Some people insist that choosing a builder is just personal preference. I think that's objectively false. Feel free to share this whenever someone says something to that effect :)
Hi Kevin. What do you recommend to learn CSS? I came from de Elementor environment but dont know what step should I take from now to be like you, man. I'm almost 50 years old and I love to make websites (i'm a marketing man)
There are so many languages, yet Kevin chose to speak facts once again. In an already underserved market, a big chunk are amateurs, another big chunk are being inefficient (fully custom builds), and most of them can only build a website, but not bring in results. The force is with the circle.
I think the most valid point is that if you are aiming to run your business or be a professional Web Designer, learn HTML and CSS and then you will understand the pros and cons of the builder that you're using . There are far too many "professionals" in this industry who do not even know the basics.
Dude, I still feel like an impostor for not mastering JS and PHP. Just goes to show how much there is still to learn. One thing I believe: I get to learn something new every single day of my life, and I intend to keep seizing that opportunity. If we aspire to be professionals, then shouldn't this be our guiding principle? Totally with you.
I’m just starting out, and discovered the very heated page builder discussion quite recently. Even though I’m a beginner, I value high-quality in anything I pursue, and it got me thinking things like, if I value clean code, why would I choose a builder that doesn’t? I’m far from the best, but if I’m striving to create solid, reliable websites, then I need to start seeking out the equipment that can deliver. Love the long videos. Always enlightening.
Finally someone's speaking the truth. I see a lot of amateur's that are charging clients and producing sub par websites. Sadly, clients don't understand the difference, to the point that it can be difficult to convey why things should be done better. I know because I often am fixing the "work" of other devs. To me, it's an issue for speed, scalability, security, and long term costs. Too many people want to slap on 40 plugins because they don't know how to build something simple. Unfortunate for clients, and imo that's borderline criminal.
Spot on. I came from divi. Really frustrated by the lack of control. Built a 250 pg site with divi. Then it was not getting the speed it needed. And there was so much that was the same...but then there were pieces that were different. What a pain. When the blog cards need to look different. No control. So then you have to dif through all of the css and write custom css to make things work. I never knew that there was such a thing as oxygen or bricks. Once I dove into oxygen and css frameworks, never looked back. With oxygen you can build anything. Nothing is off limits. Love that about these builders. Good stuff. Great vid
Wow, good video. Learned a lot. I do want to say though and I've read through comments; we all start as amateurs. When we get our first or 10th client were amateurs. The difference is some of us want to keep growing, learning and increasing our skillset. I started realizing later that a majority of my small business clients don't even need a CMS and here I am putting them on a system like WP when it's overkill. However once you learn dynamic data, ACF, CPT etc it puts you up another level. I transitioned to Webflow because it was doing everything I could do in WP without having to rely so much on plugins and dealing with site breakage due to updates etc. When I saw Oxygen and then Bricks I'm like ah man that's so cool. I hope you make Bricks beginners to advance course, the thing lacking is quality tutorials. Good job
Yes, it's all true! First time - that I heard at least in this space - that someone is not afraid to "hurt feelings" by telling how it is on YT. However, I'd like to add for anyone who wants to test yourself on amateur/professional scale. If you can build a functional website without a use of any builder, build a plugin or a functionality for a website, you are a professional web developer. Whether you get paid or not. If you can't - you are not, whether you get paid or not. If you can't build a site from scratch - you are a website assembler, not a developer. Not yet.
Digging your energy in this video. It'd be great to hear more such pieces from you on the WordPress ecosystem - functionality that should be core to WordPress, the implications of Gutenberg sucking for the foreseeable future, what "Bricks has surpassed Oxygen" would look like...
I have to agree with this video, and agree that the overall assertion is objectively true. My first pagebuilder was BeaverBuilder, I was one of the early adopters many years ago and at the time it was revolutionary. However, I stopped building larger sites with it about two years ago due to divception and failing core web vitals. BB has an awesome community, some of the best people I know are in that community, but when charging a client a large professional fee, I cannot in good conscience use BB any longer. Enter Oxygen, it was a night and day difference in almost every aspect. Then enter Kevin Geary with his Oxygen tutorials, and I was blown away (no hyperbole, this was game-changing!) and then ACSS just extended that flexibility and awesomeness even further, to the point where I won't consider using a new pagebuilder if I can't use ACSS with it.
100% I had the same journey and I am never looking back. Kevin your tutorials have been crucial to my evolution thank you for everything you contribute to this community.
This should have at least 10x as many views. You, sir, are speaking my mind 100%!! To be fair, I remember when Windows 95 came out, I thought "shit, this dumbs everything down! nobody needs to understand computers anymore to use them." And I was sad. There's a case to be made for dumbing things down, making them more "accessible to everybody", but damn it's good there's still professionals around defending our craft. More power to you, you have a new avid follower.
Watched the whole thing, and man, you are dead on preaching the absolute, 100 percent, unfiltered truth. The WP community needs you in a big way; so much garbage content out there right now, and this right here is precious signal in a torrent of noise. This video is 9 months ago, and fast forward I see you've now fully transitioned into Bricks. 9 months later, can you say that your concerns are being addressed by the Bricks team? If there's anyone they need to listen to, it's you, for real. Are they focusing on a tool for professionals? Are they fixing the issues w/ reusable components? etc. I appreciate you @Kevin Geary
Yes they’ve done a great job so far. Hopefully it continues. I mentioned proper components to them. And SCSS. But not sure how soon we might see those things.
So far I have used Elementor and Oxygen - until I watched this video I always believed that the core building blocks of HTML, CSS, or must-have functionalities were present in other builders - at the least the ability to add a DIV! Phew, I am happy that I don't even have to try those builders ever even if they are offered for free. Thanks, big time.
I have worked with many builders and all the points your bring out are HUGE. I hate dealing with builders built by amateurs. Many don’t even learn the builders they use properly, not even using global styles and they are a pain to maintain.
I think we like you enough Kevin, and it's nice to hear another person objective thoughts on builders - mega menu's OMG the amount of times I have talked clients out of this route.
I'm a person who did hand code a while ago(average level), so I understand the basics of HTML CSS ...etc. I agree with all your points, I never used Oxy because I wasn't comfortable with the UI, and now started using Bricks. I'm still in the early stage of the learning curve.... Please make more tutorials on how to properly use pro builders like Bricks in upcoming ones...best settings, using classes, global settings...etc. I spent over a year, how to optimise the website for the best performance from server cache, images, CDN..etc but regardless what you do, if you use crappy page builders you will simply fail in all tests...and that's why I abandoned Elementor...
Started building website NOT using a cms, but rather doing it all using the FLASK framework (python), in combination of a html/css template I bought (htmlstream at wrapbootstrap), I believe all Kevin’s 20 checkboxes are flagged, but o boy, in flask you really have to do it all and know it all: flask (python), html and css. A cms assists in tasks which I had to code it manually all by myself. And on which I spend hours to do so. Never regret I started that way. I shifted towards WP + divi, can you believe the disappointment I had? Jumped into Elementor, the same disappointment. Then after some time, bumped into the community of oxygen group. Where I found out it indeed allows more or is more open for developers. So, really Kevin, I follow and support your train of thoughts here … !
AMEN to @22:40 If you are that scared of the builder and don't know (or want to know any HTML CSS) then use WIX and Square space, my colleague runs a business on WIX, She does good trade the site looks awful, but she can manage it on her own. If you don't have the intellectual curiosity to progress past that point then stay in that lane. I knew NOTHING about classes until I watched a few of Kevin's videos and once I grasped the power of it I used it immediately on my next site.
Thanks so very much Kevin. Wow! This video has a guruesque meaning of life woven throughout. My obsessive perfectionism and life-learning nature seems so at odds with a general loathing towards anything that challenges their sense of personal excellence. I could build you a gorgeous house faster than anyone else. I could add design features nearly impossible in a normal house construction. And it will be cheap because it will be built entirely from cardboard. Your friends will admire it & want the same house. You’ll all lose your homes in the first rain so you think that’s just the way things are & there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s the problem with amateur design that doesn’t even want to see that there’s a better way.
"..or you love me enough to watch the whole video" lol. Thanks for this, I did not realize I'm a philosophical professional! Wish everyone understands how when you have a computer powering a website, making it do something that a billboard can is such a waste of everything!
Great video. This is exactly what the amateurs need to hear Kevin, so don't be shy to share your opinion on a matter that is important for professionals as yourself.
Bricks > Oxy for one HUGE reason. You can write CSS for the builder itself to increase usability. For instance I changed the little icon to show something has been edited and made it bigger and taller so in 2 seconds I can see exactly what I have done to a class. Oh and new way of showing classes attached to an ID is game changer!
Kevin, I just watched the video after seeing references from later videos. First off, great list. I hadn't actually thought of the entire set of "professional" vs. "amateur" properties of a builder. This video was a great reminder. I have recently gone with the assumption that a developer should use what makes the most sense for the client; however, after watching this video I have changed my mind. A professional knows -- amateurs guess. I really appreciate the content of this video.
