Drag-and-drop “Panels”-style visual layout editor?

0 Views

I’m a combination Drupal and WordPress developer and have recently started playing with Drupal’s Panels module — which allows you to create flexible layouts and drop content blocks (The Drupal equivalent of widgets) in place on either a per-layout or per-content item basis.

I’m now working on a WordPress project that would really benefit from this kind of functionality — is there a visual layout editor for WordPress that even slightly resembles Panels?

Read More

By “visual layout editor”, I mean something that can have text and/or widgets added on an ad-hoc basis to regions created by either dragging column widths or click-and-dragging selections (Similar to Adobe InDesign).

Edit: It’s a year later, so I’ve created a wiki answer below. The original question has been updated to reflect this.

Post Views: 0

Related posts

Leave a Reply

2 comments

  2. There’s been a lot of development in this sphere since I posted this question, not only in using visual layout tools for the overall site theme, but also for laying out individual pages. Some plugins I’ve evaluated:

    • SiteOrigin Page Builder has a Panels-esque fluid grid layout engine, into which you can place any kind of widget. This makes it pretty powerful. I’ve built a few widgets specifically for use with this, and it works decently well. Free!
    • Page Layout Builder is really similar to SiteOrigin Page Builder, albeit with 1/8th as many downloads (~8k versus SiteOrigin’s ~64k). Free!
    • ScrollKit, which allows you to do some really interesting scrolling effects while doing InDesign-esque visual layout, has a WordPress plugin. Note that finished pages are hosted by ScrollKit. Free!
    • PlugNEdit is a similar deal to ScrollKit, but looks eye-gougingly terrible by comparison. Free!
    • Zedity looks really similar to PlugNEdit. Free!
    • Pagelines’ “DMS” is probably the most polished of the commercial offerings and it looks really snazzy. Unfortunately, it’s brutally expensive, and if you stop paying their monthly subscription fee (?!), they add a “Powered by Pagelines” link to your site, effectively turning your site into a free ad for their company. I can’t tell whether it works on the page level, though I get the feeling it does. Plans range from $8 /mo. (1 site) to $24 /mo. (unlimited sites).
    • Visual Composer for WordPress is similar to SiteOrigin Page Builder, but seems to use its own specialized widgets instead of WordPress’ own. Appears to work on the page level. $25.
    • Elegant Builder seems to be pretty similar to SiteOrigin Page Builder, albeit for $89. Seems to work on the page-level.
    • Headway looks pretty snazzy, I like the visual grid-based workflow. $87, includes 1 year support.

    I’ve made this answer community wiki, so feel free to add more.

    IMO, what would be awesome is something at SiteOrigin Page Builder’s level of quality and cost, but directed towards free-form (i.e., “gridless”) visual layout like ScrollKit or PlugNEdit.