Beaver Builder

Feburary 2016 Update – Why We Feel Like Santa Claus

Robby McCullough - February 18, 2016

This is an exciting month. Last year was the first time we published an “Update Post.” I’m excited because I never have to make another featured image ever again, muahaha!

Real quickly before I get into it, we’re really hoping to learn a bit more about you and how you use Beaver Builder. There are a couple of questions at the end of this post, and we’d love to get your thoughts in the comments.

Our Blog Used To Suck

I vividly remember reading this article from Chris Lema’s blog, This is why most company blogs suck. I thought, “the blogs he’s talking about are doing more than we are.” Our blog was worse than “suck.”

Re-reading the article again now, I realize we still have plenty of room for improvement, but that post was really the origin of these updates.

I’ll gladly admit I lifted Chris’ strategy of fusing stories and useful information into our posts. With that, here’s a story for you:

Story Time

When I was 14 years old, I got a job at a Peet’s Coffee. I didn’t need to get a job, but I was a bored kid. I saw a help-wanted sign and, for the “fun” of it, I put in an application.

I worked at Peet’s for about 2 years. At times, I would put in 30 hour weeks. Sometimes I would wake up at 4:00 am, walk to work, open the store, and then walk to school.

I developed a work ethic, and I quickly realized how extremely fortunate I was that I always had the option (at that age) not to work.

Today—believe it or not—I am still working at a Peet’s Coffee. Literally. I am sitting in a wonderfully comfy chair, in my wonderfully comfy WordPress hoodie, pounding away on this blog post. To be honest, calling it “work” is a real stretch.

We feel like Santa Claus. The only reason we’re here right now is because you believe in us (credit to Scott Pemberton for the sentiment).

We’re living our dream right now and it’s all because of you. Thank you.

We feel like Santa Claus. The only reason we're here right now is because you believe in us. Thank you. Share on X

Okay, enough of the mush! Let’s get down to business.

Beaver Builder in the Press

Our friends at MemberPress wrote a really nice article about us. Thank for that, guys. MemberPress is an amazing piece of software for creating membership sites, and it plays great with Beaver Builder.

WP Mayor also published a wonderful review of Beaver Builder. WP Mayor has a permanent spot in my RSS reader and they’re an excellent source of WordPress news.

Also making some waves in the press was this article by Webmastros comparing Beaver Builder with one our BIG competitors. FWIW, this was a completely independent review.

Our buddy Adam Silver, from the Kitchen Sink Podcast, did a podcast review on Beaver Builder. Adam’s got a great sense of humor and his podcasts are always brief and highly informative. Lots of great content and hardly any fluff. Thanks, Adam!

What’s New This Month

If you haven’t seen it, we use a tool called User Voice to manage feature requests. It’s a great system because it allows us to keep all the requests in one place. It also lets everyone vote on features so we can gauge which ones are the most popular.

A New Public Roadmap

User Voice allows us to mark an idea as “planned” or “under review,” but there are several pages of requests now, and it’s impossible to see them all at a glance. Instead of putting our roadmap plans on UV, we decided to try using a Trello board: The Beaver Builder Roadmap.

We’re hoping these two tools mesh well and we’d love your feedback on either.

Domain Manager Update

After launching 1.7 a few weeks ago, we shifted some focus to our store. We have a couple of cool infrastructure changes coming. Available now on your My Account Page is a dashboard to manage your BB license on a domain-by-domain basis. You can now deactivate or remove your license from a site remotely.

Also, coming very soon you’ll have the ability to renew your Beaver Builder license before it expires! We’ll probably make a big fuss when that happens. Stay tuned.

Sponsorships

We had the opportunity to sponsor WordCamp Paris. Also, we’re sponsoring WordCamp San Diego. We’re going to do our best to attend, too. Will you be there!?

