Easy to learn, easy to customize. I can't believe it's free!

Even though I have a background in the arts, I’m still quite new to web design. This proved to be frustrating since I wanted complete control over the design of my site, while knowing very little about how to customize themes, much less write code.

Also knowing that I wanted more of static site than than a blog, I began to fear that WordPress wasn’t right for me. I began looking into other CMS options like Weebly and Squarespace but quickly realized they lacked the robust community of plugins and support that WordPress has acquired over the years (not to mention the fact that these other options started at an additional $10 a month, on top of hosting).

So I somehow stumbled across page builder plugins for WP, tested a few out, and quickly realized that Inno Gears offers THE best free full-page customization plugin for WordPress. I love the way it matches the WordPress theme, blending in perfectly as if it were offered by WP themselves. Everything is easy to understand, with a high level of customization right out of the box. You can tweak even more through each item’s styling options if you know how to code – but even if you don’t – IG has been great about monitoring the support forums, offering quick answers to any issues or requests users may have.

Even though I should start watching some videos at Code Academy, working with this plugin has shown me a bit about how CSS and PHP operate and I’m learning, bit by bit. I’m having a blast working with IG PageBuilder and am so grateful that such powerful products exist for free!

(I should balance this review with my only complaint though: it runs a little slow on the front-end. I have seen others mention this as well but IG says they’re looking into some performance tweaks. The speed is in no way a dealbreaker, but I do hope loading times can be improved by a few milliseconds.)