What is your setup for allowing end user to edit pages easily?

1

I’ve always created the site and handed it off to clients. Since they own the site, they typically have admin users and so they see the full Bricks interface when they want to edit a page.

I know there are options to make content editing easier but I haven’t tried to implement them yet.

What techniques do you use?

I thought you could edit Bricks pages from Gutenberg with some limitations, editing just the content? Or saving Bricks components AS Gutenberg blocks so users can add Bricks components as blocks when editing page in GB?

Was there a 3rd party tool that translated the full page into GB minus some advanced layout controls probably?

If the number one complaint about Bricks is that it feels too difficult for an end user, what can I do? The end user wants to update content of course, edit content within structures like accordions or sliders. Perhaps add common sections like a callout or a new block in a grid (or remove one).

Some of this may be part of a CPT, but some might not for certain one-off situations.

Things the end user may find difficult; creating their own little grid of things. Setting up multiple column layout, alignments of things, following design systems (e.g. knowing how to use premade styles and variables or global style systems. They don’t know what they don’t know)

I’m not sure how to make anything easier for them except to say, if you want to make a new section or element, find one that already exists on some other page and copy it over. Making anything from scratch can be difficult. Like knowledge of how a section→container works and properly adjusting flexbox or grid settings, gaps etc.

Since Bricks lacks complete structures with easy-to-manipulate controls just for that thing, it always feels like building something from scratch.

So again, what do you do that really helps an end user feel empowered to edit their own site with the lowest learning curve possible?

2

For complex tasks, such as setup and creating new structures, a webmaster will be needed (fortunately).

With CPT, you can mitigate a lot. It boils down to this: if there are too many options, the customer gets overwhelmed. If you limit the options, they feel too restricted.

I think the Builder Access & Capabilities are still far too limited right now. There is still much to be gained there.

3

So I take it you just allow the client to have full access and not try to limit them?

Some of this can be mitigated with a decent training video and walkthrough probably. Send them to some Bricks YouTubers or something.

I think the missing piece is when they want to build something “new”, such as duplicating something they like from another website. When they start looking at sections and divs and stuff in the element panel, rather than entire premade layouts, that’s when they think the builder is “too hard” to use.

I find browsing premade Bricks elements and layouts something of an awkward experience. Going in the template panel, navigating dropdowns to get to a branded set of things, with more filter dropdowns. Then another awkward series of steps to add it and fuss about importing classes and class conflicts and image copying and so forth. Then 7 out of 10 times I add the thing, it doesn’t look like the original thing, since other Bricks settings, styles, frameworks like CSS, are causing effects in the thing.

There is a part of me that wants a premade library that is near guaranteed to look exactly like the sample, with a crap ton of settings to adjust it rather than raw access to style panel and classes and such. At least from the client perspective. I just want them to browse a library, say “oh that’s pretty” and add it, then adjust anything meaningful like colors, text, links, images, etc.

4

I also “hand off” my websites to clients. There are 2 primary things I do to make life easier for them (and me!)

  1. I make use of as many Custom Post Types as possible, so that a large part of any future editing is done in the WordPress Dashboard. So things like:
    1. “Business Info” (phone numbers, hours of operation, social links, etc)
    2. “Team Members”
    3. “Menu Items” and whatever else is all handled through the Dashboard, and just pulled into the website using dynamic data
  2. I give them 2 user logins one a “full admin”, and the other an “editor” level user, and encourage them to only use “Editor” level when making any changes to the pages on the website. This way you can simplify the Bricks interface to only show simple edits, and makes it far simpler for the client. It also makes it harder for them to break anything… I make it clear that the “Full Admin” should only be used when absolutely necessary, and that if they don’t know what they are doing they should stay away from that user level…
5

That makes sense.

The only challenge I see is when the client forgets or doesn’t realize they need to use dynamic data and they just blow out a dynamic tag and type something directly. I’ve seen it but rare. They don’t understand these “strange codes” and so they change to what they want.