Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.
Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies, exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson.
Lee:
Hi, and welcome to episode number 75, would you believe it, of the WP Innovator Podcast. This is Lee, would you believe that? Well, crumbs, I keep showing up, that’s insane. And today we are talking with Dave Foy. Now he’s my mate, he’s probably your mate too, and you’ll find him over at the WP Innovator Facebook group, he’s a good contributor there, that’s over at wpinnovator.com forward slash group. And he runs his own business, helping designers build websites online. So if you’re a designer who doesn’t necessarily have the coding knowledge and maybe you’ve battled a lot with themes, Dave’s your man because he is a Elementor. Elementor specialist. Yep, Elementor, I said that. I actually quite like it. Obviously, you know how much I love Beaver Builder, but Elementor is also really very good as well. So, you know, there is choice. You can try other stuff. I’m not going to cry too much. Okay, anyway, I’m going to shut up because this is a great podcast. Sit back, relax, enjoy the ride, and keep your arms and legs in the vehicle at all times, obviously.
Lee:
So Dave, I’m looking at your website, mate, and it is looking phenomenal, Mr. Foy.
Dave Foy:
Thank you very much.
Lee:
Thank you, sir. Is this Elementor?
Dave Foy: It is. It’s all Elementor.
Lee:
What?
Dave Foy:
Yeah, yeah, pretty much. The blog itself isn’t. The blog is actually Generate Press, my theme, but I actually still use quite a lot of Elementor in, you know, within the blog as well. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Practice what I preach.
Lee:
Practice what you preach, indeed. So guys, you’re joining our conversation today with me and my mate, Dave. Dave’s an Englishman, if you can’t tell. And this is interesting because you all know I love Beaver Builder. And I, you know, I have an appreciation of Elementor, but we are talking to an evangelist of Elementor, Mr. Dave Foy.
Dave Foy:
That’s true. That’s true.
Lee:
I wanted to do some sort of sound effects there or something like that.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, that’s fine.
Lee:
Dave, explain the accent. Where are you from, mate?
Dave Foy:
Good day to you, sir. What do you know I found about these, you listen to so many American podcasts that you kind of miss the way that English people always, you know, kind of greet each other every day, don’t you know? He’s like, good day to you, sir. How do you do? And have a good morrow.
Lee:
Yeah.
Dave Foy:
And all that sort of stuff we say to him. Tip top and champion, sir.
Lee:
Oh, yeah.
Dave Foy:
That’s your cup of tea.
Lee:
I don’t mind if I do, sir.
Dave Foy:
Excellent.
Dave Foy:
I’m from up in Hull, actually. So I didn’t come from Hull. I came to Hull in, I don’t know, 1990 for three years and I’m still here. So I seem to have taken on the Hull accent as well. So I think to make myself understood to the locals, it’s what you have to do.
Dave Foy:
So there’s plenty of e-bag, um, by heck.
Lee:
There’s plenty of that, yeah. There’s plenty of very, very strange accents.
Lee:
Where are you from originally, though? Because I almost wanted to say Lancashire, but I could be wrong.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, I’m from Lancashire. That’s right.
Lee:
Yes.
Lee:
Boom.
Lee:
In the bag. Now I’ve got to guess where else in Lancashire. Preston.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, go on.
Lee:
Oh, my word.
Lee:
Is it?
Dave Foy:
Yeah.
Lee:
Yes!
Lee:
Have you been doing some research?
Dave Foy:
No, I’ve not. I used to live in Ormskirk, so that’s like 15 minutes on the train to Preston.
Lee:
It is. It is. Brilliant. Well done, Sherlock.
Dave Foy:
Happy days. Happy days.
Lee:
That’s amazing.
Lee:
I’m quite pleased with that. Have you got it written somewhere? Because then people will think I’ve actually Googled you or something like that.
Dave Foy:
I’ll find, I’ve got a birth certificate. I’ll scan it. I’ll scan it online.
Dave Foy:
No, mate, that’s cool.
Dave Foy:
I’m actually hat-doffed. I’m impressed. Yeah, yeah.
Lee:
I’m impressed too, as well. I was just thinking, what was the biggest place in Lancashire I could think of that’s not Southport? And then Southport’s kind of Merseyside, I think. I get a bit confused by everything.
Lee:
So there’s Preston and there’s Manchester, but you haven’t got the Manchester.
Dave Foy:
Sort of, less like Manchester.
Lee:
Yeah, just a little bit further away.
Dave Foy:
Yeah.
Dave Foy:
I actually wanted to go, because it was the uni thing, I wanted to go to Manchester anyway, but they just rejected me. So Hull was my second choice.
Dave Foy:
And I’ll tell you what, actually, the whole kind of reason I’m in Hull is a victory of design. Because I went to my kind of college library and put all the prospectuses, or prospectise it, I don’t know, the plural anyway.
Lee:
I like the first one, prospectuses.
Dave Foy:
Prospectuses, put them all out on a table.
Dave Foy:
Back in, you know, 1950, whatever it was that I went to university, the prospectuses were very, very kind of dull affairs, basically kind of, you know, pamphlets. But I just remember seeing Hulls, and oh my word, it was this kind of landscape, absolutely beautiful design. And a picture on the cover of this blue sky, this bridge, gorgeous looking bridge kind of extending out into the distance. And I just thought to myself, that’s where I’m going. I’m going there.
Dave Foy:
I mean, slight crushing disappointment when I actually arrived. But that’s the power of design, though, isn’t it?
