August Update – 2.0, Themer, and Gutenberg, Oh My!

Hi there! Hope you’re doing well. Summer is in full swing here and it’s been a beautiful one so far out in California. It’s been several weeks since our last update post. My apologies for the radio silence. I try to pack as many outdoor adventures as I can into the summer and take some time to disconnect. Rest assured, while it’s been quiet, things are humming along and there’s a bunch of exciting news to catch up on.

Today, we want to chat about 2.0, Themer, and also talk a bit about the new Gutenberg editor project. As always, there are a bunch of fun plugs, resources, and goodies in the footnotes. Let’s do it!

Beaver Builder 2.0

A few weeks ago, we released an alpha version of Beaver Builder 2.0. It’s available to download now on your account page. You can also jump right in and try it on Beaver Junction’s live demo.

Our goal for 2.0 is to make the building experience faster, better, and more intuitive. Along with a slew of new features, we’re introducing an updated and improved user interface and many performance enhancements!

There are improvements for power users like keyboard shortcuts and duplicating columns. There are also improvements for less-experienced users and clients like a streamlined publishing and drafting interface and a new revisions panel. In short, your work with Beaver Builder will become faster and easier.

We don’t have an exact release date 2.0 yet, but we’re shooting for early Fall. Because of the major UI changes, we wanted to take lots of time to get feedback from you! You can learn more about 2.0 and join the discussion on our original Facebook thread and the latest update thread. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Oh, and be sure to check back next week as we’ll be pushing out another update with some MAJOR performance improvements.

Page Builders in a Gutenberg World

While we’re talking about the future, the WordPress community is abuzz over the new Gutenberg editor project. It’s been fascinating to watch the core WordPress team’s progress, the community’s reception to Gutenberg, and the new goal-focused approach to core development. Lots of folks have asked what our plans are in relation to Gutenberg and what the future of Page Builders looks like…

In short, we’re really excited and supportive of Gutenberg! Our hope is that the project continues to evolve into something Beaver Builder can embrace and extend. We’ve been collaborating with the core team on the project, and we’ve been speculating, both optimistically and cautiously, of Gutenberg’s potential impact on our business and the WordPress space in general.

If you haven’t tried it out yet, Gutenberg is in the WordPress repository. Give it a spin. Imagine if Gutenberg “Blocks” we’re interchangeable with Beaver Builder modules, or if you could drag a saved row into a Gutenberg page. Or, Gutenberg’s text editor could be used inline in Beaver Builder. Lot’s of fun potential, right!?

For now, our plan is to continue focusing on building great software, growing our community, and providing stellar support. We haven’t made any major shifts to our roadmap, but we are ready to jump at the opportunity to embrace technology from Gutenberg. We’re also thrilled to be involved with and lend our expertise to the project as much as we can!

Beaver Themer

A couple months back, we released our first official extension called Beaver Themer. The response has been fantastic! After just a few weeks, Themer surged past 10,000 active installs. We’ve pushed out several new features and more 3rd party themes have added full Beaver Themer support. Themer works with just about any theme, but you can now use all of it’s features with Storefront from WooCommerce, Astra, Page Builder Framework, and several themes from WebManDesigns.

What’s Next?

We launched Beaver Themer with excellent support for WooCommerce. We’re excited to announce two more upcoming integrations, Easy Digital Downloads and The Events Calendar Pro. Expect to see more details and an alpha of this release towards the end of the month. We’ll be continuing to push out minor features and bug fixes. Also, we’re working with more theme vendors to make Themer fully compatible with as many themes as possible.

Learn More

If you’d like to learn more about Themer, along with the new explainer video above (which was expertly crafted by our good friend Shawn Hesketh of WP101), check out these two excellent reviews by WinningWP and WPKube!

Build Page Templates With Ease by WPKube

Beaver Themer: What Does It Do And Is It Any Good? by WinningWP

You can also reference this Reddit thread of resources or our Knowledge Base.

Footnotes

New Swag

We’ve been having a bunch of fun working with Brent on swag, so much so, we whipped up new designs on new items! Check our new Beaver Builder hats and ladies t-shirts.

Podcast Appearances

My sincerest thanks go out to my friends Kim, James, and Bob for inviting me as a guest on their podcasts! Kim Doyal, aka the WP Chick, and I talked about community and growth. On Mastermind.fm with James Laws, we get into some of the nuts of bolts of running a plugin business like strategy and marketing. And lastly, fitting to the theme of eCommerce and WordPress, Bob Dunn and I talked about using page builders for an eCommerce website.

WordCamp Sacramento

If you’re in the Northern California area, WordCamp Sacramento is coming up next month! With Justin and Billy only a quick drive away, this is our “hometown” camp. If you’re attending or thinking about it, let us know! We’d love to link up.

Upcoming LifterLMS Integration

Our good friends over at LifterLMS shared a sneak peek of a very nifty integration they’ve been working on. I can’t wait to give this a spin. If you’re looking for a learning management system to use with Beaver Builder, be sure to keep an eye on what the Lifter crew is working on.

In Closing

To close off, I want to say thanks again for all your help testing 2.0! One of the first changes we made after launching the alpha was in response to an email from one of our early customers and old friend. He was frustrated because, in the new UI, the contrast was too low and he was having a really hard time distinguishing the controls on the page. This was something we overlooked and we got right to work on a new iteration with much-improved contrast!

The moral of the story is that we’re here for you and really do value your feedback! Everyone brings a different perspective and experience to the table and we want to hear them all! 🙂

Thanks again for all your support and wishing you the best!