Facts are facts and I couldn’t agree more with all your points. It’s hard to make people understand and listen to your points until they are thrown in the deep end and then it all becomes apparent. I’m sure we have all been there and it’s part of the learning process. Bricks is becoming more interesting as time goes on so I’ll definitely be making a purchase at some point!
Good thinking, Kevin. The real problem with people nowadays that they can't think properly on their own. If they could, there would be much better language than html5 and css3. Those languages are an insult to study and learn. We need more people like you and people of extreme intelligence who outcompete and trash all the nonsense things existing in today's world.
I started out on WordPress with Elementor - it was good, but it just didn't give me what I wanted. I had a good amount of knowledge in HTML and CSS. Thanks to your videos, getting into oxygen has been one of the best decisions I've made this year. Guys, OXYGEN is the best. I'm following Bricks closely.......🤣
I have a project with more than 1500 posts. I agree with everything you say...if I had all this knowledge when a friend of mine and I started this project…
CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! The way you think about professional x amateur is perfect in my opinion. We need the right tools with the right features. (waiting for you to announce an ambitious next project: Automatic Builder! Hahahah ;P)
I loved Webflow but had to give up because GDPR (EU) compliance unclarity and because each extra functionality needs a third-party (usually paid) plugin. I use Elementor because one of my clients has it and I have to work with it regularly. I bought Oxygen and your great Automaticcss because it defined itself as "Webflow for Wordpress": the professional approach + all the features from Wordpress plugin, but Oxygen future seems unclear. I totally agree with your 20 points. Why don't YOU create the ultimate builder??? The real Webflow for Wordpress!! Pleaaaaaseee 🙏🏻
Similar story. I worked with Webflow and Elementor. I think Bricks is the perfect combination, it got many benefits that Webflow does not have and it got many benefits that Elementor does not have too
As a person who learned by hand coding, having a 1-to-1 relationship between visual elements to underlying html and css was fundamental. CSS calls it "padding" and "margin" so I don't want my builder calling it "inner spacing" and "outer spacing" for example. A div is a div, or main or article or aside etc. The builder should be able to add to my page everything in the HTML and CSS spec. I have to work in Beaver a lot, and they are based on Bootstrap so I already have a lot of default styles to contend with. Try adding a class to a button and the class actually goes on some great grandparent div, not even on the actual button! Where Oxygen really hurts is that I can't add it to sites incrementally. Since it takes over the theme, it's all or nothing. So clients use Beaver so we can gradually replace old content. Bricks doesn't replace the theme, but it is the theme itself, so kind of the same problem. I want a pro builder that can also merge with an existing theme and take over page content and gradually replace templates. Probably this would be some kind of Gutenberg system like Kadence or Cwicly. So you got Oxygen that replaces the theme subsystem entirely and is a plugin. Bricks is the theme itself, with child theme, that contains the builder (no plugin). Breakdance is a plugin that goes with existing theme (like many other builders). Pick your poison. I could have used Oxygen on a lot more sites if it could integrate with existing themes. I have high hopes for Bricks, they will eat Oxygen's lunch if they make sure to add features those users look for. Conditionals will be huge if they get that right. I would add one more to your list, and that is a good quality API for things like hooks and filters, adding new elements and features, or overriding/customizing default elements.
As always, great information. I fall into the 'Philosophical Professional' arena. I attempt to do as much research/investigation as possible on the tools I invest in no only monitarily, but knowledge wise as not to waste my time going down a wrong path. Thus far, I've made some good choices and have settled into at this point just a couple tools of Bricks, ACSS, and some other items along with your video's and online resources within the 2 aforementioned plugins. My big task currently is getting myself more invested in understanding and implementing custom CSS. I'll say again, I appreciate your straight forward discussions that give good insight into moving into this arena of web design and being a human in how you communicate.
I was hand coding ASP driven sites/apps for nokia back in 1998 so yeah, I guess I am professional. Kevin did a great job here at talking to a subset of "designers" and I love the term philosophical professional. Here is my 2 cents; Why spend time learning to use a builder in the way they do things rather than understanding what the builder is doing so you can do it yourself. Once you learn what var(--primary-color) does it will help you in ANY builder. Take the time, i PROMISE you will come out ahead. I actually had become bored of web dev until finding Kevins videos and now am head first back in it. The new builders (for me bricks) just reignite the fun of designing. Now Kevin MAKE A BRICKS ACSS set up video lol. I am teasing I have been trying it for the last week and its sort of hit and miss but great potential.
It's on the way. I couldn't record it until the 1.5 update came out as they changed things that would have made the video instantly incorrect. We're also working on auto-installing the colors directly into Bricks, so I have to wait on that, too. One is coming soon, though!
@@Gearyco I figured it would be, I have been learning more by poking around the system. I guess the main part is you have to make a bricks style and empty paddings and stuff. I bought ACSS as a way of saying thanks for all the super high quality stuff you have uploaded already, although I have been super impressed by the clamped text handling. It is a shining example of when someone leads with passion before profit (then profit usually follows anyway lol) .
I have tested pretty much all WP page builder that are out there including those you have mention on the video, The closes to pro for me it was Elementor and now I have migrated to Bricks and I'm loving It especially the GRID!! Baby. I Just hope they don't lose their main focused and screwing it up like what Elementor did losing it's main focused and started adding bunch of unnecessary elements such as Animation, fonts, slow and buggy.
I wish I had seen this before purchasing a lifetime Divi license almost a year ago. I have been learning how to build websites and didn't know what questions to ask. All the "research" I did was mainly simple google searches that usually talk about Elementor vs Divi vs Beaver. And I chose Divi because of the lifetime license and because a colleague recommended it. I have built a few websites and they're okay but recently wanted to start on a personal project for a magazine type of website and quickly realized the lack of the query function (something that I didn't even know the name of and has taken me many days of finding). Made the mistake of purchasing Oxygen and quickly learned about the Breakdance mess; thankfully they offer refunds within 60 days. Going to be trying Bricks before buying but it looks promising.
Thank you for this very insightful video. We started out with Dynamic and then migrated to BB. Recently we decit was ided to try oxygen and then when the whole breakdance fisco exploded we decided to move over to Bricks. When we started using beaver it was by far the best builder in the market. Recently we started a discussion in the Beaver group about the fact that there is not enough innovation in the beaver camp and we were ostracised for out statements. You just summed up exactly where the beaver is losing the plot. It used to be the best but they never innovated and the argument was always they are not into bling but even the fundamentals were missing. Beaver is aat this stage like your brother in jail You still love him but you dant talk about him any more
I think you're right about the mandatory features. I'd also add Gutenberg integration to the list for cases when you need to deliver a site where the end-user (e.g. client's employee) should be able to add/edit/remove content and sections/components. In fact, I think that it'd be ideal to handle all content in WP the native way through GB. Only when necessary store content in post meta fields and possibly through the Options API. In my opinion, GB is currently the best tool for end-user content management. A worthy successor to ACF Flexible Content if you will.
Our clients don't edit their websites, so we don't really have a need for it. I encourage other freelancers/agency owners to setup the client relationships in the same manner. I think it's best for everyone :)
@@Gearyco I understand your standpoint, but some clients have a demand for editability. And if they prove themselves to be proficient with Gutenberg, who am I to tell them that all content edits should go through me? 🤔
@@danielblomster Never had a client who was proficient with a builder or even the classic WP editor (for example the proper use of headings). They may know at a somewhat general level how to use the tool but they never follow best practices or keep the styling completely consistent with the rest of the site. You are right though clients with small budgets usually demand some sort of access to add or edit content. Hopefully in most cases when the client needs to update something I use custom post types. If that is not enough then they get access to the builder (it is their site after all). I do let them know that these type of situations where the client edits pages never actually in the end helps but creates more problems.
@@Tom-Homer The clients I currently work with are probably younger and more tech-savvy than the average client. Moving forward, will all of us get more clients that wanna handle content editing beyond blog posts and custom fields on their own? My answer is yes. It's also a principle of where and in which format to store the website content. If you code a custom theme from scratch, would you add the content in the template files and components? Probably not and why wouldn't you apply the same principle when using an advanced builder? Use it to structure and style the components and let the actual content be handled by a content editor, such as Gutenberg.
OK - so your presentation turns into a bit of a rant. Thank you. Your passion is earnest and thoughtful. I've not seen this topic demonstration in such a expert way. Please keep up the good work and more Bricks builder please.