Lee:
But that’s the power of design, yeah. And I mean, whether I was hooked or suckered in, I don’t know, but I’m still here.
Lee:
But it created an emotion, a reaction in you, and a desired outcome.
Dave Foy:
Absolutely.
Lee:
Which was to go ahead and basically be sucked in by the void of Hull.
Dave Foy:
Absolutely, yeah. Hull’s got that thing anyway. If people arrive in Hull, they rarely leave. It’s one of those strange end-of-the-line places. Once you’re in, you’re not getting out.
Lee:
I kind of like that end-of-the-line.
Dave Foy:
Yeah.
Lee:
That’s a nice – is that a metaphor? I don’t know. I’m not really good at English.
Dave Foy:
It probably is. I’m not clever enough.
Lee:
We should probably tell people what you do, shouldn’t we? We’re like nattering away.
Dave Foy:
We can give it a go.
Lee:
Yeah.
Dave Foy:
Well, yeah, I run Design Build Web, which is – I’m basically teaching non-coder graphic designers how to build websites. And the idea is how to build websites in the way that they think, visually, quickly, easily, profitably, drag and drop, kind of no code. And, yeah, that’s my thing.
Dave Foy:
So, and at the minute, it’s – I’m doing a lot of sort of tutorials, articles, YouTube videos, doing sort of webinars as well, you know, sort of like live. I’m trying to do as many of those as possible because I absolutely love them. They’re brilliant. The sort of the connection and the, you know, the – with the audience is just absolutely phenomenal. So, that kind of sort of live training thing as well. So, yeah, it’s good.
Dave Foy:
And I suppose also as well a lot of, you know, activity on Facebook groups and forums as well and just generally getting out there and just being helpful to those people.
Lee:
That’s awesome.
Lee:
And with Design Build Web, what’s your design background then originally? I mean, if you can go that far back.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, yeah.
Dave Foy:
When you first walked with a full head of hair into Hull University.
Lee:
I’ll have you know I’ve got some hair left.
Dave Foy:
I know you have. You’ve got plenty. I’m annoyed about that. But anyway, carry on.
Dave Foy:
Brilliant.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, yeah. I actually – I won’t go back too far. But I was actually a primary school teacher to start off with.
Lee:
No way.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. So, I’m – you know, I mean –
Lee:
Sorry. You’ve kind of got that primary school teacher face actually. Just looking at a picture of you right now. I can totally see you as a primary school teacher. And I’m going to call you sir for the rest of this episode.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, let’s move on.
Dave Foy:
I’m messing. Carry on.
Dave Foy:
Brilliant.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was a primary school teacher really for 10 years. And so, you know, a class of 10 years – you know, 10-year-olds. Tough crowd. And actually teaching is my real love. I left – it’s a long story. I won’t bore you. But – and I left because of bureaucracy and stupid targets and just the way education was going. It was horrible. So, I mean, I left that in 2003. And I had a kind of like an equal love of technology really messing with computers and I’d been – I think I’d been kind of hooked by watching – do you remember War Games, the film War Games?
Lee:
Yes.
Dave Foy:
80s thing. Just remember that kid with a computer in his room and the modem by the side of his bed with the – putting his telephone on the modem. And I thought, oh, one day. One day that’s going to be me.
Dave Foy:
So, I had this kind of real desire to – just to get into kind of web stuff as well. So, I – very kind of foolishly, I suppose. No plan. Just threw the teaching up into the air really and taught myself how to build websites.
Dave Foy:
So, my background is actually more in development. I want to be a designer. I think I’m not bad at design. I mean, my website’s – it’s not a design classic. It does its job. It’s all right. I think I understand – I understand design in terms of, you know, usability and the role of the site in terms of, you know, the client’s business and, you know, all that kind of thing, the client’s goals. But I am really a frustrated designer. I’ve always been surrounded by people who are far, far, far better than I am. So, my background was very much hand coding. You know, I’ve kind of never, ever used – actually, I built a website in 1998 with FrontPage. I do remember the bitter memory, actually, of that experience.
Lee:
No comment.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. I actually – I remember when I first got into web design, and I don’t know if you remember. In fact, I won’t mention the company’s name, partly because I’ve forgotten. But there’s a company that used to advertise in the back of the newspapers all the time that they would teach you how to build websites, and you could earn hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, you know. And I actually paid for this course.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. And at the time, the whole web standards thing was just kind of kicking off, you know, the move away from sort of tables for layout. And I happened to just start building websites at that time. And so, while on the course, it was all tables, you know, everything was built in tables on the course. I mean, they were, you know, that was the thing.
Dave Foy:
Well, I kind of just took it on myself to do this other cool thing that I could see, you know, people like Zeldman and whoever else at the time. I thought, I’ll do what they’re doing. They seem cool. So, I built, you know, my sites on the course with web standards, you know. Just, you know, how we build websites now, it doesn’t even need mentioning, really. But –
Lee:
The foresight is actually really amazing there, mate. I’m impressed. Because I was total tables. I was flat out tables and resisted CSS and divs for a very long time.
Dave Foy:
Really?
Lee:
I’ll confess that.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. Well, in a sense, it’s easier. And I think if you visual, tables make more sense.
Lee:
Yeah.
Dave Foy:
Because it’s grid-like.
Lee:
But then so are divs, if you think of it.
