The Best WordPress Page Builders: 10+ Picks for 2024

The rise of e-commerce and online networking via WordPress has changed how we approach website building. Sometimes, the easy way out can be modified to work to our advantage. That’s what this curated list of the best WordPress page builders is for. But before that, let’s discuss why you’re probably here.

How Can Web Building Go Wrong?

To understand the importance of profound web building, it’s important to understand the e-commerce landscape without it. Anyone can buy a domain and tweak a little code here and there. But sticking to that and that alone can lead to several problems, including the following.

Bland Design

Many site and online business owners lack the vision and imagination to elevate webpage aesthetics. This can lead to web design that is bland and uninspired or just plain uninviting.

Inconsistent Elements

Whether you’re operating a brand or even running a blog, cohesion is important. Inconsistency in colour scheme, font, UX, and navigation can be off-putting. This is one of the issues that the best WordPress page builders should help prevent.

Inefficient Site Building

Poor hosting and inefficient use of code and web design elements can burden your site. It can generate errors that can take ages to fix. Many businesses in the market for the best WordPress page builders have this complaint.

UX Restrictions

Unfettered user experience is important, especially for online stores or booking websites. Without it, your audiences are likely to experience more frustration and complaints. Even with the basic features, a limited browsing experience leaves users unimpressed and wanting more.

Poor Performance

Cumbersome web design and bloated code slow down websites, which can drain your hard-earned traffic and conversions.

Subpar Responsiveness

Smaller screens demand web design that is adaptive and mimics the control and output of Desktop. Without it, you risk alienating a large chunk of your customer base.

Lack Of Integration And Compatibility

A working e-commerce or UX website is often a combination of multiple tools and extensions. Even if they don’t encumber the website, it’s important that they work in tandem. Without the best WordPress page builder at the helm, this can be a difficult balance to achieve.

What Are Page Builders?

Page builders, also known as site or web builders, help expedite the creation of fully-fledged websites. These tools take the drag-and-drop approach to building a virtual storefront to the next level. The best page builders for WordPress are flexible and allow for customization without affecting performance or responsiveness.

In fairness, they’re hardly the only option for making a dynamic website. However, professionally developed websites can cost small businesses a pretty penny. There is the option to code your own sites, achieving the same results without help takes time and can be risky, especially if you’re a beginner.

The Best Page Builders For WordPress

The best freemium WordPress page builders offer the best of both worlds. They offer pre-made templates, layouts, and elements, thus preventing choice fatigue. They’re also user-friendly, offer control, and can be readily customized if you have the programming chops.

  1. Elementor Page Builder – The One-Stop-Shop

In the world of web building, this is the frontrunner. No coding skills, no problem. The Elementor page builder for WordPress offers intuitive front-end building and diverse capabilities to create your dream website.

Standout Features

  1. Brizy – The User-friendly Choice

For web building, Brizy is among the best page builder for WordPress in terms of learning curve. It combines simple editing with a cloud auto-save feature that ensures nothing is lost in editing.

Standout Features

  1. Thrive Architect – Conversion-focused Web Building

If you’re an online entrepreneur, Thrive Architect is the solution for you. It provides everything you need to build compelling landing pages and marketing-friendly features.

Standout Features

  1. Bricks Builder – The ‘From-Scratch’ Frontrunner

Bricks Builder is one of the best beginner-friendly WordPress page builders. Flexible and offering features like template syncing and conditional viewing, you can exercise full control with this tool.

Standout Features

  1. Breakdance – Built To Innovate

Trusted by over 200,000 websites, Breakdance is the tool that lets you create a visually stunning and interactive site that stands out from the rest.

Standout Features

  1. Astra – Lightweight Page Building

Astra is among the best page builders for WordPress users that value simplicity. It combines enticing visuals and customizability without impacting site speed.

Standout Features

  1. Oxygen – The Responsive Pick

Mobile commerce is the future, and Oxygen is the tool that will help you make the most of it. Create professional websites with seamless functionality and elements regardless of screen size.

