Rebuild / Convert WPBakery Page Builder / Visual Composer / Divi to Elementor page builder

Before the tutorial, I would like to share my journey of ThemeForest, Divi and Elementor page builder. You may use the jump to link to skip to the tutorial.

• Ex-lover: ThemeForest + Visual Composer
• Ex-lover: Divi Builder by Elegant Theme
• Problem: Slow WPBakery Page Builder / Visual Composer website & loads in 27sec
• 8 easy steps on how to rebuild / convert the website from WPBakery Page Builder (Visual Composer) to Elementor page builder and make slow website load very fast in 1 sec
  1. Create a staging site via Migrate Guru
  2. Remove WPBakery Page Builder / Visual Composer / Divi and other unnecessary themes and plugins
  3. Remove the Shortcode with Shortcode cleaner
  4. Optimize the database
  5. Redesign the website with Elementor page builder
     1. Convert WPBakery / Elementor to Gutenberg
  6. Make use of Code Snippets
  7. Use Gutenberg to handle the post
  8. Website Optimization
• Result: From 27sec to 1sec

Ex-lover: ThemeForest + Visual Composer

I used to love ThemeForest + Visual Composer, It provides a nice user experience on web development for non-coder like me. And I can create a beautiful website just like the theme’s template. Yes, just like the template, and there are thousands of them lookalike over the internet.

When I need to change the layout design, it turns to a nightmare, either you stick with the current theme design or switch to another ThemeForest theme, it cost you time and money to rebuild all over again.

Another problem with ThemeForest theme, most of them are the multi-purpose theme, they provide you everything all in one package, way more than what you need, and it turns your website becoming very slow website.

Ex-lover: Divi Builder by Elegant Theme

Therefore, I came across Divi Builder. Very affordable price at only USD180 for the Life Time usage and it provide more freedom to create the website layout based on my requirement.

It was a happy journey at the beginning, the learning curve is fine and I found myself create a much better website with Divi Builder.

The honeymoon ended with updates, the Divi Builder version 3.X always breaks my websites when I need to update, this is such a horrible experience. End up I spends more time to solve the problem.

There are lots of complaints on the Divi Builder Facebook user group, and some members recommend a new page builder call Elementor page builder.

After a few days of playing around Elementor page builder, I decided to subscribe to the expert package and never look back.

This guide works for Divi builder convert to Elementor page builder too.

Problem: Slow WPBakery Page Builder / Visual Composer website loads in 27sec

This website is built with ThemeForest’s theme with Visual Composer. It loads so slow and the client keeps facing trouble with it.

They put a notice to warning visitors about the slow loading website. To try to get better performance, the client hosts in AWS EC2, but the cost is so expensive. (595 request loads under 27sec is a pretty good performance)

Other problems that I found after the site audit

• WordPress, theme & plugin are outdated for years.
• Outdated PHP.
• The website had been developed by numbers of times, they never remove whatever themes & plugins they no longer needed.
• They installed lots of plugins to achieve some simple layout design.
• Multiple repeated function plugins.
• Use WPBakery Page Builder (Visual Composer) to create a post!

8 easy steps on how to rebuild / convert WPBakery Page Builder (Visual Composer) / Divi to Elementor page builder and make slow website load very fast in 1 sec

1. Create a staging site via Migrate Guru

• Backup! Always backup first.
• Create an A record “dev” and point to your staging server IP address.
  if you use dev, the staging site URL will be https.dev.website.com
• I use Migrate Guru to mirage the website from the live site https://website.com to https://dev.website.com

2. Remove WPBakery Page Builder / Visual Composer / Divi and others unnecessary themes and plugins

• Records down the current list of plugins
• Remove unnecessary extra themes, but I always keep a basic WordPress theme like Twenty Twenty for debug purpose.
• Remove WPBakery Page Builder / Visual Composer / Divi and other unnecessary extra plugin

3. Remove the Shortcode from WPBakery Page Builder / Visual Composer / Divi with Shortcode cleaner

When you remove the WPBakery Page Builder / Visual Composer / Divi plugin, it will leave you tons of shortcode and is very time-consuming to go through page by page to remove. The Shortcode Cleaner Pro saves me lots of time & effect. Furthermore, the development is very helpful. Below is some of the Pro features.

• Clean up the backend editor admin content.
• Clean up the content into a database.
• Clean up broken shortcodes that are left from any page builder.
• Show broken shortcodes status in the admin bar.
• Force any active shortcodes to be broken [inactive].
• Clean up unlimited number of posts, pages [intsead of just 100 in lite version].
• Add new custom frontend site content filters.
• Use default backend Admin WP content filters.
• Add new custom backend admin content filters.

4. Optimize WordPress Database

• Now the records come hardly, may use the list to look for which theme/plugin’s table to be removed.
• You can remove the orphan’s table via phpMyAdmin or use Advanced Database Cleaner Pro for better database optimization. If you prefer FREE plugin, may try plugin WP-Sweep, Plugins Garbage Collector.

5. Rebuild with Elementor page builder

• Use Hello Theme from Elementor if you are using Elementor page builder Pro. Else I will suggest another awesome theme GeneratePress.
• If you are using Elementor page builder Pro, use theme builder function to rebuild theme’s header and footer.
• Rebuild page layout with the Elementor page builder.
• Rebuild post layout with call to actions with the Elementor page builder design.
• Kiss goodbye to the slow multi-purpose theme from ThemeForest and WPBakery Page Builder / Visual Composer.

5.1 Convert WPBakery / Elementor to Gutenberg

If you had notice, I had convert my Elementor site to Gutenberg with GeneratePress and GenerateBlock.

To convert from Elementor to Gutenberg is way easier than convert WPBakery Page Builder to Gutenberg. Because when you disable Elementor, it DOES NOT leave you any miserable shortcode, you just need to redesign again with Gutenberg block editor.

With the fixability of GenerateBlocks’s Grid block, it allow you to create more advanced layouts with flexible grids, it makes the design process much more quickly.

Another Block Editor you should not miss is Gutenberg Page Building Toolkit – EditorsKit, it works like TinyMCE for Classic editor, but with way more advanced functions.

6. Make use of Code Snippets

Some functions you don’t really need a plugin, and you can use code snippets to replace it. Below are some sites for code snippets.

• isitwp.com
• generatewp.com
• wpmudev.org

7. Use Gutenberg to handle the post

Use Gutenberg Block to draft out few post template for the client, so they can be duplicate the template and replace with their text & graphic.

Always remember Elementor page builder is Page Builder, not post builder. You should NOT use the Elementor page builder or WPBakery Page Builder / Visual Composer to create the post. Please make use Gutenberg Block.

8. Website Optimisation

• Regenerate all the thumbnails with reGenerate Thumbnails Advanced, it helps to remove not-used-anymore thumbnails, which is super useful in this case. Furthermore, it integrated with ShortPixel Image Optimizer.
• For WordPress Speed Optimisation, I use Swift Performance Pro.

You may check up my other post WordPress Speed Optimization to score 100 on Google PageSpeed Insights

Result: From 27sec to 1sec

And finally, the rebuild website load way faster than before, from 27.1sec (hosts in AWS with EC2) to 1.2sec (hosts in shared hosting WPWebHost), reduce the page size from 57.1MB to 755KB and reduce the requests from 595 to 54 requests.

Ending Thoughts

I hope this tutorial will help you to solve your problem. Buy me a coffee ☕ if this tutorial really helps.

And if you have any question please give me a shout to my comment box. I’ll try to help you accordingly.  If you need Rebuild / Convert from WPBakery Visual Composer to Elementor service, hire me to get the dirty job done. Money-back guarantee!