Dave Foy:
If you can get your head around the –
Lee:
The initial concept.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. But – so, I started handing in, like, coursework, you know, sort of sample pages and things. And they were like, what’s this? What have you done? And I’m not – I’m really not exaggerating, but I got kicked off the course.
Lee:
Really?
Dave Foy:
Yeah. You could have taught the course, mate. I got kicked off. Yeah. I mean, I basically stuck, you know, two fingers up and said, right, fine, that’s all right.
Dave Foy:
So, yeah, so fast forward anyway. I kind of, you know, started my own little web design agency and started using things like Expression Engine. I don’t know if you –
Lee:
Yeah.
Dave Foy:
You know of Expression Engine?
Lee:
Yeah. You’ve got all of Expression Engine. Expression Engine was a great little CMS, actually. It was absolutely fantastic.
Dave Foy:
It’s still going.
Lee:
It is.
Dave Foy:
Yeah.
Lee:
Yeah, yeah.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, really good. I don’t have a bad thing to say about it. I just – I’ve just chosen not to use it in my particular business. But, yeah, definitely a good platform.
Lee:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually had to learn it because I remember one of my first clients, I sat in the, you know, the sort of the fact-finding meeting and very early on in my career and he said, right, okay, we want this and we want this and we want this. And I’m frantically writing down the requirements thinking, I have no idea how to do any of this. What’s my –
Dave Foy:
Yeah, absolutely fine, sir. Yes, no problem.
Dave Foy:
So, yeah, Expression Engine basically helped me to do that. Later on, I started moving a little bit more into towards kind of like the marketing side of things just – but from a web perspective. And it was around – I’d used WordPress before, but it was probably around that time that I started to notice basically the sort of non-techie, non-coded designers that I was kind of, you know, working with and surrounded with were starting to use WordPress themselves.
Dave Foy:
Now, coming from Expression Engine, which is a bit more – how shall I word it? It’s a bit more kind of purist maybe. You have to design, you know, all the custom fields yourself. There’s no kind of preset, you know, system of posts and pages and things like you’ve got with WordPress. So I at first noticed these guys trying to use WordPress and really trying to hack pre-designed themes at the time, going back to maybe 2008, 2009 sort of thing. People – designers trying to hack these pre-designed themes and struggling, you know, because the pre-designed theme did not want to be hacked. So I noticed that and thought, oh, that’s – you know, that’s not for me personally. But I would help these designers with that process from my technical background and help them achieve the design vision that they wanted.
Dave Foy:
And then it was probably more recently I noticed, again, several designers I was working with had started to kind of be attracted by – we’ll enter controversial waters here, but they started to enter the waters of kind of your sort of more kind of multipurpose themes, you know, like Aveda and X and Divi and things like that. And they were using those to, you know, drag and drop and build layouts. And that was much, much, much better for them in terms of their, you know, no desire to code and, you know, kind of a more visual layout.
Dave Foy:
And I started using them as well because in the sort of slightly more marketing work that I was doing at that time, you know, the ability to bang up very, very quick landing pages for Facebook adverts or Google AdWords or something else that the client was doing was fantastic. You know, it was amazing. I really, that was right at the end of my, I suppose, like my sort of client work at that time. And it was really kind of last year, probably about the middle of last year, maybe sort of middle to the, you know, sort of September last year that I realised I’d had an itch for quite some time.
Lee:
Yeah, Dr. Lee.
Dave Foy:
Yes, how did that make you feel?
Dave Foy:
Yeah.
Dave Foy:
I got some cream for it. It was fine.
Lee:
That was my next joke, damn it. I am out of jokes now. Sorry about that. Carry on.
Dave Foy:
Brilliant.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. I realised that I’d got this kind of, this thing kind of gnawing at me really that client work, client work was great. I enjoyed working with most clients, but I felt after sort of 14, 15 years that I needed to do something different. I realised that the teaching thing, which I’d spent all that time since I’d left, you know, formal classroom teaching, I spent it teaching clients. I know you do as well, Lee, you know, you’ve told me that you, a lot of your work is actually education with clients, you know.
Lee:
Yeah.
Dave Foy:
So I’d spent years teaching clients and teaching designers as well, you know, gradually over the years about, you know, sort of how print design is very different to web design and how to sort of translate over and then how to, you know, their design vision actually with the tech. And more recently, how to use these kind of multi-purpose themes, but kind of get around various frustrations and things like that. So I kind of really, I thought I’m really, really desperate to teach as well. I really, really miss it. And, you know, always told that I’m, I’m really good at it as well.
Dave Foy:
So, again, like I’d done with teaching back in the early 2000s, I really, I did the same last year. I thought I’ve got no plan.
Lee:
Yeah.
Dave Foy:
I’ve got an idea. I’m going to throw all the cards up in the air and do something different. So it’s just what I did. I basically just kind of walked away and thought, right.
Lee:
You have a tendency to jump off a lot of cliffs, mate. I like this.
Dave Foy:
Yeah.
Dave Foy:
It’s like, it’s not just like I’ll dip my toe in the water. It’s just kind of like, yay.
Dave Foy:
I ask the advice all the time. I remember, I remember, you know, throughout my kind of years as a, as a, as a client, you know, web designer. I used to, especially locally, I was the guy that, that people, young, young kids, I suppose, not wishing to be patronizing, but young kids were sent to, you know, say, oh, go and have a word with Dave. You know, he, he, he, he, he made the move from, you know, from, from employment to, to working for him. Basically guys who wanted to work for themselves and the whole sort of self-employment route. And they would come to me and my advice would always be, please don’t do what I did. I mean, it works out for me, but I’m an idiot.
