Pinegrow WP / Elementor Workflow

Pinegrow WP
#1

I understand the key value propositions for both Pinegrow WP and Elementor. I would like to leverage both tools in my WordPress web site development workflow. Here’s is a thought, and any feedback is most welcome.

Elementor provides a very user-friendly GUI for laying out web pages. This is not a knock against Pinegrow, as it, too, has a very deep feature set for this very purpose. However, Elementor is more intuitive. Suppose I quickly mock up my web page design with Elementor, perhaps taking it as far as possible with the free version. Next, I pull in various HTML pages for the Elementor-developed web site into Pinegrow WP and leverage its capability (a) to refine the site’s structure and/or CSS and, most importantly, (b) to apply WordPress actions to the various pages and create a custom theme.

True, this may not be the most efficient workflow, but it allows me to use these exceptional tools in a manner that matches my development style. Other than this being a somewhat convoluted workflow, does anyone see major pitfalls with this approach?

#2

I use neither Elementor or Wordpress, but the workflow that gets your bills paid is always a viable workflow IMO.

#3

Elementor is a visual builder in the form of a master WordPress theme that relies on plugins. It’s designed for a non-coding environment, but can be customized traditionally using functions.php modifications and traditional PHP templating. I’ve developed on it over the past few years when clients requested it and I ended up dropping it due to the shoddy plugin developers that support it, as well as too many core bugs (and bloat). It was a nightmare for clients, even when highly customized. My agency won’t touch it.

In theory, you could potentially use Pinegrow to develop page templates and then manually integrate them. But to do that and integrate customizations, you need to use the Hello Child Theme which was specifically designed as a “bare reset” to allow for customizations: https://github.com/elementor/hello-theme-child

Comparing Elementor to Pinegrow is apples to oranges, as Elementor is a multipurpose theme and Pinegrow is a coding/development tool. If you’re looking to code out sites, then PG will help you out greatly, but if you’re looking for shortcuts, then multipurpose themes may be the way for you to go. Customizing Elementor’s functions and templating can be done via code, but it can also be done using native Elementor controls with the built-in theme editor.

2 Likes
#4

Thanks for the reply. Yes, Elementor and PInegrow have varied functionality, and I do not categorize them the same way. My point is to utilize Elementor for its quick drag & drop functionality within an existing Elementor-supporting theme strictly for the purpose of producing a mockup. When viewing the mocked up web pages in a web browser, I would then use Pinegrow’s capability of ingesting HTML pages to capture the HTML structures and their assets and then go to work on developing a custom WP theme, essentially eliminating Elementor at that stage of development.

#5

Got it now, understood. Yes, it’s pretty good for that, I know folks that are still using Divi for prototyping. However, there are a lot of designers in my circle that are using tools like InVision, Just in Mind, and others to do that also.