Good video! I agree but I was expecting a more in depth conclusion. Does Breakdance comply with those 20 mandatory functionalities? I personally think Oxygen will slowly die. If so, are you going to start using Bricks or another page builder right away or will you keep using Oxygen for your clients? What do you think about what Soffly did? It took them 3 years to develop Breakdance, that explains why they didn't fix all the issues they have (menu builder, structure panel, etc.) and they didn't develope all feature requests that they now include in Breakdance. Can you imagine if they assigned those 3 years of resources to Oxygen? What a great builder could it be now. He changed his focus from developing a good product to making money with a product for amateurs as you said. If money was a concern he could changed the price model and cancel LTDs for new users.
No, Breakdance philosophically rejects this list. I have a full write-up on the Oxygen/Breakdance situation in the Inner Circle. Didn't want to share it publicly, though. At least not yet.
I agree with the distinction between Pros and amateurs, who pass themselves off as Pros and your argument is totally fine. Although, correct me if I'm wrong, but are you not the same guy who just a few years ago, was pushing Divi? Maybe you weren't a Pro back then either and that's fine too, but come on - Divi??? Even Beaver Builder would have been a better choice
I was recommending divi to people who were building their own online businesses to get up and running as quickly as possible. I wasn’t teaching them web design and wasn’t encouraging them to build websites for other people. I saw divi as a better option than wix or squarespace.
@@Gearyco, fair do's, but even so, DIVI (YUK) I suppose it's not all bad, you could have been pushing Avada, in which case, you'd rightly deserve a good kick in the balls
Thank you for putting this out... Cleared everything needed to understand builders the legit way! I'm in Inner Circle waiting for your Bricks series. I hope it's soon, this month ^__^
I feel personally attacked... LOL I'm joking, loving this content man! Really looking forward to Bricks adding other features to really grand themselves as top pro builder.
Thank God I chose Bricks Builder from start of my Journey .....Research always pays off I am not a professional yet but i will be when i learned and do the things the right way follow best Practices and get my advice and learning from right Actual professionals. thank you Kevin by the way I do like you enough that I always watch your video complete without skipping......just letting you know that your efforts are not in vain but actually helping people when re sincerely seeking help
Kevin Kevin Kevin. Great video. Very helpful list. Seems Oxygen is deliberately trying to lose out completely to Bricks. I'll use the list to evaluate Bricks but seems there's still a lot Oxygen has that Bricks doesn't, like CSS grid and Conditional logic. Also not sure how advanced their query builder is now. But if Soflyy doesn't immediately change course, they'll be history within two years. Anyways, thanks for all you do Kevin. I've got great respect for you. Cheers.
Brick's query loop is better than Oxygen's repeater. CSS Grid is already in Bricks if you use ACSS. If you don't use ACSS, native Grid is on its way to Bricks. So is conditional logic. I'm giving Bricks a pass because the things it lacks are on the roadmap and being prioritized by the dev team. It's still very young, but making all the right moves.
A lot of Oxygen users are moving over to Bricks. Bricks is only at version 1.5 vs Oxygen's version 4. From what I've seen, I reckon Bricks will be #1 in a year. I have no doubt missing features and new features will be added in months, not years.
I'd hate not to see a race between Bricks and Oxygen over the next few years if Soflyy decide to put all their energy into an amateur builder instead of their professional offering. I'm hoping that the only reason that they are doing Breakdance is to fund a bigger dev team for Oxygen and for them to concentrate on Oxygen pushing against Bricks. Why do you say that Paul? Well, because I want to see a "Canon vs Nikon" like race to the top continuing ad-infinitum. Competition encourages innovation. So I'll stick with Oxygen for now but keep my eyes on Bricks. I'm a little too old (56) to jump ship on a whim and I'm giving Oxygen the benefit of the doubt with this latest news. And if we all leave Oxy for Bricks then they become the only professional solution and the competition stops and the innovation slows. Scary times!!!
@@DudeWithADrone I completely agree with your love about competition. However as to your statement regarding "being too old", that's just plain false. We are never too old to learn new tools or tricks that simply needs your brain to wrap around an idea and some quality time to do it. Now as for learning how to "Breakdance", not worth the risk of breaking your balls to go backwards in time, physically or mentally. 🤣
@@DudeWithADrone I now feel properly insulted. I'm 77 and have been creating websites since the mid 1980s. I've run through thousands of dollars going through at least 2 dozen page builders in the past 3 years and thoroughly testing them. This past year, I've started to refresh my skills by following Kevin Powell on CSS and taking one of his courses on CSS. I've used Oxygen, tried Breakdance (the only builder I never approached was Beaver Builder and that was because I was seeing that it was already a loser 5 years ago). At this point, I'm focused on Bricks Builder which will be (in my opinion) fully ready in a month with version 1.8 (out of beta). It now has all the functions and features I need to build a fully functional site. In addition, if I'm not mistaken (I've taken a look at some of the source), I believe that Bricks Builder is also a headless Wordpress builder -- which significantly increases performance. Thomas has built quite the impressive professional product. Another feature that nearly every page builder lacks is the CSS Calc, which is invaluable for making responsive websites -- for example changing font size based on screen size. So being old doesn't necessarily mean 'finished' or 'behind'.
Great points Kevin-completely agree. It seems to me to be a bit challenging right now to choose pro tools too because some are not being developed fully, some are not ready, and we're also in a transition to Block/GB. The latter needs a lot of improvement but is disruptive to the status-quo. There are a lot of choices but very few good ones.
I am sooo disappointed with Oxygen right now. Louis says it is "old technology". Kevin, is Bricks ok for SEO... or is the code not good for ranking? Thank you.
Hard question: if you have to start a big (hundreds of pages) long-term (years and years) project with the NECESSITY of conditional logic, would you go with Bricks or Oxygen? - you can go with Bricks and try to find some workarounds while they develop the conditional logic feature (which is essential to have an advanced CMS) - you can build it right now with Oxygen, but on the long run you may find problems and maybe even be forced to rebuild everything with a next-gen builder I was highly convinced to go with Oxygen, but thinking about some potential and unknown evolutions of the project in the following years made me question my idea! Any pro hint?
Thanks, I learned a lot here. You have helped me so much already. I still have a way to go, but my sites are already looking pretty neat. Looking fwd to the journey ahead. A vid on conditional logic would be awesome 👍🏼 PS: also into my photography ;)
Instead of adapting page builders for amateurs, they should offer courses like yours on how to go from amateur to professional web designer. This benefits the page builder company because more and more professional web designers would use their tools. And professional web designers, in turn, bring profit to the page builder company. An amateur brings no money; they only incur costs.
That’s why I personally absolutely believe in the success of Etch once it’s released and the main development phase is completed, because you will teach even amateurs (like me) who want to become professional web designers how to use Etch. But I hope that by then I will have at least reached the intermediate level between amateur and professional web designer.
I'm using Oxygen and Brizy at the same time, depending on the kind of project. Brizy is ok for quick projects with an x-factor. It has many great features under the hood that Oxygen (or Elementor) doesn't have, even not with the available Oxygen add-ons, but yes, it is somewhat bloated like the others (Elementor etc ...). Nevertheless, accompanied with a caching plugin like WP Rocket, i've seen spectacular improvements on PageSpeed. But I must fully agree, pros should built sites with pro tools ... I have a LTD with Oxygen and have doubts about the future of Oxygen ....
Hey Kevin! Really interesting video, I've watched it several times since it came out! Given the types of features you're saying are necessary in a page builder, I'm curious what value you would get out of using a page builder at all to build pages like this? Most of the features you mentioned are really core HTML and CSS features, so I wonder why it wouldn't simply be more efficient for you to hand-code your site at this point instead of using a GUI to select what HTML tag you want to use and how you want to lay out your data with CSS classes/flexbox/grids. I'll admit I'm new to WordPress development, but some of my colleagues developed a plugin called Loops & Logic, which basically allows you to hand-code the HTML/CSS you want and then intersperse that with what we're calling "dynamic tags" (dynamic content, conditional logic, all that fun stuff). And obviously at that point since you have full control over the HTML you're writing, you get a super clean output. Loops & Logic isn't a page builder obviously, but I feel like it's a development tool that actually checks almost all the boxes in your list but instead of having to use a GUI just to add HTML tags (which seems clunky to me), you can just write your tags alongside the dynamic tags that handle data/logic. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on that approach; it's a pretty radical reimagining of how to build sites vs a traditional page builder but I think it could fit well into the kind of workflow you seem to prioritize. Anyway, keep up the amazing content!
The builders do a lot of heavy lifting. WordPress sites aren't just HTML and CSS. They're very heavy on PHP as well. I also hate writing HTML and it's easier to build a team around a page builder than custom code. We can also move faster in general.
@@Gearyco Thanks for the reply! Yeah, I'm well aware that WordPress sites aren't just HTML and CSS haha! The value I personally see in L&L is that you get the flexibility and functionality of PHP but you can write it using HTML syntax instead of needing to learn PHP. So then you get all the functionality you listed as must-have features but because it's not tied to a page builder, you've then got a workflow that works with all page builders, which opens up your market to a lot more clients. Your list of required features basically comes down to wanting the page builder to interact with every component of HTML and CSS through a GUI, so I guess my point was that if you're at the point where you want language-level controls from your page builder, it's probably just easier to interface directly with the language itself. If you want a div-first class-first site-building experience like you mentioned in your video, in my mind it's always going to be faster to just type out instead of digging through a GUI to get that functionality. Guess it really depends on the type of sites you're building and you're totally right that it's a lot easier to learn a GUI than it is to earn a language.