Dave Foy:
I’m really glad it works out for you. I, I, I kind of, you know, I, I remember just giving, I remember the day I gave up my job and went into full-time business and I, I was absolutely petrified, but I kind of started off joining a ready-made business. So the risk was a hell of a lot lower. I just can’t imagine just jacking it all in and saying, you know what, from tomorrow, this is me. I’ll be like, oh my gosh, I can feel the panic attack.
Dave Foy:
You read all the advice about, you know, three months, three to six months worth of savings and all that sort of thing and, uh, oh yeah, yeah. None of, none of that. And then that was, that was true of last year really. But I just, I don’t know, really without wishing to be too kind of cliche or corny, but I kind of just felt this, just this kind of, I don’t know, calling, I suppose. You know, kind of like a walk into the light kind of thing, really.
Lee:
David.
Dave Foy:
Exactly. David.
Dave Foy:
And I just thought, well, gut feeling, gut feeling, my gut feeling is usually pretty good, really. So, um, let’s do it. Let’s do it. So, uh, that really kind of approximately brings us to roughly where we are, where we are today.
Lee:
Just on this though, would you say that going for it, like the way you’ve done, um, really helps drive you to push it to succeed as well because you kind of have no choice?
Dave Foy:
Yes.
Lee:
I like that.
Dave Foy:
Oh, definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think sometimes, I think sometimes we’re, I mean, please, anybody listening to this, please do not take my advice. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. I am not a financial advisor, um, but, but yeah, I do, I do think that there is an element of that. Definitely that, you know, if you, if you want something and you believe in it and you feel, you know, kind of like in that gut feeling that it’s right. I think sometimes you’ve just got to jump because you won’t know what you need to do until you do it.
Dave Foy:
You know, you can plan till you’re blue in the face, you know, it’s, um, I mean, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll be aware of that, you know, I think it kind of, God laughs at, um, at best made plans.
Lee:
Yeah.
Dave Foy:
I planned this podcast for many years and then I finally did it.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, yeah. But, but I, I think, I think until you actually get a kind of feedback from whoever it is that you’re going to be working with, whether it’s clients or students or whatever, customers or anything else. I think until you’re actually getting that feedback from those people, you don’t know anything.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. So, I mean, with, with, you know, certainly with what I’m doing, I mean, the idea had been probably fermenting in my subconscious for a long, long time because it, it almost came fully formed really. Yeah. You know, exactly who I’m going to teach, exactly what I’m going to teach and why and in what style and, you know, the whole, the whole thrust of everything was kind of there already.
Dave Foy:
But literally there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think of, of another thing that’s like, ah, I’ll correct course here or I’ll, I’ll, I’ll shift slightly there or, but it’d be because basically, you know, people tell me what they want to know. So, you know, that’s, uh, that’s what drives me.
Lee:
I love that as well. You, you’ve got a constant source, haven’t you, from the community of questions that you can then populate your YouTube channel with, et cetera. Where you can create new tutorials based on all of these questions, uh, from people who are out there doing it every day.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Lee:
Now I know there are people listening who probably scoff at me for liking Beaver Builder, um, i.e. visual builders in general. So what, there is a place for visual builders and I believe the place for a visual builder is likely going to be your sort of target market, which is designers who know how to use Photoshop or Sketch. They can create beautiful looking websites and they want to be able to translate that design process online so that the client will get a responsive website without the guy coding. So that’s the perfect market. If you want to then kind of add functionality in there, that’s probably where it gets a lot more difficult and maybe Elementor or Beaver Builder can’t help. But, I mean, what are you finding, um, what are you finding, what are you finding, what are you finding the, let me rephrase the question. First of all, what are the advantages to your audience for using Elementor? And also on the flip side, what are some of the cons so that we can give a more rounded approach?
Dave Foy:
Oh, definitely. Yeah.
Dave Foy:
Well, the, the, what, I mean, what I actually did was I’d, I’d, I’d left my kind of previous work working with designers who were working with things like, like, like Divi, for instance. And I’m not knocking Divi at all, you know, I mean, I did write a fairly controversial post fairly recently about kind of the, you know, the, the, the promise of these kinds of multi-purpose themes. But when I thought, right, I’m going to teach people, I want a solution that I am absolutely a hundred percent happy with, you know, and I think is perfect for the, for the people that, you know, for the guys that I’m, I have in mind, you know, the, the persona kind of thing that I have in mind. So I went away and did a lot of research, really. I must have spent months, at least, at least two months looking into all manner of different ways of doing it.
Dave Foy:
And, and, and actually not even WordPress, you know, I just looked, I just threw the doors wide open really, and just thought, right, let’s, let’s be really open-minded. And I came to the conclusion for my audience that very, very simple theme, you know, very well, you know, if you can find a theme that’s lightweight, well-coded. Fast, really, really simple, gets out of your way. Then that paired with a page builder that does that, it does its job very, very well as well is, is for me the perfect solution, really.
Dave Foy:
I always say, it feels a little bit like the, you know, that the theme is like the picture frame and the page builder is the canvas, you know, that, that, that kind of analogy. So when I started kind of researching page builders, and I, I, I, I absolutely thrashed them to death, you know, probably six, seven or eight of them. And it came down very clearly and without surprise to, to, to be the builder, which I thought was incredible.
