Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder 2.3 “Folsom” – Touch Support, Undo/Redo, Copy/Paste

Robby McCullough - December 5, 2019

Beaver Builder 2.3 “Folsom” is live! You can download a copy from your account page and start using it today. An automatic update will be released in a few weeks.

Over the last year, our team has released dozens of updates with minor features and fixes. This week, we’re pushing out a major update that we are all really excited about. Beaver Builder 2.3 “Folsom” – named after the Folsom Dam which is just up the road from Justin and Billy’s neighborhood – features a host of quality of life and performance improvements.

History Manager & Undo/Redo

I’ll be the first to admit, one of the most infuriating things that could happen when using Beaver Builder was accidentally doing something, instinctively hitting command-z, and having nothing change. We’ve been trying to work out the kinks of an undo/redo system for a long time and I am proud to say we finally dialed it in!

This feature reminds me of way back when we released “live preview” and eliminated the loading icon when saving settings. It was a seemingly small change that took a ton of behind-the-scenes work and totally changed the experience of working with BB. Along with undo/redo, we added a history manager tab where you can view and roll back changes made while editing a page. The history manager works, in real-time, alongside the revisions manager which allows you to roll back to previously saved or published versions of a page.

Copy/Paste Module and Module Styles

In Folsom, you can now export any module’s settings or styles to the clipboard and paste them into another module in the same layout or any other Beaver Builder layout on the internet. This is really handy for a quick copy of a module to another page or another site.

This functionality is in an Export/Import section of the Advanced tab of every module, as shown in this screenshot.

BIG Page Load Time Improvements

Performance and stability have always been a major focus of our development philosophy. This post is getting a bit nostalgic… I remember back when we were just getting started with Beaver Builder and we read a “wake up call” blog post by Chris Wallace, formerly of UpThemes. He warned that themes were in a feature race, constantly adding more and more bloat, and the result was the clunky mega-themes that we now, as a community, shy away from.

We adopted this “simplicity as a feature” approach for Beaver Builder. Performant sites do better in search engines, they provide better user experience, and they’re more accessible to anyone browsing the internet on a slower connection.

We’ve made a number of minor performance improvements throughout the years. This time, we managed to decrease the average page load speed of Beaver-Builder-generated pages by 20%! In a world of micro-optimizations, that’s a HUGE step forward.

Touch Support

I chuckled to myself as I was writing this post. All of our buzzwords this time around sound like they’re coming from the 90s; “Undo/redo,” “Copy/paste,” etc. Maybe we should change our tagline, “Beaver Builder – the Graphical User Interface for building web pages for the World Wide Web.” 🙂

Don’t worry, we have a few modern buzzwords in this update as well. Touch support!

Imagine for a second trying to port the process of clicking, dragging, and dropping to a touch screen. It’s tricky. We finally figured out a way to make this happen that we’re proud of! Maybe someday we will all exclusively use touch screens for web design. I am planning on keeping my trusty mouse around for a while still, but now you can jump into Beaver Builder on your iPad or touch-screen device and make tweaks and emergency updates.

More Quality of Life Improvements

Like all major updates, we have a handful of big features and a slew of smaller updates and fixes. If you’re curious, you can find all of the changes in 2.3 on our changelog page. These include…

Persistent tabs in settings
Beaver Builder remembers which settings tab was last open when opening new settings windows.
You can enable Font Awesome Pro kits or the CDN in Settings > Beaver Builder > Icons, and there are new color settings for for the FA Pro Duotone icon set.
Use shortcodes in Layout CSS & JavaScript settings, accessed from the Tools menu
See this article for details and examples.
You can add a filter to prevent modules from loading site-wide.
After adding this filter, module counts will appear at Settings > Beaver Builder > Modules.
If you have the BigCommerce plugin for WordPress installed, there’s a BigCommerce Products module that you can access in the Standard modules group in the Beaver Builder editor.

If you’d like to learn more about how to use the new additions, you can visit the 2.3 overview article in our Knowledge Base. There is also a discussion thread from the beta period on our community forum.

Lastly, we’d like to take a moment to thank everyone that installed and helped test the alpha and beta versions of Folsom. Your feedback and real-world usage are invaluable to our development team as they tackle bugs and compatibility issues. Thank you!

30 Comments

André Giaever on December 5, 2019 at 4:59 pm

Hi!

Thanks Robby and the rest of our team for yet another beast of an update.

We at SupremeWP Hosting have more or less built our entire business around BB. The consistency and readability you have proven is second to none.

We’re our ambassadors out in the field and true fans in the office!

