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by robador 1178 days ago
> The content is not reusable (you cannot reuse content on other pages). > The design is not consistent (pages often don’t look the same). > The site is not maintainable (change on one page doesn’t propagate to other pages). > The content is not maintainable (the content cannot be easily extracted from the database). > The site is not very performant (page builders load a lot of extra assets).

All the above depends on the tool that's used. I've set up many sites that had page builder features but didn't have these drawbacks. Certainly there's many other tools out there. What OP seems to be talking about are page builders that output and store raw html.

> There’s always a missing feature (page builders cannot solve all your problems).

True, but that goes for literally anything you can use to build websites, all the way down to the HTML spec. And extending the page builder is often possible with professional help.

> Getting to know page builder doesn’t make you a developer (leave the job to a professional).

Developers are not by definition a professional in all aspects of page creation. A user well versed in, say, WordPress, will know about the drawbacks as well, and know how to mitigate them.

I'm not a big fan of page builders myself, but there's a place and time for these tools. I'm currently working with a team to implement a 1.000 page website in contentful and react, based on similar thinking as OP. It's an absolute shit show and it feels like being the hostage of 'professional developers'.

In the end the most important is to choose the right tool for the job, and there's a place for these page builders.

1 comments

I simple mix and match. Almost all page builders have shortcodes or codeblocks in some shape way or form. I can do easy things the easy way or use code plumbing where necessary. Pick the right tool for the job is a skill by itself I always found (that and everything takes twice as long as you think it does)