Excellent video. It would be so great when the team of Bricks would join the (small) team of Oxygen. Oxygen is losing money on their web builder because of the wrong subscription strategy. LTD does not work in the long term. Money has to keep coming in. Both builders have the future in their hands when they join their developments. Don't rely on the new Breakdance from Oxygen. (their goal is to attract amateurs to get more money).
Great video ! Watching your video recently, I see that you are talking more about Bricks. Are you shifting your new client to Bricks ? I'm using Oxygen for my own website, but now that I want to create an agency, plus the Breakdance pivot of Oxygen, I'm thinking if Oxygen will continue to be updated, or Oxyninja. Because of the business model of Oxygen (no recurring revenue, oh Bricks too...), I fear that one day something break in my client website in the future without any possible update of oxygen or the template that I'm gonna use for the client... If that "one day" happen, what would you do with the client's website built on oxygen ? I means what's the responsability of the agency in regard of the tools we use
41:55 I think Gutenberg is doing right here. It provides Reusable Blocks. Basically you create anything and then save it Reusable Blocks. Now, it will become a Gutenberg block. You can add it anywhere in page or post or anywhere. When you will change anything in that, it will be changed Globally.
I just scrolled through all of your comments to find an answer ... there is some discussion, but I thought I would get your direct opinion. If you were making a decision, and have not yet purchased a license for Oxygen or Bricks, I am curious which option you would choose? They are both affordable right now, but even so, I think it would be silly to buy both just because you can. One would obviously just sit there, unless you switched back and forth for different websites ... I'm not sure there would be a significant reason to do that. I'm trying to decide whether to go with the old duck or the spring chicken ... one is established and stable, but possibly losing stream. The other is built with new technology, has a longer shelf-life, but might lack some of the features of the more established builder. It's tough ... is it six of on, half a dozen of the other, or is there a good reason to go one way vs. the other if you aren't established with either at this point?
Get Bricks. It's now mature enough. Oxygen has been so very uncooperative, unwilling to fix bugs. They were somewhere around a year late on PHP 8 -- Oxygen would simply loop and stopped working until they got around to fixing it. I cringe to think how they'll be when PHP 9 rolls around.
I would agree with you on the photography analogy. I work in video production and the more professional the camera the more manual controls you have. I am a beginner at building website. Do you think it would be beneficial for me or others to learn to code HTML, CSS and Javascript first and then later build with no code. Like WP with builders and Webflow. I started to learn HTML and CSS. Years ago I had C and C++ classes but never pursued it.
You should learn the foundations of HTML and CSS, for sure. You don't have to be an expert. Just get serviceable and then you'll learn more as you go. But as you build, work to understand what the builder is doing instead of just relying on and trusting the builder to do everything for you.
100% Dynamic Data! The client wants to see form fields, repeater fields, very basic word processing fields that look totally native to the WP Admin environment. From general options, page content to menus and more. The client does NOT want to have to reach out to you to change content or ask how to change content.
3:42 - yup, that's the thing. I want my client to have a good website in all aspects, not just looks. I want it to work, I want it to rank well, I want good performance, etc.; I just can't understand the horde of people who do x website per day with Elementor (or whatever) & templates and call themselves 'professional web developers'; like come on... Doing things like this is closer to a African prince scam than being a professional, yet web developer... I'm building websites as a hobby, I'm more of a designer personally, but when I do them I want to do them at least 'good'.
@@Gearyco btw it would be cool to watch a debate about topic like this in video form between someone like you (a Oxygen/similar proponent) and someone like for example 'Living with Pixels' (clearly Elementor proponent). I'm saying this because I recently tried to get some answers from him about things like HTML markup, performance, etc. and all I got is 'you can make Elementor work fast with optimization plugins' and '2-3s load time is good for small businesses'; I will say, these are not the answers I wanted. :D Also this guy is a proponent of 1140px page width, lol. Only thing I want to add is I maybe would say that Elementor might be better at is things like 'working good with Crocoblock' (which is tons of functionality to be honest, but also tons of weird things) or it integration with Woocommerce (it might not be true but I heard that Oxy sucks at Woo).
Thanks for this video. Really just found out shortly about your content, but it's helping a lot. I'm stil torn between Oxygen and Bricks. Just not sure which tool will be the best in the end and weither Oxygen will stay alive. Really hate it. It's the same with Toolset who has made the same mistake making dumb announcements. Some companies should see some more value in PR / Marketing. What do you think? Will Oxygen stay alive? Or will it die slowly. I kinda feel I need to make the right choice since I'm going to start a journey which I don't want to be rebuilding anytime soon. (BTW I would say I'm a "philosophical professional', mabye a little bit too much even. I really just want to make sure I make the best choice. Also have been looking at Drupal or even headless CMS's. I have issues making choices haha)
I'm getting tired of Oxygen and raking my head with what to move to. It's a big decision for me because I will put everything into it. Maybe moving away from WordPress and to Webflow is the answer. Not sure yet. I haven't tried Bricks yet maybe that's the one.
highly interesting video…. question: why not talking about resilience of the builder (ex the language used to build the builder when it is no more maintained like angular for ex). and what about « portability » making it possible to migrate from 1 builder to another one. If they use all the 20 features you mention why shouldn’t be possible to start with oxygen and updating with Bricks (or the conversely if you prefer 😉)
Swapping builders on the fly isn’t super important to me. As an agency we pick a standard and stick with it. Helps with processes and efficiency. Being build on a modern supported framework is an implied thing -- that should be happening by default.
The builder market is definitely a little volatile right now. But I’m not sure babe coding is the way unless you’re just really good at it. Gonna be harder to build a team though.
There’s too much blurring of the lines between a “website builder” and a “page builder”. A website builder is a great tool for developers. A page builder is for peeps to have fun.
It is amazing to me that there is not more basic common sense in the world today, on all levels, in all lines of work. If you don't agree with this, you are an amateur.💯
Some people insist that choosing a builder is just personal preference. I think that's objectively false. Feel free to share this whenever someone says something to that effect :)
Hi Kevin. What do you recommend to learn CSS? I came from de Elementor environment but dont know what step should I take from now to be like you, man. I'm almost 50 years old and I love to make websites (i'm a marketing man)
There are so many languages, yet Kevin chose to speak facts once again. In an already underserved market, a big chunk are amateurs, another big chunk are being inefficient (fully custom builds), and most of them can only build a website, but not bring in results. The force is with the circle.
I think the most valid point is that if you are aiming to run your business or be a professional Web Designer, learn HTML and CSS and then you will understand the pros and cons of the builder that you're using . There are far too many "professionals" in this industry who do not even know the basics.
Dude, I still feel like an impostor for not mastering JS and PHP. Just goes to show how much there is still to learn. One thing I believe: I get to learn something new every single day of my life, and I intend to keep seizing that opportunity. If we aspire to be professionals, then shouldn't this be our guiding principle? Totally with you.
I’m just starting out, and discovered the very heated page builder discussion quite recently. Even though I’m a beginner, I value high-quality in anything I pursue, and it got me thinking things like, if I value clean code, why would I choose a builder that doesn’t? I’m far from the best, but if I’m striving to create solid, reliable websites, then I need to start seeking out the equipment that can deliver. Love the long videos. Always enlightening.
"if I’m striving to create solid, reliable websites, then I need to start seeking out the equipment that can deliver." -- Spot on!
Those were valid points, Kevin. I'm lookin forward to seeing what Oxygen and Bricks will be like in the next 1 - 2 years.
Finally someone's speaking the truth. I see a lot of amateur's that are charging clients and producing sub par websites. Sadly, clients don't understand the difference, to the point that it can be difficult to convey why things should be done better.
I know because I often am fixing the "work" of other devs. To me, it's an issue for speed, scalability, security, and long term costs. Too many people want to slap on 40 plugins because they don't know how to build something simple. Unfortunate for clients, and imo that's borderline criminal.
Spot on. I came from divi. Really frustrated by the lack of control. Built a 250 pg site with divi. Then it was not getting the speed it needed. And there was so much that was the same...but then there were pieces that were different. What a pain. When the blog cards need to look different. No control. So then you have to dif through all of the css and write custom css to make things work.
