Sneak peek at the upcoming Pinegrow plugin for WordPress

Announcements
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A new Pinegrow product is coming soon:

Pinegrow WordPress Plugin will let you use Pinegrow in the browser - self-hosted directly on your WordPress site - to create blocks, themes and static HTML projects.

Here is a quick sneak peek, recorded by @adamslowe:

For those not so familiar with the way how Pinegrow is used to build WordPress projects, take a look at why Pinegrow is not yet another page builder.

The plugin is currently in private beta, that will be soon followed by a open public beta.

FAQ

Will the plugin replace the desktop edition of Pinegrow?

No. Pinegrow Web Editor is not going away.

Pinegrow is implemented with JavaScript, HTML and CSS. This allows us to deploy the same code as a standalone desktop application and as a browser based web application, so that users can choose the tool that is most suitable for their needs.

When we add or improve a feature in the Pinegrow code, the improvement shows up in all Pinegrow editions.

What is the main use case for the plugin?

Pinegrow plugin is perfect for creating custom Gutenberg blocks to complement any existing site and for creating themes that do not require much custom code or complicated template structure.

I just switched from Oxygen to Bricks. I’m not ready to start using a new page builder!

You don’t have to switch. Pinegrow is not a page builder (see above). It can be used alongside builders such as Bricks, to create custom blocks that are used on the existing site.

Do I have to run Pinegrow plugin in order to use blocks and themes created with Pinegrow?

No. Pinegrow exports native WordPress code for blocks and themes, that do not require any plugins to run. You can simply deactivate or deinstall Pinegrow once you create and export the project.

How much it will cost?

We will have affordable subscription plans based on the number os sites where the plugin is used, with generous discounts for existing Pinegrow users. We are still working out the details.

How do I join the beta?

We will soon open the beta to the public.

How about Pinegrow Online?

This plugin is a self-hosted version of Pinegrow Online, with added features for creating WordPress and WooCommerce projects. At this stage we are not interested in going into the hosting business, and the plugin gives you all the benefits of the online Pinegrow edition, plus the freedom to host it wherever you want.

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Are the 2 versions Exactly the same thing?

What are the limitations and advantages of using the WordPress plugin over the desktop version?

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Is this an addition ontop of the current WordPress Builder subscription which already creates blocks?

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Wow, that´s what I need. Can´t wait for the Beta.

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As someone who has been using Pinegrow for many years, this sounds like awesome news! Does this mean we can basically have a self-hosted, fully featured Pinegrow Web Editor on WordPress, where we can create wp blocks, themes, but also just create HTML sites that can be exported to he used outside WP?

Will there be a discount for Pinegrow Web Editor users, too?

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Great news. Just hoping they have a special treatment to existent fedelity PG wp users.

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Great! I have the Pinegrow with WP subscription, but don’t really use the WP side of it, as I always use page builders (Elementor, Bricks…).

I can clearly see in the video how you used it to re-create the Flex home page that we used in the Page Builder challenge (I did the Live Canvas and one of the Bricks one, then recreated it in Elementor as well)… Did you use the desktop version of the online WP plugin version to do it?

Waiting for the beta and to know more soon!

Nelson

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@Nelmedia great to see you here as well :slight_smile:

We didn’t have to recreate the Flex site because local projects can be easily imported into the PG WP Plugin (there is an Upload ZIP option for creating new project). If we wouldn’t have the Flex project already done, we would upload the Flex starter project from Shuffle and add WP actions and Interactions to that in PG WP Plugin, in exactly the same way as it was done in the PG desktop.

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Will be a great addition for sure.

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Hi @matjaz,

I’ve been wondering the below overall question for a while and your following comment(s) finally prompted me to inquire.

What then is the status of Pinegrow Theme Convertor in regard to the above statement?

With the tremendous amount of Pinegrow related Wordpress features / improvements being added and with Theme Convertor being part of the Wordpress product line of Pinegrow why then has it not received any updates for nearly 3 years?

