Need help understanding if what I'm trying to do will work or not

[Edward]

First off, I’m a bit confused on the different parts, edit page, WordPress plugins, and so on.

Here’s what I need to be able to do.
I have multiple websites that have been designed with Beaver Builder that have been up for years that are page one sites. Backlinks pointing to them, good SEO and so on.
We want to quit using Beaver Builder and move over to something that is faster for page loads And move more into full HTML pages as much as possible.
If I understand this correctly, if I created something in PineGrow and then moved it into WordPress, the HTML front end of the page would load faster because it’s not loading from the database, only the content would be.? Is that correct so this would right away give us faster page loading.?

I watched a lot of videos and the more videos I watch the more it seems like it’s a bit more confusing on what item to use for what.
I would like to be able to design the pages locally so they’re all always easy to have backed up. and then put them into the WordPress site.

But I will need to use some kind of theme. I see there’s a starter theme 2" It looks like I would be able to use to get things going. Or could I use any theme? with pine grow like GeneratePress.

Would the theme load into the local editor for me to work in there or would the theme be put on the WordPress site? But then I edit the content area locally and then somehow take that content and how do I get it into the WordPress pages?

The most important part about this is I need to keep the page names exactly the same so my SEO does not change. I would basically be using all the same text and images from each page just with a brand new layout that I would design in Pinegrow. So the site gets removed from Beaver Builder with all the same pages and page names just redesigned.

My first plan was to replace all the pages with pure HTML pages, but that seems to be a lot more difficult than it sounds To keep the exact page names working. So I think keeping WordPress running because I do have some plugins that I would like to keep running for an order page. If I could just replace each WordPress page with a new designed page and then remove Beaver Builder would possibly be my better choice for this. I have quite a few sites to do this to.

I’ve watched some videos on creating blocks. I don’t fully understand this, but if this is right, it seems like I would create, a new version of each one of the pages in the local editor. And then export out each block into WordPress. And then drop each block into whatever page I’m working on within the starter 2 theme or other theme. Rebuilding all my pages that way, keeping each exact page name. Is that what I would need to do for this? And would that work?
So I wouldn’t start moving over blocks until I have all the pages redesigned locally in the editor. And it really wouldn’t matter what I name the pages since I’m just going to be moving in the blocks. Or should the names match and can I move the whole pages at once not block by block?

Or is there a way to create the whole entire page and then push that whole page with all its blocks at once into each page that I’m keeping the page name the same for?
I’m thinking doing it this way I would not need to use the pine grow WordPress plugin. Or would I still need to use the plug in.

Then for any new sites, I could create them as HTML sites or a mixture of HTML with a WordPress blog.
I have one of the larger sites fully loaded into a local WordPress for testing. I just need the right direction to start going And if this will work…

[Edward]

I’ve been doing a lot of searching in Google Gemini asking questions about this. I think I’m getting a better handle of it but sometimes Gemini gives me really wrong information.

From what it’s telling me, if I do it as blocks, I could use any theme in WordPress and then I put the blocks in there, the page will load definitely faster. The way it’s fed up because the blocks are finished HTML. And instead of just moving one block over a time, if I have like five or six blocks on a page I can combine all the blocks at once to be a block move over as a plug-in.

But if I use the Pine grow theme and do the whole website at once, recreating all the pages, for example on a smaller site that might only have six pages, and then uploaded everything at once from Pine Grow This would be ultimately the fastest way. I could turn off Beaver Builder. Uploading the Pine Grove theme would upload all the pages as well. As long as I rename the pages exactly the same, I wouldn’t lose any of my SEO, backlinks, and so on, because the pages would still be the same. And most of this would not even need to go into the WordPress database. Making it all load faster.

This leads to a few other questions if that is all correct above.
If I did it as the theme with the whole site at once, then how could I edit the pages? Would I edit them on my local edit area and how would it then update each page or would it have to load the whole entire site every time updating a few lines of text or something on a page or changing one of the page layouts?

Is there pre-built components that I could drop in when I’m building pages that when they would be uploaded to WordPress either as blocks or as a full page that would already be set up to be editable for text and or replace images?
Or would I have to do this manually on every single item to make it editable in the WordPress interface? I was watching one video showing how to do that. It seems like a very lengthy process for every single item.