I never knew that there was such a thing as oxygen or bricks. Once I dove into oxygen and css frameworks, never looked back. With oxygen you can build anything. Nothing is off limits. Love that about these builders. Good stuff. Great vid
Wow, good video. Learned a lot. I do want to say though and I've read through comments; we all start as amateurs. When we get our first or 10th client were amateurs. The difference is some of us want to keep growing, learning and increasing our skillset. I started realizing later that a majority of my small business clients don't even need a CMS and here I am putting them on a system like WP when it's overkill. However once you learn dynamic data, ACF, CPT etc it puts you up another level. I transitioned to Webflow because it was doing everything I could do in WP without having to rely so much on plugins and dealing with site breakage due to updates etc. When I saw Oxygen and then Bricks I'm like ah man that's so cool. I hope you make Bricks beginners to advance course, the thing lacking is quality tutorials. Good job
This should be updated in 2024! Amazing stuff.
Yes, it's all true! First time - that I heard at least in this space - that someone is not afraid to "hurt feelings" by telling how it is on YT. However, I'd like to add for anyone who wants to test yourself on amateur/professional scale. If you can build a functional website without a use of any builder, build a plugin or a functionality for a website, you are a professional web developer. Whether you get paid or not. If you can't - you are not, whether you get paid or not. If you can't build a site from scratch - you are a website assembler, not a developer. Not yet.
Digging your energy in this video. It'd be great to hear more such pieces from you on the WordPress ecosystem - functionality that should be core to WordPress, the implications of Gutenberg sucking for the foreseeable future, what "Bricks has surpassed Oxygen" would look like...
I have to agree with this video, and agree that the overall assertion is objectively true. My first pagebuilder was BeaverBuilder, I was one of the early adopters many years ago and at the time it was revolutionary. However, I stopped building larger sites with it about two years ago due to divception and failing core web vitals. BB has an awesome community, some of the best people I know are in that community, but when charging a client a large professional fee, I cannot in good conscience use BB any longer.
Enter Oxygen, it was a night and day difference in almost every aspect. Then enter Kevin Geary with his Oxygen tutorials, and I was blown away (no hyperbole, this was game-changing!) and then ACSS just extended that flexibility and awesomeness even further, to the point where I won't consider using a new pagebuilder if I can't use ACSS with it.
💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻
100% I had the same journey and I am never looking back. Kevin your tutorials have been crucial to my evolution thank you for everything you contribute to this community.
@@cbr600grl Love to hear it!
a single, huge, loud and definitive CLAP. always on point, kevin.
This should have at least 10x as many views. You, sir, are speaking my mind 100%!! To be fair, I remember when Windows 95 came out, I thought "shit, this dumbs everything down! nobody needs to understand computers anymore to use them." And I was sad. There's a case to be made for dumbing things down, making them more "accessible to everybody", but damn it's good there's still professionals around defending our craft. More power to you, you have a new avid follower.
PhilPro here. Very educative video. Set some things straight for me. Thanks a lot Kev.
Watched the whole thing, and man, you are dead on preaching the absolute, 100 percent, unfiltered truth. The WP community needs you in a big way; so much garbage content out there right now, and this right here is precious signal in a torrent of noise. This video is 9 months ago, and fast forward I see you've now fully transitioned into Bricks. 9 months later, can you say that your concerns are being addressed by the Bricks team? If there's anyone they need to listen to, it's you, for real. Are they focusing on a tool for professionals? Are they fixing the issues w/ reusable components? etc. I appreciate you @Kevin Geary
Yes they’ve done a great job so far. Hopefully it continues. I mentioned proper components to them. And SCSS. But not sure how soon we might see those things.
So far I have used Elementor and Oxygen - until I watched this video I always believed that the core building blocks of HTML, CSS, or must-have functionalities were present in other builders - at the least the ability to add a DIV! Phew, I am happy that I don't even have to try those builders ever even if they are offered for free. Thanks, big time.
I have worked with many builders and all the points your bring out are HUGE. I hate dealing with builders built by amateurs. Many don’t even learn the builders they use properly, not even using global styles and they are a pain to maintain.
I think we like you enough Kevin, and it's nice to hear another person objective thoughts on builders - mega menu's OMG the amount of times I have talked clients out of this route.
Yes, I'm entertained and not skipping around. I agree 100%
I'm a person who did hand code a while ago(average level), so I understand the basics of HTML CSS ...etc. I agree with all your points, I never used Oxy because I wasn't comfortable with the UI, and now started using Bricks. I'm still in the early stage of the learning curve.... Please make more tutorials on how to properly use pro builders like Bricks in upcoming ones...best settings, using classes, global settings...etc.
I spent over a year, how to optimise the website for the best performance from server cache, images, CDN..etc but regardless what you do, if you use crappy page builders you will simply fail in all tests...and that's why I abandoned Elementor...
Started building website NOT using a cms, but rather doing it all using the FLASK framework (python), in combination of a html/css template I bought (htmlstream at wrapbootstrap), I believe all Kevin’s 20 checkboxes are flagged, but o boy, in flask you really have to do it all and know it all: flask (python), html and css. A cms assists in tasks which I had to code it manually all by myself. And on which I spend hours to do so. Never regret I started that way. I shifted towards WP + divi, can you believe the disappointment I had? Jumped into Elementor, the same disappointment. Then after some time, bumped into the community of oxygen group. Where I found out it indeed allows more or is more open for developers. So, really Kevin, I follow and support your train of thoughts here … !
AMEN to @22:40 If you are that scared of the builder and don't know (or want to know any HTML CSS) then use WIX and Square space, my colleague runs a business on WIX, She does good trade the site looks awful, but she can manage it on her own. If you don't have the intellectual curiosity to progress past that point then stay in that lane. I knew NOTHING about classes until I watched a few of Kevin's videos and once I grasped the power of it I used it immediately on my next site.
Thanks so very much Kevin. Wow! This video has a guruesque meaning of life woven throughout. My obsessive perfectionism and life-learning nature seems so at odds with a general loathing towards anything that challenges their sense of personal excellence.
I could build you a gorgeous house faster than anyone else. I could add design features nearly impossible in a normal house construction. And it will be cheap because it will be built entirely from cardboard. Your friends will admire it & want the same house. You’ll all lose your homes in the first rain so you think that’s just the way things are & there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s the problem with amateur design that doesn’t even want to see that there’s a better way.
Fire. Thank you for speaking on this in the clearest possible terms. I feel represented. I hope all the builder builders are listening.
"..or you love me enough to watch the whole video" lol. Thanks for this, I did not realize I'm a philosophical professional! Wish everyone understands how when you have a computer powering a website, making it do something that a billboard can is such a waste of everything!
Great video. This is exactly what the amateurs need to hear Kevin, so don't be shy to share your opinion on a matter that is important for professionals as yourself.
Bricks > Oxy for one HUGE reason. You can write CSS for the builder itself to increase usability. For instance I changed the little icon to show something has been edited and made it bigger and taller so in 2 seconds I can see exactly what I have done to a class. Oh and new way of showing classes attached to an ID is game changer!
Kevin, I just watched the video after seeing references from later videos. First off, great list. I hadn't actually thought of the entire set of "professional" vs. "amateur" properties of a builder. This video was a great reminder. I have recently gone with the assumption that a developer should use what makes the most sense for the client; however, after watching this video I have changed my mind. A professional knows -- amateurs guess. I really appreciate the content of this video.
💪🏻
Facts are facts and I couldn’t agree more with all your points.
It’s hard to make people understand and listen to your points until they are thrown in the deep end and then it all becomes apparent. I’m sure we have all been there and it’s part of the learning process.
Bricks is becoming more interesting as time goes on so I’ll definitely be making a purchase at some point!
Good thinking, Kevin. The real problem with people nowadays that they can't think properly on their own. If they could, there would be much better language than html5 and css3. Those languages are an insult to study and learn. We need more people like you and people of extreme intelligence who outcompete and trash all the nonsense things existing in today's world.
I started out on WordPress with Elementor - it was good, but it just didn't give me what I wanted. I had a good amount of knowledge in HTML and CSS. Thanks to your videos, getting into oxygen has been one of the best decisions I've made this year. Guys, OXYGEN is the best. I'm following Bricks closely.......🤣
I have a project with more than 1500 posts. I agree with everything you say...if I had all this knowledge when a friend of mine and I started this project…
CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! The way you think about professional x amateur is perfect in my opinion. We need the right tools with the right features. (waiting for you to announce an ambitious next project: Automatic Builder! Hahahah ;P)
Kevin, extremely well done and thorough, great points, I am sure you will get push back. Stick with it! Much appreciated btw!
Wow, thanks so much, I like your direct open style. Thank you for being bold and telling how it really is!
Couldn't agree more on every single point.
I loved Webflow but had to give up because GDPR (EU) compliance unclarity and because each extra functionality needs a third-party (usually paid) plugin.
I use Elementor because one of my clients has it and I have to work with it regularly.
I bought Oxygen and your great Automaticcss because it defined itself as "Webflow for Wordpress": the professional approach + all the features from Wordpress plugin, but Oxygen future seems unclear.