Dave Foy:
I mean, rock solid, you know, just, I, I, I couldn’t break it, which was, which was one of my goals really, you know, trying to kind of ham fisted and break this thing. It was clearly a very, very kind of, you know, a mature product that had been, you know, built with care and with, you know, a lot of feedback. Um, and I really liked it.
Dave Foy:
And then I kind of happened across Elementor, which had actually really only come out. I think it, I think it had officially been released in June, um, last year ish.
Lee:
Right, yeah.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, yeah. So it’s probably about September that I kind of happened across it. And I’ve seen one or two mentions of it saying, oh, it’s promising, but it’s a bit flaky.
Dave Foy:
Um, I gave it a go. And apart from some flakiness, I mean, you know, giving the guys a break, it was, it was brand new. Um, but some flakiness in terms of bugs and various things like that at the time, it, it struck me as intuitively being better for designers as opposed to be the builder, which to me feels like it’s probably a bit more, a bit more kind of like suited to, to, to, to developers. I mean, that’s not, it’s nothing, it’s not a, it’s not a black and white thing.
Lee:
No, but I agree with you there. It’s something I’ve said quite a lot about the two products, uh, especially with Beaver Builder for me, I can create modules very easily in a nice, simple array structure. Um, so that kind of improves my workflow. So it’s very, you know, for a developer like me, it’s a great product to be able to use for clients and then give them very limited training on that they need. But you’re right, Elementor is beautiful. It’s almost like Photoshop online.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. There were, I mean, I mean, one of the things that I have been trying to teach designers since, since, you know, whenever years and years and years is the web, no matter how much you want it to be, the web is not Photoshop. You know, it’s, it’s not for many, many, many reasons, but it feels to me like definitely I saw Elementor and I thought this is, is, is as close as I think that you’re going to get at least at the moment.
Dave Foy:
I like the fact, I mean, certain specific things, really. I like the fact that the, the kind of the instant feedback seemed, well, more instant, really the kind of more instant visual feedback I felt with Beaver Builder. Things have probably changed since, but I felt like my view of the page that I was actually laying out was kind of obscured a bit by, you know, the settings panel or whatever that was working on at the time.
Dave Foy:
I mean, that’s, that’s possibly not, not fair, but I found, I found with Elementor that I could just see the whole of my layout while I was tweaking paddings and margins and widths and, and whatever else. I found it, I found that much more kind of clear and intuitive.
Dave Foy:
And I think, I think generally just, oh, the other, the other thing I think was consistency of styling settings as well. What I found with Beaver Builder is, I mean, myself being a developer and myself having hand coded CSS long before I’d ever used any kind of drag and drop tools was that Beaver Builder seemed with each, with each, with each widget, you know, dragging like a text widget or an HTML widget or something like that. The, the, the available settings seemed to me to correspond quite closely to the kind of CSS styles that you might apply to that kind of element if you were hand coding, which is great, you know, for a developer. It’s like everything that you would want to see.
Dave Foy:
What I found with, what I found with Elementor is that they give you all the settings, all the, you know, everything that you might possibly want to do on everything regardless, you know. So, I mean, just simple things. I mean, I remember, I remember dragging like a text, are they called widgets in Beaver Builder? Am I, are we using the right technology or modules?
Lee:
Modules we call them, but you can call them widgets. People know what you mean.
Dave Foy:
I’ll, I’ll call them what I like.
Lee:
Yeah.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. Yeah. The modules, I drag in a text module. And if I remember rightly, I wanted to apply some styling. It might have been a background color or a drop shadow or something to the, to that entire element. And clearly, obviously, you know, the Beaver Builder guys didn’t really think that that would be something, something somebody would want to do. And I, I felt like I kind of butted up across, trying to put myself in the, you know, in the shoes of, of the, of the non-coded designers that I would be teaching.
Dave Foy:
But I find with, with Elementor, every, every widget has basically got all the settings, everything, the exact same responsive settings, margins, paddings, you know, shadows, gradients, font sizes, all the sort of, you know, various, various things like that. So as a designer, you can open up any of them and be able to do anything to, to, to, to anything really without having to kind of think, right, I’m going to have to, I’m actually going to have to think about the CSS for a, for a drop shadow here or for a, you know, for a background color or, or things like that.
Lee:
So that’s a very good point. And that’s something we do quite, quite often, you know, when we’re doing builds, we’re having to add classes in the advanced section and then doing some, some CSS to add the shadow, et cetera. Which again, it’s, it’s kind of fine for us because we’re, we’re actually creating modules that are very specific to the client to drag in who doesn’t get all that extra access to be able to do any advanced settings. Because we just want them dropping stuff on a page and filling in text boxes.
Lee:
Which is, yeah, they’re going to keep on brand then. Perfect.
Dave Foy:
Yeah.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. Oh, definitely.
Lee:
But I do like that about Elementor because we, we, we were actually going to do angledcrown.com with Elementor. But because there was still some learning curve, you know, even for us, we figured for now we would just quickly go live with Beaver Builder. But our actual long-term goal is to switch over to Elementor for the, for our corporate website. So there’s a shock for some people.
Lee:
We’ve got the pro license and we do love it, but I do bang on about Beaver Builder because that’s perfect for my sort of clients who need that drag and drop without any extra settings. And we would need to keep them on brand. That’s one of the, the common issues I think with any of these visual builders.
Dave Foy:
Oh, absolutely.