Standout Features

  1. Avada – A Powerhouse Of Versatility

Avada prides itself in affording full creative control to website and online business owners. It provides diverse features and layouts from a diverse library, combined with immense customizability.

Standout Features

  1. Beaver Builder – The Reliable Performer

In a shifting market, it helps to have a website that’s easy to adjust and adapt. Beaver Builder combines drag-and-drop innovation with dynamic site editing making it one of the most in-demand WordPress page builders.

Standout Features

  1. GeneratePress – For Speedy Results

Imagine web building that prioritizes performance, UX, and super web design. GeneratePress provides all that in a super lightweight package that’s perfect for timely results.

Standout Features

  1. WPBakery – For Saving Time

The WordPress Bakery Builder streamlines the process of web building with simple, gimmick-free drag-and-drop functionality. You can manage effectively your business thanks to easy-to-learn design features, and much more.

Standout Features

  1. Zion Builder – The Promising Newcomer

A new addition to the lineup, the Zion Builder has already emerged as one of the best WordPress page builders for businesses. It provides a no-nonsense approach to web building with lightweight design and immense webpage personalization.

Standout Features

Conclusion: WordPress page builders

To avoid the continual costs of outsourcing and decision fatigue of coding, page builders are your key to a successful website. The best WordPress page builders prioritize speed, UX, other essentials for the online business of today. So, take your pick and invest in a productive year online in 2024.

Change WordPress Category Base Prefixes Without Losing SEO – A Guide

If you’re reading this, you’re probably in need of a few technical tweaks to your WordPress site or store. Specifically, you’re looking for a simple way to configure the category base prefixes on WordPress without sacrificing your hard-earned traffic. This is an understandable need, and we’ll get into why it’s necessary in a minute.

For a start, it’s worth remembering that, with WordPress, it’s the simplest changes that sometimes make the most difference. And if you’re interested in improving the online visibility and usability of your site, this is a useful approach.

So, if you’re committed to this change, it’s worth knowing what it essentially involves and why it’s perhaps worth the bother.

What Exactly Are “Category Base Prefixes”?

In the context of WordPress, and other site builders, category base prefixes make up a part of the permalinks related to your site. Also known as “tag prefixes”, they determine the hierarchy of the content on your web pages. As you navigate pages within pages on a site, all the new URLs build upon a default, or “base”, category prefix.

Their main purpose is to help site users and search engines identify different pages and page elements, as determined by the URLs and permalinks that use category prefixes. Without them, your URLs become less distinctive, making navigation less easy.

Default WordPress Settings

Luckily, WordPress once again delivers with its existing category prefix settings. For instance, let’s say you have a URL that goes “https://yourwebsite.com/category/food/”.

The purpose of any URL is to direct your users to their destination.  In this case, that would be a page on your site titled “Food”.

But to get there, you need more than just a domain name and an identifier for the destination page.  For that, WordPress will have implemented prefixes, like “category”, to make navigation more straightforward. It’s definitely functional. But again, if you’re reading this, you’re probably looking for something more personalized.

This brings us quite neatly to our main point…

Why Implement The Prefix Change?

WordPress can offer default settings for a number of options, like base prefixes, checkout fields, and much more. While they unquestionably serve their purpose, some site developers and online businesses want a little more out of their CMS. Here are some reasons why, for instance, you might be tempted to modify your category prefixes.

Enhancing SEO

By tailoring your category base prefixes, you can create alternatives that are more enhanced or align with your business. For instance, if you’re running a WordPress-based hotel room booking service, a permalink like “https://yourwebsite.com/room/page” might be conducive to better online visibility and clicks.

Improving User Experience

There is also the question of what your website users might find more convenient. If the default permalink structure is too wordy or complex, you can design a prefix model which makes them easier to follow. That way, if anyone wants to share your URL or reaccess it via their history, they won’t find the links too intimidating to navigate.

