My New Home Page – Thank You Beaver Builder [VIDEO]
To say I’ve fallen in LOVE with the Beaver Builder plugin would be a HUGE understatement.
(we all know by now when I find something I like & use I can get a little over zealous! This plugin is no exception!).
I’ve written a few posts and done a few video tutorials for another visual page builder so as soon as I started playing with the Beaver Builder I knew a few videos were going to be in order (and some upcoming webinars!). I interviewed the guys from Fastline Media (creators of this ridiculously amazing plugin) so you can look for that podcast episode soon.
In the meantime, let’s take a look at what the Beaver Builder does and why it’s so awesome.
Before we get into the video and all the super cool things Beaver Builder does, let’s talk for a a brief minute about WordPress Visual Builders (I also wrote a recent post over at WP Elevation where I talk about this in more depth. You can check that out here).
Visual Builders
There are two types of page builders for WordPress: Front end builders and back end builders.
And while this might seem obvious, the difference is that the front end builder allows you to edit the page on the front end – meaning you can see the edits happening ‘live’ so to speak on the page and you know exactly how the page is going to look (in other words, no more save draft and preview, then back to your WordPress editor). The back end builder builds your pages in your WordPress dashboard, so you’re still looking at your WordPress editor with some options. I know this probably seems overly simplified, but that pretty much sums it up.
Whether or not these builders are for you depends on your overall business goals. At the risk of sounding somewhat snarky, if you’re an entrepreneur who is “time poor” I think you’re going to find tremendous value in using these tools. The interesting thing about the Beaver Builder is that these guys knew they needed a way to create their client sites in a shorter period of time. They found that they were doing certain things over & over and pretty much created the plugin to solve a problem they were having.
Personally, my time is the one thing that I never seem to have enough of.
Let’s just say that I have gone through a bunch of new site layouts, designs, templates, etc. over the last 6-7 months (literally… I should do a post on my thought process behind each version, the direction I was going in and how I landed here! See what happens when you write? Sometimes you come up with brilliant ideas! ).
What makes Beaver Builder unique
Page templates!
If you’re someone who is better at tweaking things as opposed to starting from scratch, this is IDEAL for you.
There are two types of page templates that come with Beaver Builder:
Home Page Templates
Content Pages
O.K., so technically there are 3 types of page templates because you can start with a blank page, create your own and then save the template.
Not too shabby, huh?
Below is a sneak peek at my new Resources page that I’m working on and plan to take live in the next week or so (the page is almost done, but it’s the additional pages that I link to that need the finishing!). I used their ‘Our Services’ template and simply changed out a few things and I have a beautiful, clean and easy to navigate page.
I’ll probably do an updated post & video when I take that page live, but I show you a little about editing the elements on this page at the end of the video.
Speaking of video, let’s get to the Beaver Builder tutorial. Let me know what else you’d like to see in terms of tutorials or trainings for the Beaver Builder.
Hey Kim,
How does BB compare to Thrive Content Builder? 🙂
Hey Leo,
I think I’m going to have to do a post & videos on this because you’re not the first person to ask this question. 🙂
Personally, I use them for two different purposes.
Beaver Builder comes with page templates for the homepage and content pages (and of course you can create these from scratch with both plugins).
Thrive Content Builder comes with landing page templates (and for lack of a better explanation, mini-funnel pages. Ex: opt-in, download & thank you – all same style/template).
You can use Thrive on blog posts (and I will double check BB, but I think it’s just for pages) as well. I love Thrive for marketing pages and have used BB for my homepage and an upcoming resources page (still working on it). I think you’re going to see more features coming for both plugins (I’ve interviewed both companies 🙂 ).
And for what it’s worth, both work with Genesis and I haven’t had any issues with them both installed on my site.
Hope that helps!
Kim
Great stuff Kim.
As a side note BB will work with post as well. You can activate it within the setting for the plugin.
Thanks David!
And fantastic on the posts! I’m totally going to do that now. 🙂 Think it would be great to create a podcast post template… think I’ll give it a go!
Hi Kim,
I love your posts and podcasts. I bought Beaver Builder but can’t seem to find a good resource for how to make the templates full width using Genesis. Can you recommend a tutorial for this?
Hi Kirsten,
Thanks so much! 🙂
I actually got the snippet from my friend Jonathan Perez of SureFireWebServices (http://surefirewebservices.com). He’s the one who introduced me to Beaver Builder and he’s going to create a post & video showing you how to do this.
