You have read all the articles and all the Facebook group posts and you want to build your WordPress website with Elementor as it gives you flexibility and control over your blog’s design. And I couldn’t agree more.
But maybe you don’t have all the technical details in check, or you haven’t used a page builder before so you are not really sure where to how to use Elementor. Don’t worry, I’ll help you and since I’m a blogger myself, I’ll do my best to explain everything from a blogger’s perspective and not a developer’s perspective. Let’s keep things simple, right? 🙂
Disclaimer: I have been using Elementor for years, I have built many websites for clients and for my personal websites with Elementor and I love it, so I’m a bit biased 😀 but if you decide after testing Elementor that it’s not exactly a good fit for you, then that’s fine.
How to install and use Elementor
In this article, we will focus on the Free version of Elementor which can help you stylize the pages of your blog and I will explain what you can with the free version and the differences with the Pro version.
Log in to your WordPress dashboard and go to Plugins > Add new.
Search for Elementor on the right side field and then select Install and Activate it.
That’s it. Elementor is now installed and you will see it on the left-side menu of your dashboard
If you click on it you will see the different settings of Elementor, but if you want to start editing your pages then you need to go to each page and click “Edit with Elementor” as shown below:
Then once you do that, you will see a loading screen and once it has finished loading you will view Elementor’s editor view.
If you have already written some text on the page before loading Elementor, the text will follow once Elementor is loaded and it will be inserted within a text widget.
On the left side, you will see a column with all the available widgets of the Free version.
I encourage you to just play around and test all the widgets and their different options.
Remember that each widget has 3 tab settings. A Content (or Layout if you add a new container), a Style, and an Advanced tab, as seen below:
There are different ways to build your page but generally speaking, you add a container first, and then you add elements inside.
So for instance, you add a Container and then you drag and drop inside it, a text widget. You can add more than one widget inside a container.
Think of a container as a section. So if you want to add a new section, then consider adding a new Container.
Initially, I would suggest taking baby steps and adding the basics, like a Title, which would be your heading 1 or heading 2, as shown here:
On this drop-down menu, you can select if you want this HTML tag to be an H1 or H2 or H3 and so on.
Then if you go on Styles you can change the font of the title, the color, and the size. There are more options there but if you are a complete beginner, I suggest taking baby steps. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me in a comment below 🙂
And if you make a new page with Elementor, feel free to share it as well. I would love to take a look at it.
What can you do with the free version of Elementor?
You will notice that there are some widgets that are under a Pro label and they have a little padlock icon on their square. These are locked on the free version and you would need a Pro version if you want to use them. The Pro version offers widgets to help you build more dynamic pages, such as your blog page, your category archived pages, and your single blog posts to name a few. It also gives you the option to design a global header and a footer. But if you don’t want to commit just yet, you can use the free version for now, to see if it’s really your cup of tea.
If you scroll a bit more, you will discover some more free widgets that are under the label General. These are also free to use so go ahead and test them.
There are so many more that I could write on this tutorial but if you are a beginner I think this is a good starting point. Follow this guide, try all the different widgets, and browse through their different styling settings. There are many tutorials out there, but I hope this guide will help you getting started, if you have never touched Elementor before in your life 😀
I have some Elementor tutorials that you can see here on my Youtube channel, if you prefer video tutorials. Here is a whole playlist of tutorials.
Good luck with building your blog of your dreams 🙂
