Does WordPress need a Canva-style Drag and Drop Page Builder for Complete Beginners?

Video summary

- I tested out Canva's website builder by recreating parts of the Notion homepage in 10 minutes to see how easy it was to use and the quality of code it produced.
- The drag-and-drop interface is extremely easy to use, similar to using Canva's normal graphic design tools.
- The website scored very well on page speed tests, with 91 mobile and 98 desktop, but has major accessibility issues due to lack of proper HTML heading structure
- Functionality is limited since you can't plug in e-commerce, WordPress plugins, etc on a Canva site
- Overall very easy for beginners to build a site visually, but lacks semantics and ecosystem compared to WordPress - author proposes integrating drag-and-drop builder into Gutenberg editor

[ospinadigital]

YES, having a Drag & drop using on top of Wordpress would be brilliant. Keep us posted

[peternilsson]

Let me know when you have it ready to go! I would love to be able to build a website like in your examples. But it need to be fast, seo friendly and of course mobile friendly 😀

[celinedaumesnil]

Definitly interested to follow the idea

[davidentwistle]

The drag-and-drop approach is not incompatible with systematic design, so long as it can be used for creating page templates as well as page content. And a grid system is a well-known way of regularising design relationships, both within and between pages. Both templates and grids are built into page layout programs. These programs would provide a ready starting point for a drag-and-drop page builder, as many designers will be more than familiar with them.

[CarlMadsen]

In Gutenberg Cover block is there a method to make the entire block clickable? I see ways of editing the code div tag with javascript. SEO and accessibility of course would have issues as well.

I've searched plugins as well, nothing jumps out. Maybe javascript inside of CSS.

Thanks again for the great fun video. I'm really liking Gutenberg and have my entire website running under the Twenty Twenty-Four theme.

Here's a thumbs up, treats for cats!!!
😺

[mohdom]

You know I always send people interested in FSE to your channel, but the tutorials are scattered throughout the channel. I know something like Kevin Geary page building 101 is too early to happen with this kind of tool, but is there a possibility of a crash course?

Also, have you seen the Lemmony theme? I used it on a Clinet site a month ago, and it looked awesome. I don't know who made it; in fact, I found it in themes.

[derek-hanson]

The upside of drag and drop and sizing is that it is incredibly easy. Having layers and elements overlap with simple button clicks let’s you design with your imagination.

The big downside I think is you lose any sort of cons and repeatability. Keeping designs from one section or page to the next gets cumbersome when you have a free canvas to work on. Details like font sizes, spacing, and alignment are piecemeal instead of part of a design system.

Maybe there is a middle ground?

[JonathanCampDesigner]

Ok as a web developer I now want all headings 2pt smaller, in a diff colour and range left 🤣 whoops….

And I want a “posts” page with pic and summary, auto generated, sorted by date. … whoops…

And I want ecommerce integrated with filters and sorting…. Whoops…

Oh and I want it responsive…. Whoops…

Need I go on? Good design tool but rubbish as creating maintainable, symantic, responsive websites!

The list of issues would be endless including all the above and menus, posts, ecommerce, cconsistency, etc etc.

[vaughanprint]

Still not 100% convinced… but will come back again for the next install.

By the way, how does that cat not put on weight?

[onuro]

Imho no. "Drag & Drop" is not actually the concept that's ruling over default Gutenberg functionality but rather the UI/UX of it. In our past FSE research study with WordPress customers there was a huge usability gap between long time WordPress users vs new ones.

That's why a newcomer always prefer Elementor or alike. And the nice part of Elementor is not Drag & Drop but the usability.

[tjsayers]

It would be interesting to see the Canva site imported to a Wordpress environment (Local, InstaWP) and view the block structure. If a site can’t easily be accessible, then I don’t think the method should be used. Beginners would not know they are making a non-accessible website. This reminds me of the old Fireworks web designing method, which saved as a graphic and sliced it up. 😂

[ÖzelNumara-cd]

canva fun until you wanna do mobile verison...

[newunderthesun]

Drag and Drop in WordPress is a no brainer. Every new builder thinks they have taken a step closer to that option. This is not a new idea and if it was easy, certainly it would have already been built.

ps: Your audio was horrible on this video.

[randbaldwin]

Godaddy? Who likes godaddy? It's great they sponsored you. But we all hate gobadly. I am glad they are spending money to reinforce how much we all hate go lamely.