The Drag-and-Drop Paradox
Elementor made WordPress accessible. Marketing teams can build landing pages. Business owners can update content. The learning curve is gentle, and that’s the point. But the same simplicity that makes Elementor approachable becomes a bottleneck at scale.
We’ve built hundreds of complex pages in Elementor for our clients. We’re the ones in the editor every day – creating layouts, maintaining design systems, iterating on components. And after years of this work, we’ve felt the friction firsthand.
The small inefficiencies aren’t dealbreakers on their own – but they add up. Fast. So we asked ourselves: what if we could make our daily workflow just a bit smoother?
Introducing ElementorGate: A Developer Toolkit (Work in Progress)
Taking inspiration from tools like Figma and modern code editors, we built a collection of features that make working in Elementor feel closer to a proper development environment.
The tools fall into three categories:
1. Template Previews – See Before You Click
Elementor’s template library shows names, not visuals. When you have 50+ saved templates, finding the right one means clicking through each one individually. We added visual thumbnail previews rendered directly in the editor – browse templates the way you browse a design library, by actually seeing them.
Useful for teams managing multiple page layouts, design systems with reusable sections, or anyone tired of the “was it Header-v2 or Header-v3?” guessing game. It also makes website handovers smoother – clients can build new pages using prebuilt templates without the hassle of guessing which section is which.
2. Global Styles Visualization – Know What You’re Working With
Picking the right global typography style in Elementor means opening Site Settings, scrolling through options, and remembering which one had the right size, font weight etc. We added global typography previews – hover over the font size picker and instantly see all your global typography styles with their values, including responsive sizes for each breakpoint.
This solves a common problem: when a design isn’t perfectly tied to global variables, you can quickly check which global style matches best and apply it – getting consistent, responsive typography without manual guesswork.
We also built a toggleable overlay that highlights every element using specific global colors or fonts. Click on a style, see every instance across the page – great for auditing design consistency or safely updating global styles without breaking layouts.
3. Micro Tools & Quick Actions
We built a set of small utilities that help you develop new layouts or validate old ones faster.
Copy element context for AI – When you’re iterating on custom CSS or asking AI to help with layout issues, raw HTML alone isn’t enough – the AI has no idea which classes you’ve assigned, which styles come from global typography, or what custom CSS is already attached. This feature exports the full context: element hierarchy, custom CSS classes and IDs, global color and font references with resolved values, responsive settings, and the current editing mode.
The real power shows when customizing elements — you’ve added a .card-hover class and some custom CSS, and now you want to iterate on it with AI. Instead of explaining “there’s a container with class card-hover that has this CSS attached,” you simply copy the context and paste. The AI immediately sees widgets structure, their type, your classes, existing styles – and can assist you with ability to target exactly what you’ve built. No back-and-forth explaining what’s where.
Heading structure visualization toggles an overlay showing heading hierarchy (H1, H2, H3…) across the page – essential for SEO audits and accessibility checks. It also flags common issues like duplicate H1 tags or skipped heading levels, so you can catch problems before they go live.
CSS classes & IDs display shows custom classes and IDs directly on elements without opening settings panels. Useful for identifying elements styled with third-party classes or understanding complex layouts at a glance.
Custom CSS inspector reveals which elements have custom CSS code attached – something that’s otherwise invisible until you click into each element’s Advanced tab. The panel shows a hierarchical view of all elements with custom CSS, including line counts and code previews. Click to navigate to any element, or open the full code in a preview modal. One click takes you straight to the CSS editor for that element.
This is particularly valuable when inheriting projects from other developers or auditing pages for unnecessary inline styles that should be moved to global stylesheets.
Link checker scans every link on the page and categorizes them: internal links (same domain), external links (other websites), anchor links (page sections), and dead links (empty hrefs or placeholder # values). Dead links are highlighted in red – catch them before your client does.
The panel groups links by type, shows the destination URL, and lets you open external links in a new tab to verify they work. Essential for pre-launch QA or cleaning up pages migrated from other platforms.
Grouping shortcuts works just like in Figma – select multiple elements, hit Cmd+G to wrap them in a container. Cmd+Shift+G to unwrap. Simple.
Bringing It All Together: The Command Palette
To call these tools – and many other common actions – we implemented a Raycast-inspired command palette.
Raycast is a popular macOS application that replaces the standard Spotlight search. It lets you quickly create reminders, launch apps, open projects – all without touching your mouse. The idea is simple: type what you want, hit enter, done.
We brought this approach to Elementor. Typing Cmd+K or Ctrl+K opens a command palette – a single entry point for everything you can do in the editor. Instead of remembering where each action lives in the menu, you simply type what you want.
Beyond the micro tools, the palette also gives quick access to common actions like duplicate, delete, copy/paste, opening page or site settings – and yes, switching between desktop, tablet, and mobile views.
The Bigger Picture
These tools aren’t about replacing Elementor. They’re about recognizing that different users have different needs.
For marketing teams updating a landing page, Elementor’s current interface is fine. For developers building and maintaining complex sites, there’s room for improvement.
What we’ve learned building these prototypes:
- Elementor’s internal APIs are surprisingly capable. Most of these features tap into existing functionalities that’s simply not exposed in the UI.
- Small interactions compound. Saving 3 seconds on wrap/unwrap, 5 seconds finding a template, 10 seconds locating global style usage – these add up across hundreds of edits.
- The editor can be smarter. Contextual information (typography details, class names, heading structure) shouldn’t require opening panels.
What’s Next?
ElementorGate remains a work in progress. We’re testing these tools on real client projects, refining the interactions, and exploring what else might be possible.
If you’ve felt similar friction working with Elementor at scale, you’re not alone. The page builder paradigm works – but there’s space for developer-focused enhancements that respect the platform while making it faster to use.
We believe editing can be better. This is our attempt to prove it.
Try It Yourself
We’ve wrapped everything into a WordPress plugin that’s ready for testing. If you’re curious to see how these tools feel in practice, we’d love to hear from you – reach out to us and we’ll get you access to the demo.
But more than that, we want to hear about your struggles with Elementor. What slows you down? What small annoyance do you face every day? What feature have you been wishing for?
Help us understand what bothers you most when working in the editor – your feedback will shape what we build next.
