Is theme irrelevant with Elementor?

Interesting question. Considering all the design capabilities of Elementor I don’t really look at the Theme as adding much. I don’t want a theme that’s already out there, I create my own. I do start with oceanwp free.

My thoughts exactly. You seem to be a well-seasoned user, so that perspective holds a lot of weight. I’m intending to use my site as primarily a media portfolio, which seems to be pretty open to creative design in any capacity (ie: a totally unique page builder creation or heavily theme-based). There’s also the good chance of some eComm store in the future, not at any large scale, but for professional branding & awareness. Perhaps my question was more with regards to such broader, outside-the-box functionalities such as stopping, secure FTP server exchanges, or private message boards (ideally Slack hosting, if you’re familiar with the software). I will continue building out on Elementor Pro with the OceanWP free until strongly advised otherwise.

Les, you have been a great resource on this board, which makes me wonder if you are aware (or perhaps even a member) of any other Elementor message boards or even professional consultation services? I’ve tried reddit but haven’t had as much repeatedly helpful advice as I have on the www.ads-software.com Forums. Thank you again, as always!

Brendan, Thank you for your comments. I used to do software training for a company and I like helping people. There are times where I don’t know the answer so I investigate and try to come up with a solution. This not only helps someone it helps me to learn new features. Usually there are multiple solutions to any issue. I have recently starting viewing the FaceBook Elementor groups. Check them out, they get very deep in creativity.
There are so many people asking about Themes on all the boards. Start with a simple theme like oceanwp and use Elementor and you can create most anything you can image.

Elementor is a huge step for WordPress. Check out https://www.facebook.com/groups/Elementors/ Both groups are very educational.

• This reply was modified 6 years ago by LesTexas60.

To the extent that ELementor allows you to start with a blank template, you can achieve the same results with any theme. To the extent that a theme might provide templates that you want to use, or functionality that is useful, it might be easier to create certain pages using the theme’s functionality, as opposed to Elementor’s.

The one place where there is a fundamental difference is in the separation of layout from content. If you change themes, exactly the same content may be displayed in a very different way. But if you change a template in Elementor, that will have no influence on any pages already created. So, suppose you decide after a few years that you want a major refresh of the look and feel of your site. With themes, you might be able to do most of the that refresh just be changing the theme. With Elementor you might have to go back and adjust every single page individually to change the layout, albeit if you restrict yourself to global styles, you could do a lot of centralized changing of style, if not layout.

So, for me it is half of one, six dozen of the other. It largely comes down to your level of comfort in using the various interfaces available and your skills in designing a site that is easily maintainable.