Elementor360 Newsletter – Issue 14

The 14th edition of the newsletter features a premium Elementor addon giveaway, three tutorials, and lots of Elementor news.

Dynamic Content for Elementor Giveaway

Elementor360 is currently running a drawing to promote our newsletter.  Five winners will be chosen to win a license of the Dynamic Content for Elementor addon.  The Dynamic Content for Elementor addon has a lot of unique and useful functionality.  Two lifetime pro and three annual pro licenses are being given away.  You can enter even if you already have signed up for the newsletter.  Please share the giveaway with your Elementor friends.

Tutorials

How to Get Started with Elementor and the Page Builder Framework Theme

I use the Page Builder Framework theme on the Elementor360 website and have been very pleased. I think that the theme is “a sleeper.” People are learning about it by word of mouth and it is steadily gaining fans. As the name implies, it is designed to work well with page builders. This tutorial answered the common question of what to configure in the theme and what to configure in Elementor when starting a new project.

Horizontal Scrolling Using Dynamic Content for Elementor

These days sliders have been replaced with horizontal scrolling.  The Dynamic Content for Elementor addon allows you to easily enable horizontal scrolling.  This tutorial looks at what to keep in mind when creating content to be used with this feature.

Using the Dynamic Content for Elementor Views Widget

I continue to discover new features in the Dynamic Content for Elementor addon.  The Views widget acts as a sort of repeater to create a list of content and includes some extra features, such as the ability to enable user filters. It has a number of potential uses and could be a go-to option for displaying content from multiple posts.

Security News

Hopefully this is old new for you, but if not, hurry and update Elementor Pro and the Ultimate Addons for Elementor plugin.

Elementor released an important security update to prevent non-privileged users (non-admin accounts) from being able to upload files into the icons folder.  If you site allowed for user registration then a low level user could exploit this vulnerability to upload malware and take control of your site.  This was fixed in Elementor Pro 2.9.4.

Version 1.24.2 of Ultimate Addons for Elementor contains an important security update and fixes a vulnerability that allowed hackers to create accounts on a site, even if registration was closed.

Let’s stop and think about these security issues for a minute. Here are two zero-day hacks and they were used together. The Ultimate Addons hack was used to create a user and then the Elementor Pro hack was used to take over the site. This shows a lot of planning and sophistication to find and coordinate these exploits. It makes me think that perhaps the hackers have a back-catalog of hacks waiting for the chance to use them. It is a bit discouraging for site owners as even having two factor authentication enabled and login form protection wouldn’t have mattered.

Plugin News

Cross-Site Copy and Paste is a Popular Feature

Ultimate Addons for Elementor plugin now supports cross-site copy and paste.  It works for sections, widgets (Elementor and 3rd party), images and video content. PowerPack Elements also joined the cross-domain copy and paste club.  HappyAddons was the first to add this feature and Dynamic Content for Elementor also supports it.

I tend to develop first on local host and this feature will make it easier to get those designs onto the live site. The ability to copy content, styling, and widget settings from one site to another is a real time saver.  Cross-site copy and paste is becoming a standard feature, even if Elementor hasn’t (yet) added it.

PAFE Adds New Booking Form Feature

The Piotnet Addons For Elementor plugin has added the ability to create a simple booking form to their form builder.  I took a look at the tutorial and you will need to think like a programmer, but it is good to know that the option is available. Remember that PAFE brings the ability to take payments to Elementor forms, so this is a nice addition.

Crocoblock JetEngine 2.3 New Features

The Crocoblock team released version 2.3 of JetEngine, which adds a number of new features.  There is now a “Dynamic Function” tag that can be used with a custom field to automatically get the sum, average or the minimum / maximum value of a field.  There is a Map Listing module that allows you to display a list on a Google map.   The Listing Grid now includes a repeater fields for the output of the listing making this functionality easier to implement.

Unlimited Elements Now Includes Template Kits

The Unlimited Elements addon now includes pre-designed page templates.  These are kits of several pages that you can either import into the Elementor template library or used directly to create a page.  There are some template kits available for the free version of the plugin and more included with the premium version.

Dynamic Content for Elementor Adds Advanced Video Controls

Dynamic Content for Elementor continues it practice of providing unique and useful features with the Advanced Video Controls.  This is an extension that allows you to customize Elementor’s video widget.  It works with YouTube, Vimeo, and self hosted MP.4 videos.  You can use it to hide and customize the look of the video controls.

Designer Powerup 2.1 Adds New Features

The latest version of Designer Powerup was released with several new features.  Blobs generated with Designer Powerup can now have gradients applied.  Also, blobs can now be used with images to clip an image into the shape of the blob.  A nice feature of Designer Power is the quick and easy to use Spacer controls.  These have been extended to work on columns and keyboard shortcuts have been added.  You can now add advanced gradients and shadows to text elements.  There have also been some performance improvements.

Templates

The Elementor team has been releasing a new template kit each month, but the March kit was late and we got two new kits in April. Elementor’s 8th template kit dropped with an Interior Design theme.  This kit is a minimalist design that emphases visual images and lots of white space.  Like other kits, this includes templates for header, footer, single, archive, the 404 page and popups.  There are also templates for a project and project archive.

Elementor also added an online course template kit. This is the 9th professionally designed template kit from the Elementor team and focuses on pages for a WordPress LMS site.  It includes a home page template designed to highlight course benefits, course, lesson, and course completed templates as well as 404, about, contact, header, footer, and various pop-up templates.  The templates use light blues and purples and are very attractive.

That’s it for this issue. Happy Elementoring.

Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. You will still pay the same amount so there is no extra cost to you.