Never ever stop what you’re doing because we amongst so many others need you to remain stellar. 🙂

Kind regards!
André G
- Anthony Tran on December 6, 2019 at 9:10 am
  
  Thank you Andre for your nice feedback. Just shared it with the team and it made our day =)
David Waumsley on December 6, 2019 at 10:03 am

Thanks Robby. This is a fabulous update. It includes two of my requests which makes feel all warm inside.

I recently renewed my subscription for my 6th year with Beaver Builder and I am just as excited as when I started.
- Robby McCullough on January 13, 2020 at 11:04 am
  
  Really appreciate that, David!
Darren Stuart on December 9, 2019 at 11:03 am

thanks for enabling touch, I had a client ask the other day if they could use their tablet and I had to let them down. Now I can give them the good news 👍
David Wang on December 9, 2019 at 5:45 pm

COPY AND PASTE MODULE STYLES. AND TOUCH SUPPORT! YAAAAASSSS!!!
- Anthony Tran on December 10, 2019 at 8:25 am
  
  We’re excited that you’re excited about our latest update =)
  - Matt on January 9, 2020 at 3:07 pm
    
    That’s a nice feature. Have you looked into syncing styles and settings across modules from a global module?
    
    Divi has this feature and it’s clutch.
    
    https://www.elegantthemes.com/documentation/divi/selective-sync/
    - Robby McCullough on January 13, 2020 at 1:56 pm
      
      Hmm. Interesting. I am not familiar with it but I’ll take a closer look. Thanks for the heads up. 🙂
Daryl Ledyard on January 9, 2020 at 11:19 am

Thanks for the update and the great work guys! I love the plugin and the undo/redo and cut and past options are killer!
Mark Fayard on January 9, 2020 at 11:29 am

Awesome update. Seems 3.0 worthy. I’m interested in this item but link is not working:

You can add a filter to prevent modules from loading site-wide.
- JamieV on January 13, 2020 at 7:33 am
  
  Sorry about that, Mark. You can find the filter here:
  https://kb.wpbeaverbuilder.com/article/117-common-beaver-builder-plugin-filter-examples
Athlone Harris-Compton on January 9, 2020 at 11:32 am

Undo has been a long time coming. Thank you for adding this feature, it’s going to make the BB workflow much improved.
- Robby McCullough on January 13, 2020 at 11:06 am
  
  Thanks, Athlone! I agree 100%. 🙂
Guillaume Cadec on January 9, 2020 at 12:00 pm

Copy and paste module style is a game changer to me. So cool. Thanks!
Peter H on January 9, 2020 at 12:04 pm

Yes! Thank you for adding the undo/redo functionality and improving the page load speed/optimization! 🙌 So been wanting the undo/redo for a while – this will be a life-saver! 🙂
Kenny Manchester on January 9, 2020 at 12:14 pm

Copy and Paste with Undo/Redo alone are like belated holiday gifts 🎁! Reaffirmation that I made the right call to stay right here with you guys.

Keep up the great work. Happy New Year!
- Anthony Tran on January 13, 2020 at 7:26 am
  
  Many more cool things in the works this year Kenny. Cheers to a great 2020!
Stephen Starr on January 9, 2020 at 2:00 pm

Gotta say, I don’t know how you added a History Manager with undo & redo without adding a mighty heft, but I’m all over this feature! Thank you!!
- Anthony Tran on January 13, 2020 at 7:26 am
  
  Yay! We aim to please Stephen =)
- Robby McCullough on January 13, 2020 at 11:09 am
  
  Hey, Stephen! Appreciate the kind words.
Acacia on January 9, 2020 at 2:37 pm

I create short carousels on various topics and would like to be able to include a mix of posts and pages in the carousel, but have never found any way to do this. Is this a feature you will add in the future?
- Anthony Tran on January 13, 2020 at 7:25 am
  
  Thank you Acacia. Will share this to our development team.
Pablo on January 10, 2020 at 2:07 am

Great job guys, a pleasure to be your client since 2015.
- Anthony Tran on January 13, 2020 at 7:24 am
  
  You’re the best Pablo!
Tyler Golberg on January 10, 2020 at 5:36 am

BB was already a lean plugin but I love that you guys are continuing to improve the speed optimization. Well done! 👏
- Robby McCullough on January 13, 2020 at 11:09 am
  
  Thanks, Tyler! Good to see you. 🙂
Kathy Osborne on January 11, 2020 at 7:43 am

Thank you so much for these updates!
- Anthony Tran on January 13, 2020 at 7:23 am
  
  We’re happy when you’re happy Kathy =)
Robert virona on August 22, 2020 at 7:30 am

I have read this article and I think it is great, I had my doubts about using beaverBulider but you have convinced me, thank you very much for your contribution.