So if all this is correct, on my smaller sites I could just recreate all the pages in Pinegrow, load the whole thing at once to replace the site with the page names slugs exactly the same so they all still work.
On a larger site that has 30 plus pages I would probably be better off replacing each page one at a time using blocks Installing generate press to replace the beaver builder theme to start with and then when all the pages are done eventually replace generate press with the pine grow theme which then would make that load a little bit faster too.

So I would not need to use the Pine grow WordPress plugin.

[PeteSharp]

Hi @Edward

You don’t have to start with a theme, you can build what you want from scratch. You can build a static website or build a Wordpress theme in Pinegrow. If you make a Wordpress theme, it can display all your existing Wordpress page content, and pages. Your needs will determine how you build the theme,

Based on your posts, it suggests there is going to be a steep learning curve here, so the first question that needs to be addressed, is are you willing to invest the time for that. Then map out your goals. It might be starting with the most simple one page site you have. And use that to get familiar with working in Pinegrow first. Move on to Wordpress stuff later. (I assume you are talking about multiple websites here, it’s a little hard to follow your posts).

AddressIng the speed issue, there are lot of variables, especially the web hosting plan you have, how optimised your assets are.. etc. I’ve never used it, but it looks like Beaver Builder is just a WP page builder, I doubt that’s slowing anything down.

[Edward]

I’ve watched tons of videos, read tons of help files, and been working on this pretty much non-stop around 10 to 12 hours a day.
There’s so many things I can’t get working.
I’ve tried grabbing the whole site. That’s what I have right now. I’ve tried to do and turning it into cleaner HTML trying to follow directions from Gemini directing me on things that I’m asking questions because Getting an answer here in the help group it takes days days.
I’ve also sent in an email to support with screen grabs of things that I’m having problems with.

For example, when I drop in any of the items into the web page, they don’t drop in formatted. So if I have dropped in something with four box areas that are side by side, when I drop them in, they all become boxes stacked on top of each other. I can’t figure out how to make that drop in like it should.
Then when I tried to duplicate something, it duplicates it and pushes it down right on top of the other item below it. And makes some parts of what it’s duplicated no longer even be there.

I’ve got AI working locally now. That took me over a day to get set up. But then I get error messages constantly from the AI saying that parts of the code is wrong so it can’t fix something that’s messed up or something.
I have four websites to move over to this as soon as possible
Beaver Builder does slow down this site quite a bit with all of its extra tags around each component. And we’re moving away from Beaver Builder and not going to renew our plan. I’ve done literally hundreds of sites in it over the past bunch of years. So I’m so used to using that drag and drop system, I haven’t needed to code anything.
Everything I drag and drop in here does not work. The formatting is all off. It either extends full width, or if I drop it in a box, then the formatting is all messed up.

But I’m still trying.I need to get this going and get these sites done.
Here’s the screen grab. I loaded in this full site. It took a while for me to get to this point and then I’ve cleaned up some of the extra CSS and files but it still has tons of files in here that Gemini is telling me that I don’t need but if I remove some of them I lose all the formatting. It’s telling me to area by area copy this over to a new blank page to reformat it to get all the blote taken out. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do or not.

[Edward]

Here I started an all new design starting from scratch. This is the third time I’ve started one. And I can’t get a lot of the elements to work right. As you can see here in the screen grab, when I duplicated the one item, the whole bottom half of it turned white. And when I remove the heading off of it, it pushes it down into the other items below it.

[Edward]

For a little bit more context of what’s going on, four photography sites were just sold. And we need to remove them from Beaver Builder. And then, preferably, redesign them in PineGrow. Then the new owner would purchase a copy of PineGrow as well that we can then give him the site that’s completely finished. Basically he just needs to add blog posts to, but then he has it. And then we would buy a copy of PineGrow as well to continue using for more things.
We would be providing the web maintenance for it for up to a year. as part of the sale.
We’re also doing all the continued bookings for him for photography jobs in exchange for a small fee per job we book and manage existing jobs.