Lee:
Speaking of that, so far you’ve not mentioned any cons about, about a designer using a visual builder. Can you think of anything?
Dave Foy:
Oh, definitely. I mean, there are, there are lots and lots.
Dave Foy:
I mean, one of the, one of the, I suppose, cons of Elementor right now, like right at this minute is, and it’s not a, it’s not a dig at the developers because they’re doing some incredible, incredible work. But I think because the pace of development is so fast development on Elementor itself, you know, the, the actual, the actual developers of the, of the plugin is that sometimes I think things sometimes move a little bit too fast. And, you know, there’ll be an update and it breaks all kinds of things. And, you know, just occasionally, I mean, it’s fixed very, very quickly. You know, there’s obviously very active Facebook groups and these, these things are fixed very quickly. But for somebody who is a non-coder and doesn’t really want that hassle, sometimes at the moment, there are just those occasional little hiccups. It’s, as I say, it’s not a dig at the team at all because they are doing some phenomenal work. You know, the, the, the pace of development on that thing is frightening really. So, so that, that as a, as a specific thing, I think generally with page builders, I mean, touching really on what you’ve said, Lee, in that if you want to design a layout using, you know, the, the, the expected, the expected workflow for, for, for any, for any page builder. But especially for Elementor is just designing a layout. I mean, typically as well with a blank canvas or just your header or, you know, and, you know, kind of designing completely unique standalone pages even. It’s absolutely perfect. But if you want to give a client that kind of custom control where you, you may want to restrict what they can drag onto the, onto the page or even, you know, going back to how everything was previously done, you know, with kind of custom fields where you don’t, you, you, you, as a designer want to design. You don’t want to design that layout, but you actually want the client to fill in a set of custom fields.
Dave Foy:
You know, I want them dragging and dropping and changing the widths of columns and messing around with the fonts. So now, now actually that is possible. You know, I mean, there are, there are some fantastic plugins. There’s one called press elements that comes to mind at the minute that allows you to do just that. You know, you can, you can, you can create the actual template in Elementor, but then you can put custom field placeholders.
Dave Foy:
In various places and then just give the client access to just actually create the, the page using the default WordPress, you know, editor with the default fields. So, but I do think, I do think that’s a problem. I think one of the, excuse me, I think one of the other, the other things that I see as well is sometimes there is the promise of, you know, 100% design control, unique creativity. You know, no pre-designed templates. Do, you know, your, your, your vision. But I think that, that sometimes sets up a bit of a false promise really, in that people do dive in and expect to be able to do everything. And, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, people kind of say, well, I want it to do, I want it to do this. Thinking, well, yeah. Some, some things still will always need a developer, you know, always.
Dave Foy:
I can’t see a day when you, as a complete non-coder will be able to use tools like this to come up with any custom technology solution you like. And I know it sounds ridiculous to you and I, and it might sound quite ridiculous to a lot of listeners as well. But I think the promise of these tools sometimes, it gives people kind of a bit of false hope or a bit of kind of false expectations about what can be done and what can’t be done.
Lee:
So I think one thing you hit the nail on the head quite well with a visual builder is the idea of you’ve got a designer who knows how to design. They then follow your training to create an amazing looking website. But then you do have that problem with the client being able to update it. So what was that plugin you mentioned about being able to restrict stuff? Because I think that will be useful to some people who want to.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. Well, that one was called Press Elements.
Lee:
Press Elements.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. Press Elements just allows you to add, it just allows you to add kind of dynamic custom fields to a static template. So it’s effectively the same as.
Lee:
What, like little shortcodes type things or something?
Dave Foy:
Yeah, yeah. You drag actual kind of widgets onto your layout for things. Some of them are predefined.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. Like your title, your main body copy, your excerpt, things like that. But also kind of custom fields as well.
Dave Foy:
So there is another one, just while I remember, which takes that concept even further. It’s called Anywhere Elementor Pro. Can’t remember how much it is off the top of my head for a single license, but it’s not much. It’s in the region of sort of 20-something dollars.
Dave Foy:
Now, Anywhere Elementor Pro kind of takes that further. And there are still one or two limitations.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. It’s still quite new. But that actually allows you to design, I mean, really, everything. All the kind of dynamic templates that, as a developer, you might have had to have, in your child theme, you might have had to have, you know, created custom PHP templates for different things.
Lee:
Yeah, things like your sort of, you know, custom post archives, single post pages, tag pages, category pages, those kind of things.
Dave Foy:
Oh, cool.
Dave Foy:
And then, right, so you can actually control the loop and put it in custom fields, isn’t it?
Dave Foy:
Yeah.
Lee:
Nice.
Dave Foy:
Yeah.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, yeah. So it’s coming. It’s coming along. It’s probably the question that I get asked the most often, apart from, it’s either the really beginner-y stuff, you know, or it’s, right, got my head around all this. Fantastic. Now I want to design everything in this thing. You know, you’re like, right, okay. I’m doing a, I’m going to do a series of them.
Dave Foy:
So it will be out of date by the time that this podcast goes live, but I’m going to do kind of a series of, like, live trainings on webinars, I suppose, on, just on this topic, really. You know, how to, how to use these tools to design, you know, your entire site, including your kind of post pages and your archive pages and things like that. So it’s getting there.
