This time, the format change isn’t quite as drastic, but if you look closely, you can see some changes. But first, a little background.
As mentioned in my last announcement about a format change I’m pretty much a novice at the platform I’m using – WordPress – and I’m using this (and a couple of other sites) as part of self-training on the platform.
Switching to the GeneratePress theme was a good change for me. It gave me a much better understanding of what is going on “in the back ground” of WordPress. However, there were still things I wanted to do to improve it, which was beyond my current programming skill levels.
Time for Change
With that, I need to backtrack just a little, and give those of you not familiar with WordPress (the platform I use for the site). WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that’s very popular. It currently runs about 35% of all websites. In basic terms, it gives you the ability to quickly post content to a website, but still provides the flexibility to highly customize it through themes, plugins (additional programs), and direct coding using PHP, CSS, and HTML.
That last part is where I started hitting a roadblock. While I have some passing familiarity with PHP, CSS, and HTML; calling me a programmer would be a stretch. As much as I like GeneratePress as a theme for my site, I found myself spending an inordinate amount of time trying to tweak things using the back end programming code.
Enter Elementor
That’s where Elementor comes in. Elementor is a WordPress add-on (plugin). In WordPress terms, it’s a page-builder, used to design pages without having to write the code. Later, I’ll be writing a more in-depth review of Elementor, but the bottom line for this site is that it allows me to tweak the way the site looks without having to get into the nitty-gritty of writing the code.
So, using Elementor, I tweaked the basic layout of the GeneratePress theme I was using, and added a few things that I thought would improve the general appearance. The two packages work well together, using some of the added features of GeneratePress (and GeneratePress Pro), but using Elementor to add the final touches to get things to look just the way I want.
As always, I invite comments and questions, so please – fire away.