The City Mix version 17.4 has just gone live! =) That might be an exaggeration or may not be. Being a web designer, I am always tinkering with design and ways to improve my website. It could be that I wanted to incorporate a new design trend that has caught my attention, a new plugin that has offered new functionality or just because I am a web designer and I wanted a change. That’s kind of what I do! 

Elementor

This redesign happened by chance. I usually set aside about 1 – 3 hours a week to research new plugins, web design tools, templates to enhance functionality but also incorporate tools that would increase my speed to market. During this research time, I revisited the Elementor plugin. For those of you not familiar with the Elementor plugin, Elementor is a WordPress web builder that allows you to create beautiful websites in a fraction of the time.  

When I evaluated it a few years ago, I found the tool to be clunky, slow and lacked in intuition. It was not very user friendly. When I reviewed the current version of Elementor, I left my evaluation very impressed. So impressed that I designed my new website with the plugin. The tool that I originally found to be rudimentary in design and function has become a clean, stable, scalable offering that offers a tremendous amount of flexibility in the base plugin format. The tool has become refined in it’s value offering and very easy to incorporate.  I feel that I have only scratched the surface.

Envato Elements

After a few short hours of exploration, I realized I needed a starting place. I downloaded Envato Elements. Envato Elements is a plugin that connects to the Envato marketplace that offers free, high quality web site templates that can give you a jump. With a template chosen as my base, I curated and crafted my template web parts and was able to seamlessly incorporate them to different pages of my website. That reduced coding/design time, increased brand consistency and increased efficiency.  

I revisited my old WordPress pages to see what I could do. I liked the content but wanted to convert the pages to the Elementor format. I saw an option that I could Edit with Elementor. I have spent hours looking at some of the widgets and template elements I could incorporate. That was fun… and yes, I am a nerd! =)  

If you have a WordPress website and want to download a plugin that can extend WordPress and your imagination, Elementor is the way to go!