Aesthetics and Branding

When they’re not being user-unfriendly, the default permalinks on WordPress can be on the clunkier side of things. But a change in prefix can afford some much-needed consistency and brevity to your URLs. And a change like this might seem small, but it’s just enough to make an impact.

Reducing Duplicate Content

Many websites must contend with duplicate content that is often a result of unoptimized URLs. With altered prefixes, you can ensure that search engines will receive easily identifiable links for each, distinct page or category.

Risks Of Changing Your Base Prefixes

Clearly, changing your WordPress category base prefixes can make a world of difference. However, if your site has many pages, each with its own URL, that probably means more distinct permalinks. And with more permalinks, there are more prefixes that need changes, but also unity.

So, it’s essential that the change you bring to each prefix isn’t a damaging one, and here’s why.

Broken Links

If practice carelessly, changing your prefixes might result in broken or unresponsive URLs. That might end up in your internal and external links becoming invalid, which can disable existing pages. This can be a nightmare for user experience, which is bad enough, but there’s a bigger problem at hand.

SEO Implications

What was meant to be a change to improve your search rankings can easily become counterproductive. Without the right management, your altered prefixes might end up affecting your existing flow of traffic, thus impacting SEO. This is always a risk when you’re changing how your site is accessible.

But we’ve already established that this risk is worth taking if it offers long-term advantages. So, where do we go from here?

SEO Best Practices For Changing Prefixes

Tailoring your WordPress prefixes to perfection should ideally have minimal impact on your traffic. However, before you change anything, remember that the risk of losing your site rankings is still very real.

So. it’s worth taking the time to optimize your site for SEO before, during, and after the required changes, and here’s how:

The Two Methods Of Changing Base Prefixes

Moving on to the meat of the matter, there are two chief ways to change your WordPress base category prefixes. These are a) the manual method, and b) via WordPress plugins.

The Manual Method

This process is a bit more on the technical side of things. But if you’re worried about burdening your CMS server with added extensions, it might be the way to go. Basically, this approach involves changing the default WordPress permalink settings by yourself.

Here’s what you need to do.

  1. After logging into your WordPress dashboard, find and head over to “Settings”.
  2. Find the “Permalinks” section, where you’ll find options for changing the structure or permalinks and changing category or tag prefixes.
  3. Under “Optional, refer to the text box opposite “Category base”.
  4. Enter your desired prefix, be it “topics”, “genre”, or “page”.
  5. Once you’re satisfied, save your changes.

WooCommerce Product Page Prefixes

WooCommerce users have to option to, with this method, alter the default “/product-category/” prefix to one that they prefer. To do so, follow the same aforementioned steps, except for step 4, where the label next to the text box of interest should be “Product category base”.

Plugin Method

Alternatively, you can turn to the WordPress plugin of your choice to modify your category base prefixes. Your options include include RankMath, Yoast, AIOSEO, and Redirectioner. Aside from an absolutely lovely interface and dashboard, these plugins come with the added benefit of some nifty SEO features.

The first step, obviously, is to install and activate your plugin of choice once you’re logged in. From there, the core process should be the same for most.

  1.  Find the settings on your plugin via the dashboard which relate specifically to changing the prefixes.
  2. From there, to remove the base prefix entirely, you’ll need to disable or enable the default WordPress setting. For RankMath, that would be “Strip Category Base”.
  3. Find the option or text box with which you can enter your new prefixes.
  4. Once you’re happy with your choice, and you’ve also disabled the default version, don’t forget to set up the new redirect for the old permalinks.

Note: You’ll find the relevant option for activating redirects in any of the chosen plugins.

  1. Save your changes, and make sure to test the new permalinks and redirects.

Best Of Luck With Your Changes!

So, to summarize, there are a few ways to change your default category base prefixes on WordPress. And given the benefits, it’s clear that these changes are worth exploring if you want to spruce up your user experience.

There are certainly some risks regarding SEO, but they’re worth braving given the upsides. And besides, by utilizing SEO best practices, you can implement the desired changes to your prefixes without compromising your rankings. It’s a win-win for everyone, so best of luck!