Elementor360 Newsletter – Issue 7

In this issue: an Unlimited Elements tutorial, a walk-through of the Flexible Elementor Panel plugin, two additions to the Crocoblock suite, a very nice new widget added to PowerPack and a new widget added to Premium Addons.

Tutorials

Unlimited Elements Widget Creator

I created an article and accompanying video where I used the Unlimited Elements Widget Creator. The Widget Creator is a feature of the Unlimited Elements addon pack. You need to know HTML and CSS, and maybe some JavaScript, depending on what you are trying to create. I created a simple sales banner that pulled the sale start and end dates from the database and conditionally showed the banner when a sale was active.

Flexible Elementor Panel

I also did a walk-through of the Flexible Elementor Panel plugin. This doesn’t add widgets, but instead adds some nice quality of life enhancements to the Elementor editor. If you aren’t familiar with the plugin then checkout the article or video.

Themes

Astra Pro 2.1

Astra Pro 2.1 was released with the major feature being the ability to move inline theme CSS to a separate CSS file. This should make it easier for browsers to cache and make page load faster.

Plugins

Crocoblock – New JetStyleManager Plugin

If you are a Crocoblock user then you are the owner of an plugin suite that just keeps giving. They introduced a new JetStyleManager plugin. It adds new “Editor Load Levels” settings of None, Low, Medium, Advanced, and Full. The settings apply to most of the Crocoblock widgets. As you ratchet down the load level, the number of options in the Elementor editor’s widget options panels declines. They say that can greatly increase editor speed. It is also a way to limit the options for clients after a site design is completed.

When you have the new JetStyleManager plugin active then you also get new items added to an element’s right click menu. Style that button the way you want it and then right click on it and “Save as Skin” to apply a skin name and save the design for recall on the next button. If you set the Editor Load Levels to “None” then the next time you add a button and right click on it, you can apply the skin you previously saved. I put in a feature request asking them to allow users to apply a skin no matter the Editor Load Level. I hope that is implemented as it would give us some “global style” options.

Crocobloack JetElements – New Bar Chart Widget

Crocoblock added a new widget to the JetElements plugin. The bar chart widget allows you to manually enter the labels and values for bar charts or you can use dynamic data to populate the values. I was glad to see that they continue to include the dynamic data options with new widgets.

PowerPack for Elementor – New FAQ Widget

PowerPack is another Elementor addon that gets a frequent mention because they are regularly updating their product. The latest addition is a FAQ widget. You have the ability to manually enter your FAQ question and answers and style the display accordion. There are several things though that make this a standout widget. First, you can use dynamic data and pull the content from ACF repeater fields. This makes it easy in the admin to enter the content. You can also use the dynamic data option to pull the questions and answers from Custom Post Type fields. This makes it useful for creating a mini help desk page. Second, the FAQ widget has support for Schema markup so that Google will read.

Premium Addons for Elementor – New Color Transition Widget

The new Premium Addons Color Transition Widget is pretty cool. It gives you the option for background color transitions where you can have the background of a section change color when you scroll it into view. In their demo, they pair it with some image easing to create a subtle, yet eye-catching effect.

From the Elementor Mothership

Elementor Pro – New Pro Gallery Widget

Elementor released a new Pro Gallery widget with is a very nice gallery with a number of display options (tile, masonry, grid, justified). You can add multiple galleries and get a filter option as well. One thing that I noticed about this addition is that the Elementor team created the gallery JavaScript from scratch with special attention to performance. They released it as a stand-alone jQuery plugin on Github.

Elementor – New Template Kit

The Elementor design team released the third site template kit. This one is targeted to portfolio sites. These site kits are “complete websites” in that they provide common pages that are pre-designed. This template kit is very attractive and colorful and breaks out of the common template mold based on stock photos.

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.