Lee:
I think as well, there’s a learning curve, isn’t there, from a designer who maybe understands how to post a page and a post in WordPress and understands how to use Photoshop or Sketch or any graphic design application. There’s still quite a learning curve for them, especially when, you know, if they’re going to try and get into the anywhere and Elementor stuff to actually, they have to have a kind of a concept, a very basic concept of things like a loop, don’t they? And what a single post would be, et cetera, and how that would look, you know, how that, how you could then add custom fields. So there is quite a learning curve.
Lee:
You know what? We’ve not mentioned your website the whole time. So what I’ll make sure I do is mention it in the intro. But guys, if you want to, like, see any of these tutorials at any point, check out designbuildweb.co. That’s designbuildweb.co. Charlie Oscar, the phonetics out there, phonetic alphabet sounding good.
Lee:
Brilliant. Designwebbuild.co. Charlie Oscar. And you can go and check, if you click on start here, essentially there’s a whole lot of information. It tells you what this young man is all about with this gorgeous head of hair. And you can also go and check out the resources section. There’s some great plugins that you talk about in there. Well, obviously, Generate Press and Elementor right up at the top there. But also some that I had not even heard of. And I’m just scrolling down right now. I remember looking at this. Where was it? Where’s the one I hadn’t heard of? Oh, it was Social Warfare or something for a sharing plugin.
Lee:
Oh, yeah. Social Warfare. So, that’s some good tools on there. And also some great tutorials throughout the website as well. And, mate, you know you said you think you’re a designer. I’d say you are a designer. You get it. I’m looking here. You’ve got great line height. You’ve got a good margin between your paragraph text. You’ve got good image alignment. You’ve got consistency throughout. So, you’ve not got lots of different font sizings. You know, everything is there. The resources page is nice and informational. Again, you’re repeating the same sort of structure throughout with your different colors to kind of separate out the areas. And, again, it’s not all cramped together fonts. It’s nice font usage as well. You know, you’ve got your header fonts. You’ve got your paragraph fonts, et cetera. Just everything looks really, really sweet. And so far, I’ve yet to find an issue with regards to responsivity. I’ve been resizing this screen, willing to find a bug. Because I find them on my site all the freaking time. And I’m like, come on. It can’t be perfect.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, it’s true.
Lee:
A little birdie told me that you might have a free gift for WP Innovator listeners. Is this true?
Dave Foy:
I do. Yeah, well, I thought it would be quite nice, actually. Like I say, I do these quite regular sort of live training webinar things. And I did one about two weeks ago, I think. And it was all about using Elementor to, like, really quickly design. And, I mean, it was an absolutely gorgeous design. There’s a designer on kind of the biggest Elementor Facebook group. She’s called Maul Cohen from Southern California. She’s absolutely, you might have come across Maul.
Lee:
Yeah, yeah.
Dave Foy:
She’s absolutely brilliant. And she has kind of just donated this design. I think she was going to sort of have it as a paid kind of template for sale. But she gave it to us. She gave it to us. And I was really delighted.
Dave Foy:
But in the webinar, I kind of just go through exactly how to build that layout. It covers all sorts of, you know, basic stuff, tips and tricks, little time-saving things. Now, when I do the webinars, I leave the replay up for about three days. And then I’ll just take it down because, you know, the event’s finished. But I just thought it would be nice to kind of offer that replay of that webinar to your listeners. So if you head on over to designbuildweb.co forward slash WP Innovator. That’s right, isn’t it?
Lee:
That’s exactly it.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, that’s the one. Forward slash WP Innovator. And go and get your free gift of how to essentially build a beautiful design into Elementor of all things. Who would have thought I’d be plugging in Elementor? I have actually interviewed the guys from Elementor, to be honest. And I do, I got to admit, like, I feel like I’m cheating a lot of the time. Because obviously, everyone knows how much I love Beaver Builder as well. But it’s like when I use Elementor as well, I get just as excited. And I’m also a member of the Elementor community as well. So it’s…
Lee:
You were one of the first guys I actually, I kind of came across when I first, I remember first joining the Facebook group. You were one of the first people I noticed. We’re even working on an Elementor project at the moment with regards to some open source code we’re going to put out there as well. You know, some little, well, little widgets that people, modules, widgets, whatever you want to call them.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, yeah.
Lee:
That people can use as well.
Dave Foy:
Tomato, tomato.
Lee:
Tomato, tomato.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, potato, potato. Who the hell says potato?
Lee:
Not in whole.
Dave Foy:
Not in whole. They do say some very weird things in whole, but that’s not one of them.
Lee:
No.
Lee:
Well, there you go then. So, mate, what are the best ways to get hold of you? How can people kind of connect with you?
Dave Foy:
Yeah, well, I mean, the website, as you said, designbuildweb.co. I am on Facebook and Twitter. They’re, you know, facebook.com/designbuildweb and twitter.com/designbuildweb. I have to say, right now, my kind of, my actual kind of, you know, social channels, I’m not hugely active in them. And I check them every day. I post stuff to them every day. But my, my, my kind of main thing and where all the kind of, where all the action happens is, is actually right now is my email list. My, the email list is absolutely just, just brilliant. Such, such kind of, such a good community and kind of really good relationships with those people as well.
Dave Foy:
So, if you want to, and I kind of, all my best stuff, all my kind of first stuff. And later on, when I’ve got courses and things like that out, you know, they’ll always be kind of like the biggest discounts to those people as well. So, you can, you can, there’s a, there’s a link on the site called My Best Stuff, I think, up in the.
Lee:
So, at the top right.
Dave Foy:
Top right.