I totally agree with your 20 points. Why don't YOU create the ultimate builder??? The real Webflow for Wordpress!! Pleaaaaaseee 🙏🏻
Similar story. I worked with Webflow and Elementor. I think Bricks is the perfect combination, it got many benefits that Webflow does not have and it got many benefits that Elementor does not have too
@@KariposTheOne I just finished watching a WPTuts video about Bricks... thinking about it 👍🏻
Loved the video and every point Kevin - found some of the comments completely hilarious 😆
As a person who learned by hand coding, having a 1-to-1 relationship between visual elements to underlying html and css was fundamental. CSS calls it "padding" and "margin" so I don't want my builder calling it "inner spacing" and "outer spacing" for example. A div is a div, or main or article or aside etc. The builder should be able to add to my page everything in the HTML and CSS spec.
I have to work in Beaver a lot, and they are based on Bootstrap so I already have a lot of default styles to contend with. Try adding a class to a button and the class actually goes on some great grandparent div, not even on the actual button!
Where Oxygen really hurts is that I can't add it to sites incrementally. Since it takes over the theme, it's all or nothing. So clients use Beaver so we can gradually replace old content.
Bricks doesn't replace the theme, but it is the theme itself, so kind of the same problem.
I want a pro builder that can also merge with an existing theme and take over page content and gradually replace templates. Probably this would be some kind of Gutenberg system like Kadence or Cwicly.
So you got Oxygen that replaces the theme subsystem entirely and is a plugin. Bricks is the theme itself, with child theme, that contains the builder (no plugin). Breakdance is a plugin that goes with existing theme (like many other builders). Pick your poison. I could have used Oxygen on a lot more sites if it could integrate with existing themes.
I have high hopes for Bricks, they will eat Oxygen's lunch if they make sure to add features those users look for. Conditionals will be huge if they get that right.
I would add one more to your list, and that is a good quality API for things like hooks and filters, adding new elements and features, or overriding/customizing default elements.
As always, great information. I fall into the 'Philosophical Professional' arena. I attempt to do as much research/investigation as possible on the tools I invest in no only monitarily, but knowledge wise as not to waste my time going down a wrong path. Thus far, I've made some good choices and have settled into at this point just a couple tools of Bricks, ACSS, and some other items along with your video's and online resources within the 2 aforementioned plugins. My big task currently is getting myself more invested in understanding and implementing custom CSS. I'll say again, I appreciate your straight forward discussions that give good insight into moving into this arena of web design and being a human in how you communicate.
“Philosophical professional.”
@@Gearyco updated. 👍🏻 Crossed up my typing apparently, but yes, that is what I meant. 😎
I was hand coding ASP driven sites/apps for nokia back in 1998 so yeah, I guess I am professional. Kevin did a great job here at talking to a subset of "designers" and I love the term philosophical professional. Here is my 2 cents; Why spend time learning to use a builder in the way they do things rather than understanding what the builder is doing so you can do it yourself. Once you learn what var(--primary-color) does it will help you in ANY builder. Take the time, i PROMISE you will come out ahead. I actually had become bored of web dev until finding Kevins videos and now am head first back in it. The new builders (for me bricks) just reignite the fun of designing. Now Kevin MAKE A BRICKS ACSS set up video lol. I am teasing I have been trying it for the last week and its sort of hit and miss but great potential.
It's on the way. I couldn't record it until the 1.5 update came out as they changed things that would have made the video instantly incorrect. We're also working on auto-installing the colors directly into Bricks, so I have to wait on that, too. One is coming soon, though!
@@Gearyco I figured it would be, I have been learning more by poking around the system. I guess the main part is you have to make a bricks style and empty paddings and stuff. I bought ACSS as a way of saying thanks for all the super high quality stuff you have uploaded already, although I have been super impressed by the clamped text handling. It is a shining example of when someone leads with passion before profit (then profit usually follows anyway lol) .
I have tested pretty much all WP page builder that are out there including those you have mention on the video, The closes to pro for me it was Elementor and now I have migrated to Bricks and I'm loving It especially the GRID!! Baby. I Just hope they don't lose their main focused and screwing it up like what Elementor did losing it's main focused and started adding bunch of unnecessary elements such as Animation, fonts, slow and buggy.
I wish I had seen this before purchasing a lifetime Divi license almost a year ago. I have been learning how to build websites and didn't know what questions to ask. All the "research" I did was mainly simple google searches that usually talk about Elementor vs Divi vs Beaver. And I chose Divi because of the lifetime license and because a colleague recommended it.
I have built a few websites and they're okay but recently wanted to start on a personal project for a magazine type of website and quickly realized the lack of the query function (something that I didn't even know the name of and has taken me many days of finding).
Made the mistake of purchasing Oxygen and quickly learned about the Breakdance mess; thankfully they offer refunds within 60 days.
Going to be trying Bricks before buying but it looks promising.
Completely agree with this! Great explanation about what makes a pro page builder.
Thank you for this very insightful video. We started out with Dynamic and then migrated to BB. Recently we decit was ided to try oxygen and then when the whole breakdance fisco exploded we decided to move over to Bricks.
When we started using beaver it was by far the best builder in the market. Recently we started a discussion in the Beaver group about the fact that there is not enough innovation in the beaver camp and we were ostracised for out statements. You just summed up exactly where the beaver is losing the plot.
It used to be the best but they never innovated and the argument was always they are not into bling but even the fundamentals were missing. Beaver is aat this stage like your brother in jail You still love him but you dant talk about him any more
Props for recognizing the issues!
I think you're right about the mandatory features. I'd also add Gutenberg integration to the list for cases when you need to deliver a site where the end-user (e.g. client's employee) should be able to add/edit/remove content and sections/components.
In fact, I think that it'd be ideal to handle all content in WP the native way through GB. Only when necessary store content in post meta fields and possibly through the Options API.
In my opinion, GB is currently the best tool for end-user content management. A worthy successor to ACF Flexible Content if you will.
Our clients don't edit their websites, so we don't really have a need for it. I encourage other freelancers/agency owners to setup the client relationships in the same manner. I think it's best for everyone :)
@@Gearyco I understand your standpoint, but some clients have a demand for editability. And if they prove themselves to be proficient with Gutenberg, who am I to tell them that all content edits should go through me? 🤔
If your clients are just adding content, then Custom Post Types should work just fine.
@@danielblomster Never had a client who was proficient with a builder or even the classic WP editor (for example the proper use of headings). They may know at a somewhat general level how to use the tool but they never follow best practices or keep the styling completely consistent with the rest of the site.
You are right though clients with small budgets usually demand some sort of access to add or edit content. Hopefully in most cases when the client needs to update something I use custom post types. If that is not enough then they get access to the builder (it is their site after all). I do let them know that these type of situations where the client edits pages never actually in the end helps but creates more problems.
@@Tom-Homer The clients I currently work with are probably younger and more tech-savvy than the average client. Moving forward, will all of us get more clients that wanna handle content editing beyond blog posts and custom fields on their own? My answer is yes.
It's also a principle of where and in which format to store the website content. If you code a custom theme from scratch, would you add the content in the template files and components? Probably not and why wouldn't you apply the same principle when using an advanced builder? Use it to structure and style the components and let the actual content be handled by a content editor, such as Gutenberg.
OK - so your presentation turns into a bit of a rant. Thank you. Your passion is earnest and thoughtful. I've not seen this topic demonstration in such a expert way.
Please keep up the good work and more Bricks builder please.
I like to rant. Subscribe for more.
Good video! I agree but I was expecting a more in depth conclusion. Does Breakdance comply with those 20 mandatory functionalities? I personally think Oxygen will slowly die. If so, are you going to start using Bricks or another page builder right away or will you keep using Oxygen for your clients? What do you think about what Soffly did? It took them 3 years to develop Breakdance, that explains why they didn't fix all the issues they have (menu builder, structure panel, etc.) and they didn't develope all feature requests that they now include in Breakdance. Can you imagine if they assigned those 3 years of resources to Oxygen? What a great builder could it be now. He changed his focus from developing a good product to making money with a product for amateurs as you said. If money was a concern he could changed the price model and cancel LTDs for new users.
No, Breakdance philosophically rejects this list. I have a full write-up on the Oxygen/Breakdance situation in the Inner Circle. Didn't want to share it publicly, though. At least not yet.
I agree with the distinction between Pros and amateurs, who pass themselves off as Pros and your argument is totally fine. Although, correct me if I'm wrong, but are you not the same guy who just a few years ago, was pushing Divi? Maybe you weren't a Pro back then either and that's fine too, but come on - Divi??? Even Beaver Builder would have been a better choice
I was recommending divi to people who were building their own online businesses to get up and running as quickly as possible. I wasn’t teaching them web design and wasn’t encouraging them to build websites for other people. I saw divi as a better option than wix or squarespace.
