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Page Builders for Joomla: YOOtheme Pro

February_YOOTheme

In this article we'll get to know one of the most used Page Builder for Joomla: YooTheme Pro. YooTheme has been an active template club for more than a decade, with hundreds of templates developed and published for all the versions of Joomla.

Before YOOtheme

We used different basic templates which we customized manually. We did a lot of the magic with Articles Anywhere (which we still use sometimes).

What is YOOtheme Pro?

In short it’s a template and a builder in one package. With a builder we mean a tool that helps building a layout of a page without coding.

How to start?

As with every website, content is king and it’s always a good idea to have a big part of your content available in articles, custom fields, modules etc.

A good design before you start is also a must. But if you like one of the template designs they have then using this as a start is also an option. Don’t forget to make this design your own.

If you have a license you can use all the pro-designs to give you a quick-start developing your website ( https://yootheme.com/joomla-templates ).
These designs can be imported as a whole page with just a few clicks when you are in the builder designing a page.

Access the YOOtheme Pro Library

YOOtheme Pro layouts

You can even import the images from the template and download them into your own website. All you need to do is replace the demo content with your own.

Playing with the Content

When you have imported this design all the fun starts. This is when you can see all the building blocks of the page you just imported. For example a little part of the page showing the about section.

YOOtheme Pro builder blocks

But these are just the blocks with content. The styling of the content is done within YOOtheme.

Modifying the styling of the site

WIthin YOOtheme Pro there are a lot of options to change the styling, and I mean a LOT!

And because there are so many options it’s a good idea to start your YOOtheme journey by watching all their YouTube videos and creating a development site to play around before you start developing client sites.

The things I like most about YOOtheme Pro?

Dynamic content

It must be the ability to use dynamic content options. This is a very powerful option enabling you, for example, to assigna template to a certain category and dynamically use the fields within the articles (and other content sources) to fill all the parts of your design with content from those sources like custom fields, tags, images. It takes some time to get the most out of these options but there are also lots of inspirational videos, and articles to get you going.

Save your custom designs in your own library

I also really like the option to save all the parts of the design that you have created in the builder and save them to your own library.

YOOtheme Pro save layouts in your library

You can then reuse them in other parts of your design and even export them to your computer to be used in other websites. This is also a very powerful thing and can save you lots of work in the process.

What I think could do with some improvement?

When using third party plugins for example the output is not alway rendered the way it is done in a standard Joomla template. Also, integrations with some components are not yet available and would be nice to have. This is also something that could be developed by starting an initiative with multiple site developers that use these extensions and create some budget for this. That way we can make this even more awesome.

Is YOOtheme Pro for you?

The best way is to give it a try and see for yourself. For me deciding if we start a site with YOOtheme Pro depends on the project and the type of customer. If you need to create a website that can benefit from dynamic content and a great design, YOOtheme is definitely the tool for you.

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