[Support request] Elementor Pro for Headers versus Generatepress/generateblocks for headers

[Mark]

I’ve searched the forum and the web but can’t seem to find a recommendation or review.

I have both GP Premium and Elementor Pro. I can see how to design page content with Elementor, but not sure about headers/footers.

Can you tell me what are (or what you recommend) for best practices? For example, would you recommend using a page builder for the page content and also use GeneratePress to build the the headers/footers, or would it make more sense to use Elementor Pro to build BOTH the page content and the Headers/Footers.

How does GenerateBlocks factor into this?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Mark

[Elvin]

Hi,

…or would it make more sense to use Elementor Pro to build BOTH the page content and the Headers/Footers.

That’s good if you can do that. That would definitely make sense to do so.

Can you tell me what are (or what you recommend) for best practices?

Ideally, it’d be nice if we can avoid page builders as most of them add bloat that slows down the website.

Say, for styling headers and footers, if possible, try to stick w/ the customizer and then just add custom CSS for things that can’t be styled with it.

As for header/footer actual contents or layout, manipulate things with GeneratePress hooks and filters using PHP snippets.

While these things may be intimidating because of some codes, your site will definitely load faster because you’re sure there’s no bloat coming from page builder plugins.

How does GenerateBlocks factor into this?

You can try adding contents to the header/footer using Block Element containing GenerateBlocks hooked to them. But this doesn’t control the theme generated elements.

[Mark]

Thank you.

I’m still not sure which is better to use as Elementor claims that GeneratePress is their recommended theme – but you are saying it causes a lot of bloat?

Mark

[Elvin]

I’m still not sure which is better to use as Elementor claims that GeneratePress is their recommended theme – but you are saying it causes a lot of bloat?

Not a “lot of bloat”, atleast not compared to its older versions. Elementor v3 definitely improved on that.

But it still add some bloat that increases the page size, making pages load slower compared to pages with no page builders.

Elementor is still definitely great to work with though. My suggestion was coming from page speed considerations and not ease of work.

In general, when it comes to page speed, less plugins means lighter pages. Lighter pages means they load faster.

Take it as this:
Having no page builder tools makes styling a bit harder as you have to code, but in exchange, the site loads faster.

Having Elementor makes styling way easier as you don’t have to code, but in exchange, the site loads slower than having no page builder because of the things it adds to the page size.

[Author]

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