11 Awesome Shortcodes & Page Builder Plugins For WordPress
Oftentimes premium WordPress themes come with all sorts of shortcodes built-in, but what if you ever decide to switch themes? Well, you’ll lose all the capabilities of your shortcodes unless you manually transfer over the code to your new theme. Better solution? Use a plugin! There are many create shortcodes and even page building plugins out there which are perfect for spicing up your site and without risking having to re-do everything when you switch themes. Below you’ll find a good mix of free and premium shortcodes/page-building options, so be sure to take a look at each one!
1. Symple Shortcodes
The ultimate in free shortcode technology, I definitely recommend out very own Symple Shortcodes plugin developed right here on WPExplorer. It’s got loads of shortcodes for buttons, toggle, tabs, highlights, and more. Plus it’s constantly reviewed so it’s always up to date and new features are added as we think of them! It’s a great, and 100% free, plugin that you should install today!
2. Shortcodes Pro
Shortcodes Pro is a free and simple shortcode plugin available on WordPress.org. The plugin makes it easy to create shortcodes, add TinyMCE rich editor buttons for your shortcodes to insert them into your posts, and Quick-tags within the admin panel. This is a great plugin, and since it’s free there really isn’t any reason not to get it.
3. Shortcodes Ultimate
Shortcodes Ultimate is a free shortcode plugin with over 30 shortcodes ready to go. Just install and start using them! This is a great free plugin with tons of useful shortcodes for boxes, buttons, tabs, etc as well as specializes shortcodes for adding a nivo slider, carousel, or custom gallery.
4. Styles With Shortcodes
Styles with Shortcodes is an awesome premium plugin. This plugin comes with over 100 shortcodes (including buttons, quotes, social bookmarking/sharing, alert boxes, and more) as well as a shortcode generator. The plugin is set up with a built in lightbox, custom post type support, and a shortcode insert tool. This is a great plugin for someone who doesn’t know CSS/PHP/Java but wants to use custom styling options.
5. Visual Composer For WordPress
Visual Composer is an easy to use page builder plugin that allows your to build beautiful pages all by dragging and dropping modules to your desired page location. The plugin also includes content “blocks” (the equivalent of shortcodes) for everything from Google maps and social icons to accordions and tabs. This is a great plugin built on the jQuery UI framework and Twitter Bootstrap, so you know it has a strong code core.
6. Zilla Shortcodes
The ZillaShortcode plugin by ThemeZilla is an awesome free shortcode plugin option. While in the visual editor, all you have to do is click the “z” icon to open a list of many shortcodes to insert into your page or post. This plugin includes a bunch of useful shortcodes, and is compatible with any theme.
7. Titan Editor Shortcodes
Titan Editor shortcode plugin gives you the ability to manage page templates and drag and drop shortcodes in and out of them. Its easy to build and change page templates with shortcodes such as recent posts, popular posts, buttons, quotes, videos, and more.
8. Elegant Themes Drag & Drop Builder
The Elegant Page Builder is a clean and easy to use page builder plugin. The plugin is designed to work with any theme (not just Elegant Themes). To add a module to a post or page simply drag it onto your canvas, adjust the settings, and change the size by stretching the container. You can also use this plugin seamlessly with the Elegant Shortcodes Plugin for all of your design needs.
9. Arconix Shortcode Collection
Arconix is a free basic shortcode collection plugin on WordPress.org. The plugin includes 8 style shortcodes, 5 utility shortcodes, and supports 5 columns. This plugin is great for when you just need a few custom style/utility options, and if you know a bit of code the developer made it simple to make tweaks to the CSS of this plugin if you can/want to.
10. Ether Content Builder
The Ether Content Builder Plugin works with any WordPress theme and offers a variety of features to build custom posts and pages. Use the visual composer to drag and drop the built-in widgets (or use third party ones) wherever you want. With responsive options, grid sliders, headers, rich text, pricing tables, social sharing buttons, and more this is a truly great plugin.
11. Content Builder
Content Builder is a helpful page builder plugin. Change up your posts and pages with drag and drop functions for the layout, gallery, tabs, videos, Google maps, headings, dividers, rich text or images. Customize your website with just a few clicks, add YouTube or Vimeo videos in a snap, and easily manage your content.
Reader Thoughts and Suggestions
Let me know what you think! Do you use any of the plugins listed? How is it? Or did a I miss a must have shortcode plugin? Let me know!
Nice links, really usefull.
Guess my comment didn’t get approved. Could I at least have a copy of it for an article I’m writing? Thanks
I would love to see your original comment as well, but there wasn’t any…
:) Wasn’t any what? The comment was a couple paragraphs long. Was that the reason?
That shouldn’t be a reason for a comment not going through…Not sure what happened, maybe you closed the browser before the comment went through, idk. WP could have put it in the SPAM box, but I don’t know because we empty that quite often so I can’t check.
Would love to hear your thoughts though!
i have used shortcodes ultimate and i so loved the simplicity. Thanks.
