Want to Beta Test a Visual Designer Plugin?

S

samZ

New Member
Hello :D, I've been slaving away on a WordPress page builder called Visual Designer. I was hoping to find some Web Designers who would be interested in beta testing the plugin?

We're trying something different – community driven development – we develop features based on community feedback. This way the plugin becomes something that you want and need. And we work on features that we know people actually want.

Community driven development requires...a community. So, I *really* need beta testers. Your mum. Your dog. Your cat. Your cute little hamster. The more beta testers, the better.

What can I offer in return for your beta testing and feedback – honestly, at this point, not much. You will be able to shape the direction of the plugin and its features via your feedback AND I’ll personally send each and every beta tester a funny story on a topic of their choice.

To get the beta version of Visual Designer click here and we'll email you beta access as well as a feedback form to tell us what you think!
 
I've downloaded your beta and it doesn't work. I created a new page and there is no option to use the VD to create a page. I have had a play with your demo and the UX is awful. The colour picker for example doesn't allow me to add HEX codes, there is no CSS option, the image uploader didn't work and I gave up trying to create a text element with headers and lists. And the icons are guesswork - you have to hover to find out what they mean and that's no good on a touch screen.

Have you seen Gutenberg? It's the new built in wordpress pagebuilder (coming soon) that will pretty much make your plugin redundant.
 
For those of you tempted to test this plugin - don't bother. It's one of the worst I ever used (and I've tested loads of them).

If you want to use a page builder try Gutenberg. It's been developed in house by wordpress and is really very clever: https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/
 
fisicx said:
I've downloaded your beta and it doesn't work. I created a new page and there is no option to use the VD to create a page. I have had a play with your demo and the UX is awful. The colour picker for example doesn't allow me to add HEX codes, there is no CSS option, the image uploader didn't work and I gave up trying to create a text element with headers and lists. And the icons are guesswork - you have to hover to find out what they mean and that's no good on a touch screen.

Have you seen Gutenberg? It's the new built in wordpress pagebuilder (coming soon) that will pretty much make your plugin redundant.
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I am interested to hear what about the plugin makes it the worst you have ever seen. Please elaborate on this in an objective manor.

Thanks for your feedback :) Re not having an option to use vD on the page, when you view the page you just created in the top admin menu is a link 'Edit with VD'. Yes, I believe I need to add an admin link on the 'Edit Page' page aswell to make it more clear. And we also need to add hex input to the colour picker - this is a planned feature in our pipeline. You can add custom css styling to any widget by clicking the Style button then the CSS button. Most of our feedback has been that the UX is great, we appreciate your feedback here aswell.

We hope you'll give vD another chance. Especially try the beta plugin again. We've created a simple replication of your website to demonstrate that you can quickly produce web pages. Our replication isn't mobile responsive, nor an exact replication: http://www.visualdesigner.io/qp/
 
samZ said:
I am interested to hear what about the plugin makes it the worst you have ever seen. Please elaborate on this in an objective manor.
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The main reason is because it takes me out of the dashboard editor. This doesn't allow me to use all the standard tools. for example, If I want to link an image or some text to a new page I can't use the wp tool. I can't access the image editor to add alt text or a caption. I can't access the dashboard menu, add catagories, tag, featured images or my SEO editor. If I want to embed a youtube video I can't paste in the code (because I can't switch between visual and text). Inserting a WP gallery seems impossible.

I could go on. Most page builders are pretty rubbish, they nearly all generate rubbish code - something google is getting quite hot about now that mobile first is becoming a big thing.

I've spent about two hours playing with your plugin and don't find it at all intuitive.

Once Gutenburg goes live in WP5.0, it will make your plugin redundant.
 
fisicx said:
The main reason is because it takes me out of the dashboard editor. This doesn't allow me to use all the standard tools. for example, If I want to link an image or some text to a new page I can't use the wp tool. I can't access the image editor to add alt text or a caption. I can't access the dashboard menu, add catagories, tag, featured images or my SEO editor. If I want to embed a youtube video I can't paste in the code (because I can't switch between visual and text). Inserting a WP gallery seems impossible.

I could go on. Most page builders are pretty rubbish, they nearly all generate rubbish code - something google is getting quite hot about now that mobile first is becoming a big thing.

I've spent about two hours playing with your plugin and don't find it at all intuitive.

Once Gutenburg goes live in WP5.0, it will make your plugin redundant.
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That's great that you've spent about 2 hours using the plugin so far! :) I'm curious why invest so much time if its the worst you've ever seen?

fisicx said:
If I want to embed a youtube video I can't paste in the code (because I can't switch between visual and text). Inserting a WP gallery seems impossible.
Click to expand...

You can certainly include a youtube video using a HTML Widget. Select any column, in the column menu select the Foundation Components button then select the Add HTML button.

You can certainly bring in any shortcode using the Shortcode Widget :D. Select any column, in the column menu select the Web Design Components button then select the Add Shortcode button. Then enter your shortcode - something like [gallery id="1"] I believe.

Regarding Gutenberg and competitor page builders out there (there are many) we render the editor the fastest and our UI allows for very fast designing and constructing (especially compared to other page builders where you need to jump between dialogs). Have you created a design using Gutenberg and then clicked preview? You have to wait quite a while for it to render your design?
 
samZ said:
That's great that you've spent about 2 hours using the plugin so far! :) I'm curious why invest so much time if its the worst you've ever seen?
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Probably because he's trying to help you and wanted to give it a fair chance. I have to agree though, once Gutenberg arrives, users will have no reason to use a third-party plugin. Not trying to be harsh, just giving you an honest opinion. Unless a 1st party solution is bad or doesn't exist, there's no reason to use a 3rd party one, be it yours or one developed by someone else.
 
Gutenburg is still in development so you can't use this as a benchmark.

You haven't addressed the issue that your plugin only work in live view. To be a useful tool it needs to work in the post/page editor so people can use the full range of built in tools and functions.

Consider also that many of the popular themes already incorporate a page builder.
 
fisicx said:
Gutenburg is still in development so you can't use this as a benchmark.
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Gutenberg is something you brought up as an alternative not myself :) And I agree, Gutenberg is still in development, it seems you are saying 'Don't use todays solution because tomorrow solution could be better - its still in development after all'.

Customers who want to build a website for themself or their client want a solution today :) And the segment we target, designers, want the ability to fine tune their web design down to minute detail. Gutenberg has not demonstrated this ability as yet, its more targeted to the every-man.

Our market feedback is people want to see what they are designing and their biggest turn off for a page builder was not being able to perform front-end editing. You're literally the first respondent to ask for backend editing. Not all theme page builders have the same range of features and capabilities, something you can do in X, cant be done in Y. For a designer/freelancer moving from one project to the next, they want consistency, with theme X they could embed a twitter feed but theme Y cannot.
 
samZ said:
And the segment we target, designers, want the ability to fine tune their web design down to minute detail.
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Good designers won't be using a page builder. £99 website builder might but they aren't designers.

However, I doubt we will agree on anything so I'll just wish you all the best and hope you find success.
 
fisicx said:
Good designers won't be using a page builder. £99 website builder might but they aren't designers.
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Thats quite a large audience you've just insulted lol. Page builder plugins were some of the top selling plugins in the last 5 years and the customers range from one-person freelancers to digital agencies with large subscriptions. This is quite a large market with alot of talented people using these products.
 
Having just read through the thread, samZ has made a splendid case for not investing valuable resources in providing feedback for samZ's product. Two hours saved.
samZ - you need to embrace feedback when you solicit it on a forum!
 
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