Newbie question about the BB templates and navigation ...

BB Theme
1

Hi team,

I’m a newbie here to BB and after playing around for two days with the page builder etc. I have to say I’m so impressed with everything you guys have done. Love it.

Now just to offer a little background, I’m a graphic designer by trade but I’m a novice when it comes to Wordpress and BB. In the past I’ve always designed sites and sent them off to my programming team for coding, whether the client wanted a static html design or wordpress install etc. I designed… they coded. So I really never got involved with the actual code/setup of the sites I designed. I’m simply the visual guy :wink:

So after reading about BB I decided to take a shot and purchased the Agency package. If all goes as planned I’d like to build the wordpress sites myself and allow the customer to then manage the site themselves with the BB plugin. (love the white label feature BTW!)

So to get to my question (and go easy on me because it might be a lame one at that…)

I see the various BB templates you can use to just build a site with little effort involved. Really cool. I also see that there aren’t any templates that include a full blown site so to speak. Just pages … or sections of pages.

I’ve purchased a few WP templates in the past, and most come complete with multiple pages and navigation etc. already to go. Just edit and you’re done. But I also understand these are more so considered “Wordpress themes” rather than templates.

I swear there’s a question here …lol.

The difference between the BB templates and WP themes …?
Yes… I think that’s the answer I’m looking for :wink:

So, if I were to design and setup an entire site for instance, can I save that entire site including navigation structure as a BB template? I’m sure I could save the individual pages as templates but I’m just curious what the limitations are to saving an entire site design. I see none of the BB templates have any navigation included (unless I’m missing something).

I’m soon going to be tapping into a pretty demanding niche and I’d like to create a few dozen BB templates (sites) where professionals can just edit the entire site I’ve already designed and be done. Not sure if this is possible with BB so wanted to get some feedback.

Thanks for allowing me to ramble and offering any feedback and advice. I knew there was a question in there somewhere …

Again, LOVE BB already… and I’ve only scratched the surface.

Thanks in advance.

2

Hey David,

Glad you’re loving the plugin! :slight_smile: Okay, so first off, let me just tell you that the BB Page Builder can only edit the contents of a page, not the entire page. Some elements of a page are controlled by the theme, like the Header/Sidebar/Footer. These elements are the ones you can find on all pages of the site. The header contains the logo and menu on the upper part of each page. Footer contains all the stuff on the bottom of each page. The sidebar contains misc stuff you see at either side of each page, e.g., the links you find on the right side of this site. BB templates are only applied to the content area of a page, so you won’t be able to change the elements on the Header/Footer/Sidebar using the BB Page Builder.

WordPress Themes control the layout of each page and, sometimes, even the contents, depending on the theme you’re using. So the main difference between the two is that a BB template can only get applied to the contents of a page, while the WP theme controls the layout of the entire page.

If you wanted to create the entire layout using the BB Page Builder, you can use our theme. We’ve an option to disable the Header/Footer so you can create the entire page using just the BB Page Builder. :slight_smile:

Hope this helps!

Ben

3

Thank you Ben. I really appreciate the detailed response. So just to clarify a few things:

  1. If I use the beaver builder theme (which I am currently using) and keep the header/footer turned on, would I have to use custom css or similar to design the header/footer area the way I need them to look per each site - I.E logo and navigation etc?

  2. If I use the BB theme and disable the header/footer, sounds like you are telling me I can then just create the navigation myself with the page builder and place it wherever I need to in the design… Correct? But technically it would be in the “content” area of the WP structure still Although aesthetically it would look proper? If so, would that mean the navigation/footer, etc on each page would have to be updated manually every time a new page was added or removed etc?

From what I gather from your response, it sounds like wordpress has what I would refer to as “include” files for header/footer/sidebar etc. I’m somewhat familiar with that architecture. I also know that the “include” files make life a whole lot easier when it comes to updating certain things like navigation, sidebar content, etc site wide. Sounds like if I don’t go that route it could make things much more complicated for updates etc. Correct?

So final question… If I create a site with the BB theme and keep header/footer on and figure out how to style those correctly without using the page builder (just use that for content areas), would a customer then need to know how to use the wordpress admin panel to add pages to the navigation etc? I ask because I’m trying to conceive it in my mind how much the end customer will need to do to be able to maintain, edit, grow their website once I set it up and hand it off to them even with the BB plugin for the front end editor installed. I’d also assume they’d need to be familiar with the admin panel in WP to create blog posts if they so chose. Correct?

I really appreciate the insight…

4

Hey David,

No worries!

  1. Correct. You also have options to style it in the customizer(Appearance > Customizer) but if that's not enough, then custom CSS it is.
  2. Correct. We've recently just released the Menu module so you can add navigation on the content area. We also have Global Templates, templates which are linked to each other so when you update the 'master template', all instances of that template gets updated as well. But yes, you'll have to add those every time you create a new page. Also, this works best on pages only. If you're dealing with posts, you may need to modify the codes on some template files to make it work like a page.

Correct on the includes part. That is what the theme is for. You can check the themes description from the codex on the link below.
https://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes

It indeed does make life a bit harder if you don’t use the theme features(related to the posts problem I posted on #2). But if you know a bit of PHP, we’ve some workarounds to get through that. :slight_smile:

Yep! Your client would need to know some stuff regarding WP. But it should be pretty easy, that’s what WP is for. In fact, there should be several videos up on Youtube for those kind of stuff. :slight_smile:

Ben

5

Thanks Ben. It’s all starting to make a lot of sense now :wink: I’ll be a master in no time. Again, appreciate the detailed replies.

6

Hey David,

I’ve a feeling that is the case! :wink: Have fun now! :slight_smile:

Ben