Elementor360 Newsletter Issue 24: Site Update & Lots of News

In this issue there are several tutorials related to the recent update of the Elementor360 website as well as a lot of Elementor related news.

From the Elementor Mothership

Elementor recently celebrated its 5th birthday and they released an infographic with their “facts and stats”. There are a number of impressive stats, but one set that stands out is that Elementor is powering more than 8 million websites and 5% of all websites on the Internet are using Elementor! People often cite the steady growth of the WordPress market share, but this stat has caused Paul Lacy to suggest that without Elementor and WooCommerce WordPress growth might be flat. Do you think that Elementor is partly responsible for WordPress’ impressive growth?

Elementor Pro 3.3,added Video Playlist and Image Hotspots widgets. Elementor Core beta 3.3 introduces a new Template Kits Library, an Import/Export Kit Tool, a Color Picker, and several optimization enhancements including Conditional and Inline CSS Load per widget. These will be available as new “experiments”. They are also working on custom device breakpoints, but I’m not sure if that experiment will make it in with this version.

From Elementor360

Three Elementor Themes Win the Color Palette Trifecta

When Elementor released version 3 with its global style settings it broke the integration that themes and plugins had with the Elementor editor. Back in November I covered the Kadence theme, which was the first to integrate its color palette with Elementor 3+, as well as with Gutenberg. I noted that Neve and Blocksy also added global color support for Elementor and Gutenberg and took a look at those integrations in this review.

Switching an Elementor Site to the Blocksy Theme

Blocksy was one of the themes that has a truly global color palette. I’ve wanted to try it out for a while and the Elementor360 update project was a good opportunity to do so. In this post and accompanying video I showed how I switch themes on a live site. If you are interested in the theme, you can see many of the Blocksy features in action.

Dynamic Content for Elementor: Using Dynamic Date Conditions

I had the Elementor360 website up and running before I learned of Dynamic Content for Elementor, but the site update gave me a chance to replace 3 plugins with Dynamic to achieve the same results more efficiently.

Themes

Astra Theme

In version 3.5 the Astra team made several accessibility improvements for screen readers and color choices.  Astra now claims to be a 100% accessible theme when using the default layout.  Also, the Astra team have been working to improve Core Web Vitals results. In 3.5 they made a number of optimizations on the loading of CSS assets to load only what is needed on the page and removed some unused code. With version 3.6 Astra continues optimizing the theme for faster load times and a better user experience.  The team added the ability to self-host Google fonts as well as a number of other enhancements.  They have also moved more color options from the pro version into the free version.  It is good to see the team actively improving the theme.

Page Builder Framework

The Page Builder Framework has a couple of releases that brought several WooCommerce enhancements, theme options available from a new extended quick edit screen, and a new notice block for use with Gutenberg.

Plugins

Ultimate Addons for Elementor

Ultimate Addons saw two new features. A new widget for WooCommerce that allows you to build your own custom checkout page.  You can use multiple layout options like single column, double columns or multi-step and display customized coupon boxes, along with other features. The team also now allows you to manage the visibility of Elementor widgets, sections, and columns based on date, time span, browser, operating system, login status, and page.  I was hoping that these options would allow you to use dynamic data, but they do not.  Hopefully that will be added in the future.

The Plus Addons Partners with Astra Security

The Plus Addons announced in their Facebook group that they have partnered with the Astra Security team to review the plugin code to avoid security issues. This is a practice that more plugin developers should adopt.

New Advanced Loop Builder for Unlimited Elements Pro

Unlimited Elements, the plugin that has the widget builder, has now added an advanced loop builder.  The loop builder gives you the ability to create a single loop item template which includes the ability to use ACF fields.  It has an advanced query builder. You can use the single loop item to create unique grids, tabs, accordions, and sliders.

PowerPack Elements Adds Two New Extensions

The latest release of PowerPack Elements has two new extensions.  There is a new link wrapper that allows you to add a link to sections or widgets, and there is also a new custom cursor option.

Dynamic Content for Elementor Enhancements

Dynamic.ooo added a new Tooltip extension as well as several advanced features for Elementor Pro forms.  There is now a JS Field for Elementor Pro Forms that lets you add JavaScript processing, a new HTML field that can be used with the JS Field for dynamic display based on user input, and a new Conditional Validation for Elementor Pro Forms option.

Happy Addons

The Pro version of HappyAddons got a new mega menu widget called Happy Mega Menu.  It allows you to add custom icons, badges, and Elementor content to default WordPress menus for use in Elementor.  The team also added a new Advanced Slider widget to the pro version and a Mailchimp widget in their free version.

Premium Addons for Elementor

Premium Addons includes a new TrustPilot widget for your TrustPilot reviews.  It also has a new Equal Heights extension for making your columns and widgets align.  Rounding out the update is the ability to now copy and paste entire pages.

Templates – Templately

Templately has a template library and is a template manager for Elementor and Gutenberg templates.   The free version of the plugin recently hit 100,000+ active installs. Templately also added three new templates to their free version:  Wave Digital – SEO Agency Personal Website, Artist Personal Website Template for WordPress, and Templately Coupon/Deals Website Template.

Well, that’s it for this issue. Happy Elementoring.