is certain: some page editors will vanish, and others will need to make significant optimization improvements.
In the online realm, speed matters – faster is always better, and slower simply won't cut it.