Dave Foy:
So, if, you know, if you want to kind of pop yourself onto that list as well, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of good stuff on there. So, but yeah, yeah, join in any of those things.
Lee:
And you can be found in the Elementor group as well. I’ve seen you dotting about in there as well. And are you a member, are you a member of the WP Innovator group?
Dave Foy:
I am, sir.
Lee:
Would you like to, would you like to give it a testimonial as to why people should go to anglecrown.com forward slash group?
Dave Foy:
Should, absolutely, definitely. I am, I was, it was recommended to me by, well, by, by a friend of mine who kind of recommended me to you and, and to me, to you. To me, to you. Chuk-a-chuk-a-vision.
Dave Foy:
And, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s an absolutely fantastic group. It’s one of those groups where, because I’m, I’m part, as I know you are as well, Lee, part of, you know, a number of WordPress groups. And you get these quite large groups where there’s several thousand people and there’s either nothing going on at all or it’s just a hive of kind of self-promotion and spam. Your group is fantastic. It’s, it’s, it’s probably one of the only Facebook groups I’m on.
Lee:
How much are you giving me for this? Did you say 50 quid?
Dave Foy:
No, 50p.
Lee:
50 p.p.?
Dave Foy:
No, no, no, no.
Dave Foy:
Oh, it’s, oh, well, it’s, the groups are, the groups are.
Dave Foy:
Yeah, it’s one of the, it’s one of the only groups where there’s, there’s a smaller amount of people, you know, like a, several hundred people. But it’s quality. Really, really good quality. You know, people sharing fantastic advice. I’ve learned absolutely tons since being part of the group. So I would, I would definitely highly, I think you’re doing a sterling job, Lee, honestly.
Lee:
Well, I wasn’t fishing for that, but thank you very much. That was beautiful.
Lee:
So come and join the 596 members as of this recording over on angledcrown.com forward slash group. Or just tap in WP Innovator to Facebook and come and join the community where you do get to chat with awesome people like Dave. And we all learn from each other and we do post cat pictures and we also are pretty hard on spam. So I’ve actually introduced recently a couple of questions just to kind of root out those people who are just joining groups for the sake of it. Because you’ve got some people that are like a member of 800 groups and you know, they’re just going to post a message to their CodeCanyon plugin or whatever it is. So I’ve introduced two questions. Don’t be scared of the questions. It doesn’t matter if you’re not a web designer or developer, you can still come in. It’s just two questions to find out how you found out about the group. And if you have a website, do share it. And that just allows us to kind of work out who’s just wasting time. Because we’ve had a few of those, I’m afraid.
Dave Foy:
Yeah. I do think that’s a really good idea because then when you are participating in the group yourself, you know 100% of those people are there for the right reasons.
Lee:
Exactly. Awesome.
Lee:
Yeah. Well, you’re a legend. Designers, if you want to know how to get your gorgeous designs built up online without knowing code experience, get in touch with Dave. He is your man. He is a great teacher. I’ve watched many of his videos. He is as nice as he is now on those videos. So he’s a pleasure to listen and to watch designbuildweb.co. Head on over to start here and you can start your journey with Dave and become amazing web developers. How much am I getting paid for that?
Dave Foy:
Oh, fantastic. That’s gone up to 100 quid that.
Dave Foy:
Mate, you’re a legend. Take care yourself. Get me credit card out and Julie. Thank you very much for having me.
Lee:
Take care.
Dave Foy:
Thanks very much.
Lee:
Cheers, mate. Bye-bye.
Dave Foy:
Bye.
Lee:
And now I need to find the stop button. Where’s he going? Oh, there it is.
Lee:
Well, that wraps up episode number 75. Next week, we’re going to be talking with Brad Miller and I’m super pumped about this episode. This guy has done stuff for The Walking Dead. That’s amazing. And I don’t mean actually for zombies because they can’t really order websites or have strategy, etc. Well, actually, sorry. Sorry. Thinking of some of my past clients. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. Anyway, he’s worked on The Walking Dead, Better Call Saul and all those amazing. programs with AMC. He’s also done some work with Disney. And I mean, that ticks all my boxes. He’s from Lift UX. You can go and check out liftux.com in advance of next week’s podcast. But it was a great show. We got on super, super well. And we’re probably going to do a meetup when I’m over there soon. So great guy. And I’m really excited about releasing this episode. But I’m going to be patient. I’m going to be patient. I’m going to wait till next Friday like a good boy. All right. Don’t forget, we have a Facebook group. It’s WPInnovator.com forward slash group. That’s a redirect if you didn’t know. And that’ll take you to Facebook where we’re all chilling. We’re watching the game, maybe drinking the odd bud and sharing cat pictures and also talking about WordPress, design agencies, web agencies, strategies, contracts, what we did on holiday, all that sort of good stuff. So come and join the conversation. It’s a great place to be. Don’t forget, though, there are some pre-qualifying questions. And don’t worry, just fill them in. Don’t matter what you put in there. It’s just to make sure somebody actually fills in the questions to make sure they’re human. So it doesn’t really matter what you put in there. You could even just put highly. That’d be nice. I like that. But the idea is if somebody doesn’t fill in the pre-qualifying questions, I’m guessing they’re probably going to spam the group because it tends to happen that way. Anyway, I feel like I’ve explained myself way too much. I’m going to go now. See you in episode 75. If you’d like to chat beforehand, see you in the Facebook group. See ya.
Dave Foy:
Bye
