Beaver Junction

FREE DESIGN ELEMENTS PLUGIN

Beaver Builder goodness without the bloat

An experimental initiative to help Beaver Builder users get more from this amazingly solid, secure and reliable page builder.

Bj Custom Rows3

01

The thing about Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder appeared in 2014, when developers were mostly dismissive of page builders, and did things differently:

  • It came with a developer API rather than mess of shortcodes,
  • Was aimed at agencies rather than the DIY market.
  • Was lean rather feature rich.

Although still true to it's target audience much has changed:

  • Many customers have no coding background.
  • Agencies themselves have come to expect faster development and less coding.
  • The demand for page builders to do more than pages has grown.

Beaver Builder has mostly adapted by creating the first theme builder (Beaver Themer) adding more code free design options along with a constant stream of monthly updates, but with their commitment to stability there is always a need for balance.

The difficult trade-off

Beaver Builder serves web agencies who in turn serve clients who will expect their page builders to remain recognizable and reliable over many years.

Many will also host and manage their client sites so can not risk a platform that increasingly require more server resources or becomes buggy and insecure.

This means Beaver Builder can't blindly follow the approach of popular all-in-one platforms serving the larger, more transient DIY market.  These products aim to serve the constant demand for code free ways to get the latest design trend.

The problem is that constantly adding eventually leads to issues of technical debt, code bloat and increased difficulty managing security and bugs catches up.

But knowing this still leaves us with question of  how to help Beaver Builder users who want to stay current wit trends,  but don't code?

Beaver Builder has mostly tackled that by prioritizing support and encouraging community, but...

02

03

Is there another way?

One of the ironies of trying to do everything code free is that it often ends up being more complex and time consuming than the code itself.

Not only do you have the bloat of the code needed to alter the code but you can be stuck with things no longer needed when browser and code standards on the web changes. Then after working through a gazillion of code free option you end up without the one you want and revert to someones code snippet?

Could the solution simply be for us to share a library of useful modules and row templates with the code explained for easy tweaking?

The Pros

  • No code bloat
  • No extra server resources needed (ie. using what it in Beaver Builder already)
  • No plugin dependency (it can be deleted it after use)
  • Provide a chance to learn a transferable coding skill
  • No restrictions

The Cons

  • You can break things (but can fix this with revisions).

So what's this plugin then?

Presently it's two plugins

Our growing design elements

Image Hover Effects

Social Icon Styles

Separator Styles

Business hours & Price Lists

Pricing Tables

Modal Box with Button

Block Quote stlyes

Heading styles

Sticky Columns

Background Row shapes

Accordian

Tabs

*  These work with the free Beaver Builder Lite version.