The last update v1.3 was March 10 2020, with another release post on February 21 2022 regarding v1.5. But that v1.5 release never seemed to come to fruition as v1.3 is still the only version available for download from early 2020.

Shouldn’t at least some ( if not many ) of the Pinegrow Wordpress related improvements and features being added within the nearly 3 year timeline also be rolled into Pinegrow Theme Convertor, given your above statement?

Thanks in advance.

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Yes they should. We are not satisfied with PGTC falling behind and often discuss this matter internally. Due to the low usage the product is getting for most users that miss the newer feature, converting them to regular PG solves their problems.

Are you using PGTC? Or, would you use it if it had been updated?

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Thanks for your response @matjaz ,

I’m just respectfully inquiring trying to understand. What is your response really saying however? Are you indicating that there is no intention to update Theme Converter at all or within any foreseeable timetable? Or will it be discontinued all together in favor of the “Pinegrow Wordpress Edition” along with the new “Pinegrow Wordpress Plug-in”?

I understand my singular input does not propel decisions within Pinegrow. Given your quoted comments above in my first response, I found it uncanny that Theme Converter is not keeping pace as part of the flagship PG Wordpress product line with relevant features. Indeed I have a lifetime license for Pinegrow Theme Converter, but as they say concerning all software that just means the lifetime of a developers willingness to support a product not an actual users lifetime.

Regarding status will “Pinegrow Theme Converter” receive the updates you acknowledged above which it’s lacking or instead be discontinued in favor of the other WP options?

I have similar concern for “Pinegrow Interactions” regarding lack of updates. As it does not seem to be keeping pace with the “GreenSock GSAP” core updates, improvements, optimizations and fixes. “PGIA” was last updated November 20, 2020 to v2.01 unless I’m mistaken (even regarding PG Live)? I believe the present version 2 of Pinegrow Interactions is using GSAP version 3.6, while the current version of GSAP is 3.11. Which includes a multitude of improvements and optimizations over those 2 years, even if PGIA won’t be leveraging the many additional impressive GSAP core feature additions available.

It appears from another video that Pinegrow Interactions will be part of the Pinegrow Wordpress Plug-in. Will it at last be updated across PG products to coincide with the PG WP Plug-in release?

Thank you in advance for your time.

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Hi @matjaz,

I wanted to be polite and not circle back to the above unanswered inquiry until you had time to release the new “Pinegrow Wordpress Plug-in” and focus on its initial bug fixes along with the new Pinegrow v7 release.

But now that those releases have occurred, I would really appreciate your considerate response as it relates to the update status and future of “Pinegrow Theme Convertor” as inquired above. Especially given your latest (seen below in the video) and continued comments that all app codebases are using the same core and have the ability to push updates across apps.

Thanks as always.

The relative comments from the above video can be read by clicking here

“… HTML Planet for Kids, and when I decided to spend it was like a year or maybe like I don’t know how many 500 hours on that. But when I think of what to do what to implement I always think of ok where else can we use this feature, so how to leverage it and then if its’s just something that oh this is only useful for HTML planet and that’s it would probably not go and implement it, but seeing oh if we did that and then this opens up like the online doors for us to run Pinegrow in browser and if do that and then we have WordPress system backend and we have WordPress tools to build WordPress stuff, then this opens more possibilities and then if all of this is basically same code that desktop and in the browser, then this just expands kind of um you know we have one thing like our code or our features but it lets us package it in different boxes and send out in more different places like selling more shops and then at the end this helps us because you know as a team we have to have a sustainable business, we have to sell enough of Pinegrow in order to keep working on it to invest in improving it, so it makes a lot of sense from the perspective that 95% of the code is the same and then like if desktop is this big the market and then we can go if we can expand it to here with the browser it makes sense and of course like we and that’s another downside of being general purpose editor then people really have very diverse needs and requirements and if you check our forum how many feature requests we get really from all like hug spectrum of of like we development space and we can’t do everything so we have to have some kind of selection process and we have to when we implement features we have to be kind of sure be confident that they make business sense so like people asked us to do like Drupal integration I mean its nice CMS and I used it int eh past but looking at the marketshare of Drupal verses Wordpress it just doesn’t make sense it we can’t do it and we have like requests about better PHP integration but again nowadays PHP on websites is mostly WordPress not so many custom projects and again we have to say no to that feature um so its hard for me I I you know I when when something feels oh yeah that that’s that would work very well in Pinegrow yes yes I would want to do it we are kind of limited with uh resources and with kind of having to then actually implement and support that so we have to be selective.”

