I was wondering if there has been any consideration in making Bricks Builder a plugin as opposed to a theme?
The primary benefit is that it’s a much better way to future proof your site.
Let’s say you’re building two landing pages a month for a client. If after two years the client wants to switch themes for whatever reason, you now have 24 landing pages that will be completely broken once Bricks is disabled.
If Bricks Builder came in the form of a plugin, it’s no longer an issue. You just keep the plugin activated and use whatever theme you want.
The other major benefit is that it allows you to transition TO Bricks incrementally. If someone was using Oxygen on their site, they could start building new pages with Bricks until they’ve eventually covered them all.
Currently, you could only really migrate from a theme or Oxygen to Bricks by doing a major re-design all at once. I feel like that’s a barrier to adoption.
Elementor is of course plugin-first, and it’s exactly why I’ve had multiple clients use Elementor alongside their existing theme.
Cwicly does a good job of this as well. The plugin handles all the heavy lifting, and the barebones theme is available for the sake of reducing conflicts with other themes.
My comment to your Facebook posting on same topic:
As an old application developer relatively new to Wordpress, I found the Wordpress “theme” architecture very convoluted and constraining. It was a relief to discover Bricks and it’s open framework. Bricks has the ability to create (and name) multiple Theme Styles, and apply a different Theme Styles to specific pages/posts/etc through the use of conditions. Along with the Bricks templating system this provides much more flexibility and adaptability than the traditional Wordpress single theme architecture.
There you go. There will be no themes soon. You should be focused on the visual, layout, functionality… If the client wants new theme? Just update the layout, the look and feel in bricks and update the classes or style sheet… If bricks is a plug-in I’m out:)
Play with Bricks theme styles. They are powerful. You will be able to spin up lots of themes with it in no time which can be applied to the whole or parts of the website. Bricks being a theme is a very wise decision. It bypasses all the overriding styles of a theme as well as plugins. It also reduces one more decision to make (what theme).
It’s best to create a clone of the existing website and start from there. Any other solution is hacky and can affect the live website.
I’m with sunny on this one, but for different reasons - building out landing pages/edits to a current site is a common request.
Breakdance allows both a theme mode (where it acts like a theme) and or you can keep a theme. (You can even just override a sites template/header etc if you want to):
What do you do with situations where a client wants you to build a new blog template only or a sales page? This is a common request for design days - not everyone wants a full website.
You can’t rebuild the entire site on Bricks. Instead, you need to use Elementor or another builder.
I am also against stacking. I had faced issues in the past when I was using 2 builders. An update to the old builder had some conflict with the new builder messing up the whole site.
Hey Yan, the concept of my post is not at all to have an additional 3rd party bloated theme.
It would be a barebones official Bricks theme with essentially no features.
The point is to have the same functionality and experience you have now, but by moving the page builder capabilities to a plugin, you unlock a few significant benefits when it comes to future-proofing or migrating to Bricks.
I’m against stacking too. But in some cases it is necessary, especially in the case of performing a gradual transition to Bricks.
The other time it can make sense is when a ton of pages have been built with a legacy builder. It’s far easier to simply build new pages with the new builder and leave the old pages as-is. Otherwise it becomes a major re-design project.
@Sridhar one of the first ‘actually constructive’ points I’ve seen haha. I think you could get around this by pairing the plugin with a barebones Bricks theme though, no?
and what will change the theme give you if the whole site is built on a builder … copy Elementor that released its crooked theme and adds pro version functionality to it confusing users is this normal? And the fact that Oxygen disables all styles will you also need to change the theme?
@Deanphillips I see merit to your point after some consideration. I think this request looks difficult as Bricks is already theme and converting to a plugin structure will require major overhaul. It will also make it difficult for those who have it installed as a theme. I think it will add a lot of complexity just for an edge use case.
My suggestion is to setup a seperate wp install as a sub domain / sub folder co-existing with the old site. Use the new installation for Bricks to make the new landing page / blog page. Later upsell the client to convert the whole site to Bricks.
