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Looking for an easy way to build and customize your WordPress website? That's where the drag-and-drop page editor comes in. The WordPress page editor allows you to create, edit, and customize your website layout without having to write any code.
Why use a drag-and-drop page editor
When starting a WordPress blog, many beginners have a hard time customizing the page layout of their website the way they want. Although many premium WordPress themes vary in design and typography, most are difficult to customize for people without coding experience.
Many users -- especially those switching from Weebly or Wix to WordPress -- have questions like: How can I make WordPress drag-and-drop? Or, does a simple drag-and-drop page editor for WordPress exist?
The answer is yes, there are indeed a few standout options that beat the competition across the board with ease of use, flexibility, and functionality, allowing you to create completely custom page designs on your WordPress site without writing any code.
1. Beaver Builder
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By far the best WordPress page editor on the market, it's easy to get started, runs fast, and comes with a built-in getting started tutorial to help you get familiar with the interface quickly.
Simply drag and drop individual controls from the right sidebar onto the page and you'll see all changes in real time, as well as the ability to click on any element on the page to edit properties or adjust styles.Beaver Builder includes a large number of modules that allow you to add almost anything you want, including sliders, rotators, backgrounds, buttons, content blocks, and more. There are also over 30 well-designed landing page templates that make it easy to quickly create stunning site layouts.
This plugin is perfect for beginners, is compatible with the latest WordPress version and has been nicely updated in the Gutenberg project so it will work fine with the new Gutenberg editor.
2. Divi
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This is a drag-and-drop theme and page editor plugin that is very easy to use and offers more than 20 layouts and templates for a variety of different types of websites.
Like Beaver Builder, Divi is a visual drag-and-drop page editor, a true WYSIWYG editor. You can click directly on a page to use it immediately, and all changes can be previewed in real time, with no need to save to view the new design.
The editor comes with 46 content modules, which you can drag and drop anywhere in the layout and customize each element using advanced design. Using Divi, you can create any type of custom page layout in minutes and then save it for future use on your website. On top of that, you can export layouts from one Divi installation to another.
Divi is a great alternative to Beaver Builder, with a powerful page editor, unlimited design possibilities, rich content modules that allow you to create any type of website you really want, and a lifetime plan that makes it the most cost-effective page editor plugin on the market.
3. Elementor
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Elementor is another powerful drag-and-drop page editor plugin that allows you to see all your changes in real time while using it.
Simply start by creating Sections, then select the number of columns for each Section. Then you can drag and drop widgets from the left panel to the page section. Elementor comes with a large number of widgets, including the most commonly used website elements: basic images, text, buttons, advanced accordions, sliders, recommendations, icons, tabs, social media, etc. Each widget can be custom set. In addition, Elementor allows you to add widgets created by other plugins.
Don't want to design a page layout? Just point and click to edit any item on the page, replace the automatically generated content, and you're done.
4. Visual Composer
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Visual Composer is an easy-to-use WordPress website editor that helps you quickly create custom website layouts. The plugin comes with a simple drag-and-drop builder, out-of-the-box content elements, professional page templates, and many powerful features.
Similar to Beaver Builder and Divi, it provides a true front-end editing experience for designing websites, but also allows you to do more, such as editing logos, menus, headers, footers, sidebars, and more, hence why we call it a website editor (rather than a page editor).
You can get tons of useful design features, customize the appearance of any element on the page, add stylish backgrounds with simple options including parallax, gradients, slideshows, rotations, zoom in/out, videos, etc. Visual Composer works with all WordPress themes, which allows you to switch themes without losing your custom layout. In addition, it provides perfect support for the new Gutenberg editor, Google Fonts, Yoast SEO.
5. Themify Builder
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Themify is a popular WordPress theme store, with a built-in advanced page editor for all its own themes. For other non-Themify WordPress themes, you can use this Themify Builder plugin.
This simple and intuitive page editor comes with several out-of-the-box modules for quick addition to pages or posts. The plugin includes more than 40 preset layouts for different industries, such as gyms, restaurants, portfolios, music, photography, online stores, and more. You can import layouts with one click, change the default content and build a beautiful landing page in minutes.
Both front and back office, Themify Builder allows you to make page edits. With live editing in the frontend, you can see exactly how the latest changes are rendered on your website. In addition to this, the plugin comes with pre-defined layouts that can be quickly applied to any page.
6. SiteOrigin Page Builder
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With over 1 million active installs, SiteOrigin Page Builder is the popular WordPress page editor on the market, and one of the main reasons for such popularity may lie in the price, which is a fully featured free plugin.
As with almost all open source software, this plugin is complex to use and often difficult for new users to adapt to. For components, SiteOrigin allows you to use WordPress widgets, plus several of your own, and to download and install any additional options. It comes with a history tool that allows you to switch back and forth to undo/redo recent changes, which helps save a lot of time and also allows you to be creative with impunity.
The SiteOrigin plugin and all its widgets are compatible with Gutenberg, plus there is a new SiteOrigin layout block that can also be used in Gutenberg.
Summary
When we compare different drag-and-drop WordPress page editors, one thing is very certain: Beaver Builder and Divi are clearly the first choice, while Elementor and Visual Composer are the second best choices, both of them offering full drag-and-drop editing capabilities. If you don't mind spending some cost to get the best solution on the market, you won't regret choosing any of these four.
If I am using the new WordPress block editor, do I still need the page editor?
Since the launch of Gutenberg, many users have had this question. On the surface, the block editor looks similar to the above solution, so there is a heated discussion about Gutenberg and the page editor in the WordPress world.
Is Gutenberg a web authoring tool? Can Gutenberg's block editor replace the page editor?
The answer to both questions is: no, at least not at the moment. If you want an easy way to create fully customizable pages, a dedicated page editor is essential, and there is a huge gap between Gutenberg and a real page editor plugin that could take many years to reach the same heights.