Have you heard the quote:

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

We’re experimenting with promotional sponsorships. Luckily for us, I know the money we’re putting towards sponsoring WordCamps isn’t being wasted—even if it doesn’t net us one sale. We’re really proud to be in the position to financially support the WordCamp ecosystem, and we’ll continue to do so as much as possible.

Video User Manuals

Another recent and exciting development is that the Video User Manuals plugin included all of our tutorial videos in their plugin. If you’re looking for an effective video training platform for your clients, the inclusion of Beaver Builder’s videos with VUM’s outstanding library makes it an excellent choice!

The Team is Growing

I’m excited to introduce everyone to a few new members of the team!

danny-dougal

First up is Danny Holt. Danny lives in Manchester, UK, and he’s an avid football fan. Go Manchester United!

Danny and his dog, Dougal, have been helping us out in the support forum and with some various other tasks. He’s been with us for just over a month now, and he’s fitting into the team splendidly. Danny’s a big Star Wars fan, and he enjoys watching Game of Thrones and hitting the gym!

ozan3

Next up is Ozan Çanakli. Ozan lives in Bodrum, Turkey. He’s got a background in graphic design, although he joined the team as a developer. Ozan loves animals. He’s a vegetarian, and he shares his home with his wife and an assortment of critters including two Golden Retrievers.

Ozan has been focusing on the Beaver Builder theme recently, and he’s doing a spectacular job.

We shared a video in the Beaver Builder’s Facebook group of some of the cool stuff Ozan has been working on, and we’re just about to release a new beta with all those goodies.

Keep an eye peeled for the theme beta sometime next week.

Docs Day & A Tutorial Forum

I’m sure many of your are familiar with our Knowledge Base.

In all honesty, documentation is something we struggle with. It takes a lot of time and it’s tricky to explain things in a concise and effective manner. For that reason, our documentation could be a bit better and it’s due for an update.

We thought of an idea to help with this: we’re going to dedicate one day on a recurring basis (maybe quarterly) where the whole team will focus as much time as possible on documentation.

A bit like Spring cleaning for our docs. No one particularly loves writing documentation, but I think if we all team up, and make a fun day out of it, it’s going to help a lot.

Help with Doc Day, Get Some Swag

That said, we wanted to open up our Docs day to the community, too. Of course, there is no obligation or expectation here, but if you’re interested in helping, we’d love some extra eyes and fingers!

Our first “Docs Day” is planned for March 1st. We’ll surely be coordinating and communicating with everyone in the Slack Group. Even if you just have a suggestion or notice something that we’re missing, any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated.

I guess we should do a SWAG giveaway or something of that nature to anyone who helps, too! More details on that to come.

Join @BeaverBuilder on March 1st for Docs Day. Help us with our docs and we'll send you some SWAG. Share on X

Tutorials Forum Section

On a similar note, we added a new section to our support forum for community submitted tutorials. Often times, answers in the support forum become tutorials of their own, so we want to get all of those posts in one place for easier reference. If you’ve written (or want to write) a tutorial on Beaver Builder, this would be a great place to get some eyes on it!

What is your favorite thing about Beaver Builder?

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, we’re hoping to learn a bit more about you and how you use Beaver Builder. We’re working on a homepage redesign and some new copy. Getting insight into your thoughts will be immensely helpful with that.

So, I’ll end it with these two questions. Thanks in advance for your replies! Until next month. 🙂

What’s your favorite thing about Beaver Builder?

Where did you first hear about Beaver Builder?

