For those who haven’t seen the classic movie, The Wizard of Oz, go watch it now so you’ll understand my title above.
I have seen some confusion regarding these items, so I would like to try to set each in their proper place for you. (If you already have them set properly, you can go work on your site or a DKM or send a followup email instead.)
WordPress Editors
Gutenberg is the “code name” the WP folks use for version 5 of WordPress. It is the basis of your site and now includes a new editor in your WP dashboard that is quite similar to what the Plugin called Elementor does. (See below.)
WordPress Plugins
So Elementor is a plugin, just like Yoast SEO or WPForms or Table of Contents Plus. Many of you have been using it to give special style to your sites for the home page and for posts and such. You created Elementor Templates to do so. It takes the basic Theme you chose and personalizes it the way you want it to look, so your site doesn’t look just like everyone else’s who happens to use the same Theme. (See below.)
About Elementor Pro…If you have not yet done so, I would suggest you cancel the yearly recurring fee that it includes. You can still keep and use the features of Elementor Pro if you wish. You just won’t get support and updates after a year from your initial purchase. (I have already canceled my subscription and no longer use the plugin. You do it via PayPal, assuming that’s how you paid for it in the first place.)
As you may have heard or read, the reason for possibly not using Elementor is that that plugin really does many of the same things you can now do with the new WP editor (aka Gutenberg). Before v5.0 of WP, there was more need for plugins like Elementor (and other similar products). Gutenberg is not the equal of Elementor yet, but the WP editor itself will only get better over time, and those plugins will likely become less useful and less needed.
I’m not suggesting you delete your Elementor plugins, especially if you’re already using Templates you created. It’s just that you may find Elementor less useful in the future.
WordPress Themes
Good free Themes for our purposes are GeneratePress, Oceans, and Astra. (The WP Inn is using Astra.) A Theme determines how big your fonts are and what color they are, what your headings look like, how wide or how tall various pieces are, and more.
One last thing…When you create a new Post on your site, you’re not doing so “in Elementor”. You’re doing it in your WP Editor – either the old Classic Editor, as it’s become known, or in the new Gutenberg editor. Elementor will just give that Post the style you created for it when you made a Post Template.
I hope this clears some things up. There are a lot of pieces here that can be difficult to keep straight.
