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by pbowyer 3640 days ago
Congratulations on releasing - it looks very nice. Can you compare and contrast how it differs to others (e.g. Visual Composer) - how does it store the elements?
1 comments

Thanks!

Element data (or models) are stored as meta data and the content generated by Tailor is saved as HTML within the post (with a few exceptions for dynamic elements that use shortcodes). The benefit to this ofcourse is that when you disable the plugin you're not left with shortcodes in the place of content. This is one way in which the plugin differs from something like Visual Composer.

Conceptually it's very similar to other plugins: drag and drop elements on the page, configure them to your liking. Differences I'm proud of are the way in which rows and columns work (drag elements to the left or right of an existing element), the primacy of content (see my other comment), the way templates are managed (saving, importing, exporting and adding to the page) and the revision history panel.

There's a lot more under the hood and a lot of time and effort has gone into it, so if you're interested I hope you'll check it out - it's free after all :D

> ...the content generated by Tailor is saved as HTML within the post (with a few exceptions for dynamic elements that use shortcodes)

So, does that means that if I don't use any of those shortcode-dependent elemensts, the pages/posts I build with Tailor will retain the full original design even when I disable (or altogether delete) the plug-in?

If so, you ARE my hero!!

(In case anyone is wondering why I would need to disable/delete the plug-in, the answer is speed/performance gain. With more and more people becoming aware of the site loading speed as one of the SEO factors and of tools like Google PageSpeed Insights/GTMetrix/Pingdom etc., I have been observing an increasing demand for loading speed optimization over the last year or so. IMO, the excessive importance people are attaching to the scores as reported by these services is blown a bit out of proportion, but that is possibly a topic for another thread.)

Content is maintained separate from the plugin, but Tailor does provide it's own set of minimal styles for elements. The main problem it solves it getting "locked in" to a plugin (i.e., being left with nothing but shortcodes when the plugin is disabled), but the element styles would no longer be applied when the plugin is disabled.

That's an interesting thought though and something I'll explore. If it can be achieved without hacking WordPress or introducing other issues then I will introduce it. One of the great things about Tailor at the moment is that it doesn't mess with WordPress and I haven't had to release a single maintenance release to support new versions of WordPress.