@@Gearyco, fair do's, but even so, DIVI (YUK)
I suppose it's not all bad, you could have been pushing Avada, in which case, you'd rightly deserve a good kick in the balls
Thank you for putting this out... Cleared everything needed to understand builders the legit way!
I'm in Inner Circle waiting for your Bricks series. I hope it's soon, this month ^__^
Yes, this month!
@@Gearyco Awesome.
I feel personally attacked... LOL I'm joking, loving this content man! Really looking forward to Bricks adding other features to really grand themselves as top pro builder.
Thank God I chose Bricks Builder from start of my Journey .....Research always pays off I am not a professional yet but i will be when i learned and do the things the right way follow best Practices and get my advice and learning from right Actual professionals. thank you Kevin by the way I do like you enough that I always watch your video complete without skipping......just letting you know that your efforts are not in vain but actually helping people when re sincerely seeking help
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YES! Every single word you said in this video is 100% dead on.
Kevin Kevin Kevin. Great video. Very helpful list. Seems Oxygen is deliberately trying to lose out completely to Bricks. I'll use the list to evaluate Bricks but seems there's still a lot Oxygen has that Bricks doesn't, like CSS grid and Conditional logic. Also not sure how advanced their query builder is now. But if Soflyy doesn't immediately change course, they'll be history within two years.
Anyways, thanks for all you do Kevin. I've got great respect for you.
Cheers.
Brick's query loop is better than Oxygen's repeater. CSS Grid is already in Bricks if you use ACSS. If you don't use ACSS, native Grid is on its way to Bricks. So is conditional logic. I'm giving Bricks a pass because the things it lacks are on the roadmap and being prioritized by the dev team. It's still very young, but making all the right moves.
A lot of Oxygen users are moving over to Bricks. Bricks is only at version 1.5 vs Oxygen's version 4. From what I've seen, I reckon Bricks will be #1 in a year. I have no doubt missing features and new features will be added in months, not years.
I'd hate not to see a race between Bricks and Oxygen over the next few years if Soflyy decide to put all their energy into an amateur builder instead of their professional offering. I'm hoping that the only reason that they are doing Breakdance is to fund a bigger dev team for Oxygen and for them to concentrate on Oxygen pushing against Bricks. Why do you say that Paul? Well, because I want to see a "Canon vs Nikon" like race to the top continuing ad-infinitum. Competition encourages innovation. So I'll stick with Oxygen for now but keep my eyes on Bricks. I'm a little too old (56) to jump ship on a whim and I'm giving Oxygen the benefit of the doubt with this latest news. And if we all leave Oxy for Bricks then they become the only professional solution and the competition stops and the innovation slows. Scary times!!!
@@DudeWithADrone I completely agree with your love about competition. However as to your statement regarding "being too old", that's just plain false. We are never too old to learn new tools or tricks that simply needs your brain to wrap around an idea and some quality time to do it. Now as for learning how to "Breakdance", not worth the risk of breaking your balls to go backwards in time, physically or mentally. 🤣
@@DudeWithADrone I now feel properly insulted. I'm 77 and have been creating websites since the mid 1980s.
I've run through thousands of dollars going through at least 2 dozen page builders in the past 3 years and thoroughly testing them. This past year, I've started to refresh my skills by following Kevin Powell on CSS and taking one of his courses on CSS. I've used Oxygen, tried Breakdance (the only builder I never approached was Beaver Builder and that was because I was seeing that it was already a loser 5 years ago). At this point, I'm focused on Bricks Builder which will be (in my opinion) fully ready in a month with version 1.8 (out of beta). It now has all the functions and features I need to build a fully functional site.
In addition, if I'm not mistaken (I've taken a look at some of the source), I believe that Bricks Builder is also a headless Wordpress builder -- which significantly increases performance. Thomas has built quite the impressive professional product. Another feature that nearly every page builder lacks is the CSS Calc, which is invaluable for making responsive websites -- for example changing font size based on screen size.
So being old doesn't necessarily mean 'finished' or 'behind'.
Great informative video!
Great points Kevin-completely agree. It seems to me to be a bit challenging right now to choose pro tools too because some are not being developed fully, some are not ready, and we're also in a transition to Block/GB. The latter needs a lot of improvement but is disruptive to the status-quo. There are a lot of choices but very few good ones.
Yes, the most mature builder with the best UX isn't even available for WP ... Webflow. That's kinda sad.
Today i also think "shortcuts" is an important Thing for workflow but nice list 🙂 totally agree
Yeah it a nice to have but I don’t consider it a requirement.
I am sooo disappointed with Oxygen right now. Louis says it is "old technology". Kevin, is Bricks ok for SEO... or is the code not good for ranking? Thank you.
I don’t see any issues with bricks and SEO. Code is clean.
Hard question: if you have to start a big (hundreds of pages) long-term (years and years) project with the NECESSITY of conditional logic, would you go with Bricks or Oxygen?
- you can go with Bricks and try to find some workarounds while they develop the conditional logic feature (which is essential to have an advanced CMS)
- you can build it right now with Oxygen, but on the long run you may find problems and maybe even be forced to rebuild everything with a next-gen builder
I was highly convinced to go with Oxygen, but thinking about some potential and unknown evolutions of the project in the following years made me question my idea!
Any pro hint?
Bricks has conditional logic now, they just don’t have a UI for it. Tough call, though!
Thanks, I learned a lot here. You have helped me so much already. I still have a way to go, but my sites are already looking pretty neat. Looking fwd to the journey ahead. A vid on conditional logic would be awesome 👍🏼 PS: also into my photography ;)
Instead of adapting page builders for amateurs, they should offer courses like yours on how to go from amateur to professional web designer. This benefits the page builder company because more and more professional web designers would use their tools. And professional web designers, in turn, bring profit to the page builder company. An amateur brings no money; they only incur costs.
That’s why I personally absolutely believe in the success of Etch once it’s released and the main development phase is completed, because you will teach even amateurs (like me) who want to become professional web designers how to use Etch. But I hope that by then I will have at least reached the intermediate level between amateur and professional web designer.
Thanks, Kevin! This is great.
I'm using Oxygen and Brizy at the same time, depending on the kind of project. Brizy is ok for quick projects with an x-factor. It has many great features under the hood that Oxygen (or Elementor) doesn't have, even not with the available Oxygen add-ons, but yes, it is somewhat bloated like the others (Elementor etc ...). Nevertheless, accompanied with a caching plugin like WP Rocket, i've seen spectacular improvements on PageSpeed. But I must fully agree, pros should built sites with pro tools ... I have a LTD with Oxygen and have doubts about the future of Oxygen ....
Thanks for the video
Quite a good solid list!
Hey Kevin! Really interesting video, I've watched it several times since it came out! Given the types of features you're saying are necessary in a page builder, I'm curious what value you would get out of using a page builder at all to build pages like this? Most of the features you mentioned are really core HTML and CSS features, so I wonder why it wouldn't simply be more efficient for you to hand-code your site at this point instead of using a GUI to select what HTML tag you want to use and how you want to lay out your data with CSS classes/flexbox/grids.
I'll admit I'm new to WordPress development, but some of my colleagues developed a plugin called Loops & Logic, which basically allows you to hand-code the HTML/CSS you want and then intersperse that with what we're calling "dynamic tags" (dynamic content, conditional logic, all that fun stuff). And obviously at that point since you have full control over the HTML you're writing, you get a super clean output. Loops & Logic isn't a page builder obviously, but I feel like it's a development tool that actually checks almost all the boxes in your list but instead of having to use a GUI just to add HTML tags (which seems clunky to me), you can just write your tags alongside the dynamic tags that handle data/logic. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on that approach; it's a pretty radical reimagining of how to build sites vs a traditional page builder but I think it could fit well into the kind of workflow you seem to prioritize. Anyway, keep up the amazing content!
The builders do a lot of heavy lifting. WordPress sites aren't just HTML and CSS. They're very heavy on PHP as well. I also hate writing HTML and it's easier to build a team around a page builder than custom code. We can also move faster in general.
@@Gearyco Thanks for the reply! Yeah, I'm well aware that WordPress sites aren't just HTML and CSS haha! The value I personally see in L&L is that you get the flexibility and functionality of PHP but you can write it using HTML syntax instead of needing to learn PHP. So then you get all the functionality you listed as must-have features but because it's not tied to a page builder, you've then got a workflow that works with all page builders, which opens up your market to a lot more clients.
Your list of required features basically comes down to wanting the page builder to interact with every component of HTML and CSS through a GUI, so I guess my point was that if you're at the point where you want language-level controls from your page builder, it's probably just easier to interface directly with the language itself. If you want a div-first class-first site-building experience like you mentioned in your video, in my mind it's always going to be faster to just type out instead of digging through a GUI to get that functionality. Guess it really depends on the type of sites you're building and you're totally right that it's a lot easier to learn a GUI than it is to earn a language.
Kevin. I am a follower of your Oxygen tutorials. You are THE master for me. What happened to the Louis-Permaslug--You live re Oxygen Breakdance?
