Home | Blog | Business | I hate Visual Builders!

Yeah, ok…”hate” is a strong word. It’s pretty applicable here though. I hate these visual builders that so many themes seem to have integrated into them now days. I hate them even more than I hate DIY websites like Wix.

The purpose of these visual builders (it’s a plugin that allows a user to basically drag and drop different types of content and set up different layouts, etc.) is to ostensibly make your life easier, as someone who presumably doesn’t know anything about building a website yourself. Sounds great, right?

Well, there are a couple of inherent problems here:

1. When you try to make a theme too flexible, then your site isn’t going to truly be a reflection of you and your business
This is the a general problem in the business of themes. In an effort to create a theme that MANY MANY people will buy, developers are trying to build in almost unlimited possibilities into their themes. The reality is, though, that more often than not, the site owner, unless really comfortable already with making site updates, is going to wind up being overwhelmed with the possibilities, and not able to narrow in on what will present their business best. A good designer will work with you to figure out your business goals and what your website really needs in order to best present your product to the digital world. Remember, one size fits all really doesn’t.

2. CODE BLOAT and a slow site!
So, the code bloat part will mainly bother a coding geek like me. EXCEPT that when you have as much bloat as is created by these visual builders, your site begins to slow down. Like…a LOT! In order to be so “flexible”, these builder systems create a lot of code that otherwise wouldn’t be necessary. The more code your host servers are chewing on, the slower things will get. A good developer will streamline things for your site so it’s running at it’s most optimal.

The bottom line is that ultimately, you’re not getting a site built for YOUR audience if you’re using these templates with visual builders in them. There are plenty of templates built for specific industries and specific markets. I’m always happy to help you find a good theme, or build one from scratch for you as well.