“yeah it shows up in pine in desktop and and now uh and just to like you said some people are maybe feel like uh worried about what will happen with desktop but you know just a week or two weeks ago we released Pinegrow 7 with lots of improvements and not only that but under the hood we also merged all the code from our online WordPress desktop version to bring it back together so now it’s all these projects if you look at their code they’re using they’re like kind of at the same place so all the backwards compatibilities were taken care of so and now it’s really once you are there kind of at the tip everything then a feature in one it really quickly shows up in another product so I would I would see this as an advantage”

“bringing it all together helps with that and we tried with Pinegrow live that was a desktop version that loaded from the server but actually didn’t work out because somethings we were just unable to do to to operate in that way so we are kind of depreciating Pinegrow Live, but uh we have desktop Pinegrow and we have Pinegrow plugin and a couple of other products so and all of them are yeah synchronized code wise so its very easy to transfer features from one to another”

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Hi @matjaz,

You’ve been unhistorically active (great to see ! ) on the forum especially concerning all things Wordpress.

However 7.5 months later and this inquiry has not advanced concerning any update to “Pinegrow Theme Convertor”. In-fact the only public facing thing I can see that has transpired is the aforementioned Theme Convertor 1.5 update has now been removed from the release notes. So is this app in fact not part of the same code base as you’ve mentioned for all apps? Is there no intention to update Theme Convertor, if so why is it still being offered for sale?

You mentioned in your singular sparse response above that you are trying to move people to the Pinegrow Wordpress version. So are you saying that the features somewhere along the way became identical between the two apps (minus the obvious missing updates in Theme Convertor)? Because that has never been how the Pinegrow Theme Convertor page or the Pinegrow Wordpress Documentation has described things concerning outside workflows and the need for Theme Convertor even presently to this day. Please clarify.

I really appreciate your time and effort Matjaz and would really appreciate insight into what Pinegrow’s intensions are here for Pinegrow Theme Convertor? Why offer and continue to sell a product if you’re not willing to support it?

I also saw no one from Pinegrow responded to this inquiry, which only helps to play into the abandoned narrative. It’s not hard to imagine that it’s tough to get and retain users of an app when it appears abandoned in every regard.

Please clarify, thank you for your time.

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Hi @Pinegrow_User thank you for your concern. Please let me know more about how you are using Pinegrow Theme Converter in your development workflow. Based on this we will be able to suggest the best approach for you. In many cases this is simply using Pinegrow Web Editor instead of PGTC.

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It’s a first in my professional career that an app developer would adamantly deflect and reject answering such basic inquiries about their own public facing information, documentation and direct comments they’ve made regarding their own app(s).

So I’ll leave the lack of concern to you, after all “Pinegrow Theme Converter” is your product and your lack of support for the app and its customers solely reflects negatively upon you and the Pinegrow (wordpress) brand. That’s no concern of mine, and obviously not yours either.

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Finally, after all the above, progress is finally made.

Though the term “highly-anticipated” :roll_eyes: would be more adequately translated to “implored by users” :astonished: requesting an update which was absent for 3 years. Nonetheless it’s good to see that the effort of the unbalanced above dialog allowed positive progress to be made for “Pinegrow Theme Converter” to finally receive an update.

Thank you.

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