Louis refused to do it
@@Gearyco Thank you Kevin, sorry to be late for the reply. I wonder why he refused to do it? 🤕
Excellent video. It would be so great when the team of Bricks would join the (small) team of Oxygen. Oxygen is losing money on their web builder because of the wrong subscription strategy. LTD does not work in the long term. Money has to keep coming in. Both builders have the future in their hands when they join their developments. Don't rely on the new Breakdance from Oxygen. (their goal is to attract amateurs to get more money).
They don’t need to join forces. Bricks just needs to be the new leader.
Great content. Is there any Gutenberg style builder like Kadence or Generate Press that meets the 20 must have features?
Not that I’ve found. Some people say cwicly but I haven’t fully looked at it yet.
Great video ! Watching your video recently, I see that you are talking more about Bricks. Are you shifting your new client to Bricks ?
I'm using Oxygen for my own website, but now that I want to create an agency, plus the Breakdance pivot of Oxygen, I'm thinking if Oxygen will continue to be updated, or Oxyninja. Because of the business model of Oxygen (no recurring revenue, oh Bricks too...), I fear that one day something break in my client website in the future without any possible update of oxygen or the template that I'm gonna use for the client...
If that "one day" happen, what would you do with the client's website built on oxygen ? I means what's the responsability of the agency in regard of the tools we use
Yes we are shifting toward bricks. Oxygen sites will have to be rebuilt in 2-3 years.
Great stuff. And thank you for offending everybody I'd wanna offend
41:55 I think Gutenberg is doing right here. It provides Reusable Blocks.
Basically you create anything and then save it Reusable Blocks. Now, it will become a Gutenberg block. You can add it anywhere in page or post or anywhere.
When you will change anything in that, it will be changed Globally.
Bricks and oxygen both offer this as well, but without the limitations of Gutenberg.
I just scrolled through all of your comments to find an answer ... there is some discussion, but I thought I would get your direct opinion. If you were making a decision, and have not yet purchased a license for Oxygen or Bricks, I am curious which option you would choose? They are both affordable right now, but even so, I think it would be silly to buy both just because you can. One would obviously just sit there, unless you switched back and forth for different websites ... I'm not sure there would be a significant reason to do that. I'm trying to decide whether to go with the old duck or the spring chicken ... one is established and stable, but possibly losing stream. The other is built with new technology, has a longer shelf-life, but might lack some of the features of the more established builder. It's tough ... is it six of on, half a dozen of the other, or is there a good reason to go one way vs. the other if you aren't established with either at this point?
I can’t answer this currently. I should be able to answer it in about 3 months when I’ve spent more time with Bricks.
Get Bricks. It's now mature enough. Oxygen has been so very uncooperative, unwilling to fix bugs. They were somewhere around a year late on PHP 8 -- Oxygen would simply loop and stopped working until they got around to fixing it. I cringe to think how they'll be when PHP 9 rolls around.
Thanks for this excellent video!
I would agree with you on the photography analogy. I work in video production and the more professional the camera the more manual controls you have. I am a beginner at building website. Do you think it would be beneficial for me or others to learn to code HTML, CSS and Javascript first and then later build with no code. Like WP with builders and Webflow. I started to learn HTML and CSS. Years ago I had C and C++ classes but never pursued it.
You should learn the foundations of HTML and CSS, for sure. You don't have to be an expert. Just get serviceable and then you'll learn more as you go. But as you build, work to understand what the builder is doing instead of just relying on and trusting the builder to do everything for you.
@@Gearyco Thank you for getting back to me. Great video and channel.
When I grow up I want to be Kevin.
🤗
One should always remember : "you got what you paid". Thank you Kevin for pin pointing all of these !
"Oxygen and Bricks does flexbox differently". Can you explain a little bit on this?
Just talking about the visual UI controls for it.
100% Dynamic Data! The client wants to see form fields, repeater fields, very basic word processing fields that look totally native to the WP Admin environment. From general options, page content to menus and more. The client does NOT want to have to reach out to you to change content or ask how to change content.
I’m not a big fan of letting clients edit websites, but if that’s your thing then custom fields are definitely the way to go!
hi! I completely agree with you.
Are you going to offer a Bricks course outside of the inner circle?
I don’t have any plans to create courses. I only create trainings inside the inner circle.
and why you don't say about motion effects. only elementor (i think) have it.
Motion isn’t required for pro websites. Most of the biggest sites in the world don’t use motion.
3:42 - yup, that's the thing. I want my client to have a good website in all aspects, not just looks. I want it to work, I want it to rank well, I want good performance, etc.; I just can't understand the horde of people who do x website per day with Elementor (or whatever) & templates and call themselves 'professional web developers'; like come on... Doing things like this is closer to a African prince scam than being a professional, yet web developer...
I'm building websites as a hobby, I'm more of a designer personally, but when I do them I want to do them at least 'good'.
This is the right attitude! Much love.
@@Gearyco yeah, I'm still young and not long (relatively) in the game so my morals are still intact. :P I hope it will stay that way.
@@Gearyco btw it would be cool to watch a debate about topic like this in video form between someone like you (a Oxygen/similar proponent) and someone like for example 'Living with Pixels' (clearly Elementor proponent). I'm saying this because I recently tried to get some answers from him about things like HTML markup, performance, etc. and all I got is 'you can make Elementor work fast with optimization plugins' and '2-3s load time is good for small businesses'; I will say, these are not the answers I wanted. :D Also this guy is a proponent of 1140px page width, lol.
Only thing I want to add is I maybe would say that Elementor might be better at is things like 'working good with Crocoblock' (which is tons of functionality to be honest, but also tons of weird things) or it integration with Woocommerce (it might not be true but I heard that Oxy sucks at Woo).
@@wittywolk share this video with him. Let him know I’m up for a discussion. See if he’s up for it.
Why no one talk about themeco Pro (cornerstone builder). It have 18 of 20. Variable css, looper, logic, components it have.
I’ll look into it.
Maybe it’s implied. But control of all css properties. Pretty sure there are a few builders that breeze over many of those.
If it does the 20 things on my list, it almost certainly does this. So yes, important, but mostly implied :)
Which builder are you using Kevin? Between Oxygen and Bricks which builder do you stand behind most and recommend to others?
Bricks is the best right now and it’s the one I use and recommend. Oxygen is second.
Is there a tool to save a rendered webpage as clean code?
Not that I know of
Thanks for this video. Really just found out shortly about your content, but it's helping a lot. I'm stil torn between Oxygen and Bricks. Just not sure which tool will be the best in the end and weither Oxygen will stay alive. Really hate it. It's the same with Toolset who has made the same mistake making dumb announcements. Some companies should see some more value in PR / Marketing.
What do you think? Will Oxygen stay alive? Or will it die slowly. I kinda feel I need to make the right choice since I'm going to start a journey which I don't want to be rebuilding anytime soon. (BTW I would say I'm a "philosophical professional', mabye a little bit too much even. I really just want to make sure I make the best choice. Also have been looking at Drupal or even headless CMS's. I have issues making choices haha)
Oxygen will die slowly, 100%. It’s not even a question. I won’t be building another site in oxygen.
I'm getting tired of Oxygen and raking my head with what to move to. It's a big decision for me because I will put everything into it. Maybe moving away from WordPress and to Webflow is the answer. Not sure yet. I haven't tried Bricks yet maybe that's the one.
Bricks is legit. Webflow is great, but it’s a closed system with a lot of limitations.
highly interesting video….
question: why not talking about resilience of the builder (ex the language used to build the builder when it is no more maintained like angular for ex). and what about « portability » making it possible to migrate from 1 builder to another one. If they use all the 20 features you mention why shouldn’t be possible to start with oxygen and updating with Bricks (or the conversely if you prefer 😉)
Swapping builders on the fly isn’t super important to me. As an agency we pick a standard and stick with it. Helps with processes and efficiency. Being build on a modern supported framework is an implied thing -- that should be happening by default.
At this point i feel going back to coding is much better than using builders
The builder market is definitely a little volatile right now. But I’m not sure babe coding is the way unless you’re just really good at it. Gonna be harder to build a team though.
There’s too much blurring of the lines between a “website builder” and a “page builder”. A website builder is a great tool for developers. A page builder is for peeps to have fun.
They’re all generally referred to as page builders. I think it’s semantics at this point.
I listened to five about fourteen times, wondering where six was. it comes after 16 🤣... goes to buy bricks
Amazing...
Anyway, who is that Beaver Guy anyway... ??🤗🤗🤗🤗
It is amazing to me that there is not more basic common sense in the world today, on all levels, in all lines of work. If you don't agree with this, you are an amateur.💯
So mega menu is not a professional thing?
A lot of people don’t like them.
This video would be much better with text overlays or slides.
Divi Builder but without a Divi Element. They don't even deserve the name Divi.