I’ll add that link here as soon as he’s published it (I already mentioned it to him so it will be this week).
Thanks again,
Kim
p.s. would love a review in iTunes if you’re up for it 🙂
I can recommend a plugin…Dambuster For Genesis.
http://www.genesisdambuster.com/
Thanks Grace,
I use that now (it wasn’t available when I did this post). 🙂 Appreciate the share.
Have a great day,
Kim
Oh my gosh that would be soooo awesome! I’ve watched some videos but they seem to skip steps that the person assumes I know – like where exactly to post the code or how to create a new page template (or even a link on how to do this). These are things I don’t know yet but would love to learn – especially in relation to Beaver Builder. And yes I’ll leave you a review on iTunes, thanks for the reminder. I can’t wait for the video!
Awesome Kirsten!
I’m going to pass on the other things you’d like to learn with Jonathan (I’m nudging him to do a training on BB! 🙂 ).
Thanks for the review too- totally appreciate it!
Kim
Kim, I love your Home Page, but I have a question – I used Page Builder by SiteOrigin Plugin, do I have to completely deactivate that plugin in order to use Beaver Builder? I prefer Beaver Builder now that I see how easy it is to use. Thanks Kris (I am still working my way learning WP)
Hi Kris,
I haven’t used Page Builder by SiteOrigin but you shouldn’t have to delete that plugin. I haven’t found any plugin conflicts with Beaver Builder (I also use the Thrive Content Builder and love it and they both work well together). I would probably run complete backup on your site and then install BB and activate it with the SiteOrigin plugin.
Hope that helps! 🙂
Thanks,
Kim
Thanks Kim, I’ll give it a go!
You bet Kristine! 🙂
Hi!
Can I use Beaver Builder to create my blog? Will it have all the same features as say… any theme from StudioPress on genesis? Are these 2 things even the same? I want to start a blog but can’t dabble in code as dont know any idea about CSS and other coding. Pardon my noobie questions, just starting out 🙂
Hi,
Yep, you can use Beaver Builder to create your blog… your entire site for that matter. You can use BB with Genesis, but without first installing Genesis you won’t have the features of Genesis.
Genesis & BB are two very different things. Genesis is a theme framework and BB is a plugin.
Hope that helps!
Thanks
Kim
Hi Kim
I just started using BB and love it… I thought Visual Composer was good (and although it has a lot more features and functions) I like how BB is fast and has what you really need.
My problem with it has been the positioning of text. Can you do a tutorial on how to position text anywhere in a row?
Fun knowledge delivered here.
What about just using the BB theme/ child-theme instead of purchasing Genesis or any other theme framework ?
Would they not make a nice site?
Bill
Hi Eliott,
Definitely! 🙂
I’m going to be testing that shortly. Just did a follow up interview with the guys at BB…. love what they’re doing. They’ve got some big things planned!
Have a great day,
Kim
Hi Kim,
I am late here but the new homepage looks great!
We recently started using to BB for development at our web agency and I can’t tell you how much fun it has been!
I was never a fan of page builder plugins and BB made me fall in love with it.
While using BB, we were able to cut down our development time as well as build fast loading sites without any issues.
A site that we re-built for a client was using Avada and had 14 videos embedded on the homepage. It took 60+ seconds to load.
We re-built it using BB and some custom tweaks to delay the video load on-click. The load time came down to 1-1.5 seconds.
So far, Genesis + Dynamik + Dambuster + BB have been the best option for development!
This combo provides a great level of control and flexibility over both design and functionality.
And these days, we are building some cool and useful add-ons of BB 🙂
Hi Puneet,
Thanks! This post was for a previous home page, but I LOVE BB! Since I’m not a developer I’m all about whatever makes things easier 😉
Just checked out your site too- love what you guys have done and can’t wait to test out your addons! Would love to chat more and see how I can support you guys!
Thanks,
Kim
Thumbs up Kim for the Beaver Builder tutorial. Beaver Builder is awesome and unique. They knew that they needed a way to create their client sites in a shorter period of time and now we’re all doing the same 😛
My pleasure Grant (this was an old post! Time for a new video).
I love the guys at Beaver Builder and am thrilled for their success. The community around BB is amazing and it’s fun to see the 3rd party plugins, themes & training being developed for BB… like what you’re doing at BeyondBeaver.com! 🙂
Thanks much,
Kim