Pinegrow Wordpress Plugin (First Look!)

I take a first look at converting my Pinegrow desktop project to their WP Plugin and get a sense of what's going on under the hood
Pinegrow WP Plugin: pinegrow.com/wordpress
Font Files Documentation: pinegrow.com/docs/wordpress/p...
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⏰ Timestamps
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00:00 - Intro
00:45 - Pinegrow Desktop vs WP Plugin
01:24 - WP Plugin pricing
02:23 - Installing the plugin
03:00 - Creating/importing a project
03:58 - Exploring the UI
05:08 - Activating the theme
05:43 - Interactions
06:12 - Fixing fonts (Yabe Webfont)
07:48 - Under the hood
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#nocode #Pinegrow #Wordpress

[@AdamSLowe]

As we move more into the world of full site editing, WordPress is pushing us from local development processes to browser based ones. Even though love the power and flexibility of Pinegrow desktop, I think the Pinegrow plugin has been working better for me on those FSE projects. If nothing else, it minimizes context switching when I’m creating blocks for my pages and templates.

[@webflowandcode]

Do you still create blocks? I feel like the Wordpress editor is antiquated and one of the many confusing options for someone to edit a site (blocks, custom fields, gutenberg). Curious, what do you mean "full site editing"?

[@AdamSLowe]

​@@webflowandcode I actually created more blocks than ever these days. The term Full Site Editing (FSE) encapsulates the "new way" that WordPress wants us to build sites, where we don't rely on "legacy" PHP templates anymore. It includes tools like the WP Site Editor, Global Styles, Block themes, and Theme.json. I agree with you, though, that WordPress is becoming more confusing than ever. You have the classic editor, the block editor, page builders, PHP themes, block themes, etc. and sometimes you have to mix and match them to get what you are after. The long-term vision for WordPress is to move everything to the site editor, but right now it's only usable for people who want to build super simple sites or people who are going to lean heavily on custom blocks. And even for those two camps, it's a terrible developer experience. For the average WordPress agency without React skills or tools like Pinegrow and deep knowledge of WP, it's not a happy place right now. (Which is why so many agencies rely on page builders). From an enterprise perspective, where budgets are high and more senior developers are involved, Full Site Editing opens up a lot of doors that they didn't have previously. It frees developers from managing content and enables content editors to have more to have a much more seamless experience. There are still workarounds and ugly hacks needed here and there, but that's going to happen with any system. Think about NASA, with hundreds of editors, or other industries where people are working in WordPress and are publishing multiple pieces of content every day. On the other end of the spectrum is the market that is drawn to Wix and SquareSpace, who just want a basic website with a nice looking theme and some basic styling options. These are the spaces that WordPress is currently building for. Unfortunately, they are leaving behind the "agency" space that works with customers who have semi-complex needs and middling budgets. That crowd is being driven, by necessity, to Elementor, Bricks, or Saas products like Webflow. It's almost like WordPress doesn't recognize one of it's largest audiences.

[@webflowandcode]

I’ll look into WP Site Editor is I start to formulate thoughts on why people might want to switch away from Webflow. Given this, why bother with Site Editor when you have Pinegrow or Bricks where you don’t need to worry about templates really. You’d miss out on a lot but you could just build each page as you see it (kind of like what designers are already doing in Webflow)

[@AdamSLowe]

@@webflowandcode the site editor is basically the new templating engine for WP, similar to what we do with php themes. While you can create each page individually, that isn’t the most scalable way to work and can lead to tons of issues on sites with more than a handful of pages. As for Bricks and other page builders, they essentially circumvent the way WP wants us to work. Everything in the WP ecosystem is moving to blocks and the block editor, so while Bricks et. al. Give you an easy way to build out pages, you are limited to things that specifically integrate with them.

[@carlosrosalesrojas6788]

To modify an online theme created with the desktop pinegrow version : - Just export new version of theme Zip the exported template folder - Install this zipped theme on the wordpress theme uploader, you will then see a message about updating the existing theme. You confirm and that’s it. Done. Pretty simple.

[@webflowandcode]

Yeah! But what’s your point here?

[@visualmodo]

Excellent content, keep it up!

[@webflowandcode]

Thank you

[@carydriscoll2942]

You may have found the light/dark theme setting already, but if not, given the similarity to Pinegrow Online's interface, it should be the button next to browser preview that looks like a square in front of a square.

[@webflowandcode]

Thanks a bunch. Will give it a try. I haven’t looked since the video

[@JacobODonnellDesign]

So if I'm not worried about not having internet access, I'd be fine with just the Pinegrow plugin and not need the Pinegrow desktop editor?

[@webflowandcode]

Exactly!

[@d0ntbeevil]

IS PINEGROW A GOOD FIT FOR ME? AM I FIT FOR PINEGROW? I was asked to add a Blog section to an existing website that is using a custom theme built with Pinegrow. Before I learned it had been built using Pinegrow. So here I am. 🙂 Accessing the WP admin, I tried to do things as I'm used to, but it didn't work. I'm coming from ancient html/CSS then years of WordPress (Genesis framework). Now I find the "new" WordPress "blocks" approach to be confusing at best. Stiffing at worse. So I always install the Classic Editor so I can actually develop a website. Otherwise the workflow is awkward. How is the learning curve with Pinegrow? You mention other software which I never used (coding?). I'm not as agile as I used to be with learning new software, but I need to get a working understanding of at least one (1) WP builder for websites in 2024. The more I try to figure this out, the more confusing and frustrating it becomes... Thanks for any tip!

[@webflowandcode]

Pinegrow Is definitely arguable the most difficult as it requires a solid understanding of HTML and CSS. If you do then Pinegrow is a good fit. Bearing in mind Pinegrow builds the theme files. You might consider something like my personal favourite, bricks which in of itself I’d a theme so works slightly differently.

[@tancdiscovery9432]

I would use Pinegrow, but as a designer, the UI is simply too grim. Its horrible, visually grating. Its a great shame, because I'm sure it would be a very successful tool if they got that part of it sorted.

[@webflowandcode]

I’m torn. I understand why you say this but I also think it’s such a silly thing to get hooked up on. To me, UI just faded into the background. I personally have never minded the UI. I guess everyone has their own taste.

[@SamBroomby]

I tend to agree, but as a designer and wanna-be FE dev, I essentially have Pinegrow running on one side of the screen as a HTML editor and multi-viewport preview machine and VS code as my style editor. Works for me but for a pure designer, incredibly daunting. Pinegrow is powerful, but very clunky.

[@AdamSLowe]

A friend of mine said that the Pinegrow UI looks like the cockpit of a 747. Insanely powerful and efficient, but ugly and daunting until you understand it. I think a lot of this comes from the fact that Pinegrow was built as a tool for developers, who want all the knobs switches and dials, not for designers who want an immediately intuitive and beautiful interface.

[@webflowandcode]

@@AdamSLowe I describe it manual vs automatic car controls but essentially the same thing!! Totally agree. Pinegrow is making devs lives easier, not designers.