Thanks for this list, I’m looking for a good content builder and this has really helped. Ether and Visual Composer look like they might work, so trying to decide which one to get :)
You can’t be wrong with Visual Composer :)
Michael. Is that because you wrote it?
I can’t find a good working visual builder like “Visual Composer” or “Ether ” witch Ill be able to install on my WPMU (WordPress multisite), The license for both is per site and I would like my users to open as much sites as they want.. Any help?
Tx
In my opinion 1 multi-site install is a single domain and thus considered one site.
If you use one I’m pretty sure no one will ever know ;)
Hi Kayla, I’m hoping you can help me. I installed ADAPT theme for a client, but bullet lists don’t work on the Portfolio pages – the only pages that the client is using. I installed Shortcodes Ultimate but the bullet lists are clunky and alignment of the bullet is unattractive. Is there any way I can fix the css for the Portfolio pages to allow bulleted lists? I changed the ul code but it also affected the top Menu – any help will be greatly appreciated. I couldn’t find any support pages or any way to contact the owner of this website. I’m sure I’ve missed it somehow … Thanks in advance!
Hi there! Open single-portfolio.php and on line 59 add the class name “entry” on the single-portfolio-right div. We’ll update the theme soon. Thanks for pointing it out! :-)
5:00am here and just followed your suggestion – YAY! It worked! Thanks SOOOO MUCH, Kayla! when my client wakes up they’ll be VERY happy :-)
nice list! I have used shortcode ultimate which handy. have used shortcode press which also seems good to me. Can be download free from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/short-code-press/
Thanks
thanks kayla you are a great women
Hi ,
If possible please tell me about the page builders used by Kriesi and GoodLayers ( themeforest authors).
Why my last comment was spammed :)
No comment was spammed. Comments are moderated and I was sleeping so it hadn’t been accepted yet.
My personal opinion is that I don’t like those at all. The main reason is because if you create an entire site based on a page builder that’s included with the theme, if you ever switch themes where does all your content go? I think page builders / shortcodes that work directly in the post editor are a much better solution.
Hi Kayla, thanks for this post. Great list, it’s probably been the most helpful I’ve come across recently. After tediously demo-ing all the options, I’ve sett;ed on Ether as a content builder. Main reasons are that it is an add-on tab in the editor – you can still access and use the visual and plain text editors at the same time, and together with the page builder. Other builders replace it completely, so that if you switch from the page builder to a plain text editor, you lose all your settings. Second, Ether allows you to use your existing widgets in post layout.
This plugin is now en essential that I use on all sites. Thanks Kayla, it’s saved me hours of development time when I was using column shortcodes before.
And your free Symple shortcodes is pretty useful too
Hi Steven – I’m so glad our article was helpful! The Ether plugin is a really nice one. I wish we could use it on our premium themes but they don’t have an extend license :-)
Thanks….
Love it post..
Hi … Nice Post …really nice but I have one Item to add to your list …
Look at this one Bytomi Layout Builder
I really love the way this builder works, but I do not like the custom design. If you could make it match the WordPress UI it would be probably one of the best layout builders out there and I would consider purchasing for all my themes.
Like Now … Check it again it is a little bit colored but if you want I could change it for you … New features : Google Fonts Contact Form , PayPal Digital Downloads , Doc Viewer (upload a pdf , word doc , excel , and more… and it shows in front with google doc style) , Blog post module on 1 ,2 3 or 4 columns , 4 image styles and more…. Try it on live preview . Username: bytomi Password: demo123
It does look better and it’s still a good looking plugin, but I really really think you should make it match the UI. Not just for me, but by default. There is no point in adding textures. Use the same gray gradients and standard buttons WP uses ;)
Great and very useful article Kyla. I’m kind of new to WordPress and though impressed by the possibilities, it does ‘bother’ me a bit that each theme comes with it’s own and particular functionality concerning (among other things) page composing and short codes. This may get cumbersome especially when developing websites for multiple clients and supporting those clients.
A question: when using one or more of the plugins you mentioned in a theme that already has it’s own page builder and short codes, it could get ‘crowded’ in the page and post editing interface area. My thoughts would to disable the functionality of the them itself in such cases. Do you have any experience in that area?
Every theme is built quite differently! But, in General WordPress works the same way. If a theme uses core functions (which I always tend to stick with) and you are very well experienced with WordPress in general all themes should have a familiar feel to them. We are actually currently working on updating all our free and premium themes so they all share the same file structure, admin panel and general setup. It’s a long/slow process, but by the end of the year we feel our portfolio will be much stronger ;)
I am not actually a huge fan of page builders. I personally believe if you are a good developer you will create custom page templates that fit your client’s needs. This will ensure full future compatibility and keep the admin much cleaner for your user. Plus, if you work with page templates more you can probably easily re-use the basic cod for different projects.
In general though…use the KISS attitude ;)
Sounds like you really care for your clients, which seems to be scarse these days! Best of luck with your endeavors ;)
-Kyla
I agree. Nicely researched. Just what I was looking for. which one to choose is the new dilemma. I’ll go with content builder first.