41 Comments

Dave Porter on February 18, 2016 at 3:20 pm

Thanks for the update – great that support folk are in different time zones, great for world wide support and not having to wait for the US to wake up 🙂

Favorite thing: Gosh this is hard – I think the speed and efficiency of producing pages.
Where did I hear about BB: I think over at the Dynamik Forums

And sorry but I have to ask, how long away is the next beta of the theme? I’m really hanging out for some of the new features (particularly the new menu ones)

Cheers, Dave
Dave Porter on February 18, 2016 at 3:23 pm

I just re-read the blog post more carefully and see it is mentioned that the beta of the next theme update is coming next week – thanks…
- Robby McCullough on February 19, 2016 at 8:25 am
  
  Hey Dave! Thanks so much for the comment and the feedback. Correct! We’re shooting to get the theme beta out next week.
Jay on February 18, 2016 at 4:02 pm

Great stuff again guys!
I guess my favourite thing about BB indirectly is the community. Actual plugin-wise is that it’s really fast and intuitive to pump out completely customized code solutions.
I’ve been on BB for a long time, but I think I first came across it promoted by one of your team on reddit. I was expressing frustration with page builders after trying Layers and VC – and then someone suggested BB and I fell in love instantly.
Keep up the good work!
- Robby McCullough on March 2, 2016 at 3:18 pm
  
  Hey Jay! Thanks for the comment. Glad to hear that the absurd amount of time I spend cruising reddit actually had a positive outcome, haha!
Jon on February 18, 2016 at 4:17 pm

I was developing blocks for Headway and Gerard convinced me (after months of trying) to try BB, I liked the clean code and started developing modules.

Favourite thing about BB, that it has afforded me a creativity outlet supporting other developers with the prospect of it becoming a FT gig.

To date I think I have something like 30+ modules/tweaks available for Beaver Builder with at least another 36 on the way, so I feel your pain when it comes to documentation. Once you finish writing yours you can come write some for me 🙂
- Craig on February 18, 2016 at 5:30 pm
  
  I actually like writing documentation – my thinking being that there’s a payoff firstly for me, I will understand the product better, and secondly for those who are around now and for those that come after – why make them go through the pain of discovery again….
  - Robby McCullough on March 2, 2016 at 3:21 pm
    
    Lol @Jon! We might be able to work something out.
    
    @Craig, yes, agreed! I an a bit late to reply here, but we just completed “Docs Day” yesterday and I feel the same way. I spent most of the day working on the WordPress Customizer doc, and I have a very, very thorough understanding of every setting available now, haha! 😉
Davinder Singh Kainth on February 18, 2016 at 7:15 pm

Great update, keep rocking BB guys!

Fav thing about BB – Nothing beats this… ease of use!
Where I heard about BB – On Twitter while replying to a Genesis query.
- Robby McCullough on February 19, 2016 at 9:05 am
  
  Hey Davinder! Appreciate the comment. Rock on! <3
Carlos on February 18, 2016 at 8:57 pm

Hello Guys!

I love BB! It is difficult to choose what I like the most, so here goes a few with no particular order.

-I love that there is a community that, in a way, determines where the direction of plugin and the theme is going.
-I love that the team is very good at what they do, and they always find solutions that work perfectly.
-I love that the team is very accesible and they interact with the community all the time.
-I love that BB indeed makes your life a lot easier, reducing the time needed to create a stunning looking websites. There are a few layouts that are not possible at the moment, but eventually BB will get there!
-I love that the support is GREAT! Even when you ask stuff that is very easy and obvious, they explain stuff easily and make sure you don’t have any issues.

I think that is pretty much it haha. I hope this helps!

– Keep up the great work!
- Robby McCullough on February 19, 2016 at 9:04 am
  
  Carlos, thank you so much! I feel the same way about the community. You guys are amazing. <3 Thanks for the feedback. It's really helpful.
Nancy on February 18, 2016 at 10:16 pm

I’m a former tech writer from Silicon Valley so I’d be glad to help on documentation.
- Robby McCullough on February 19, 2016 at 9:03 am
  
  That would be amazing, Nancy. Thank you. Are you still in SV?
  
  I think we’re going to plan/coordinate docs day on Facebook, then we’ll communicate in Slack on the day of. =)
tevye on February 18, 2016 at 10:29 pm

My favorite things about Beaver Builder are the code quality and intuitive, uncluttered interface. I started coding in my bedroom on my brand new Commodire64 (released 1982) and green screen, more than a few years ago. Since then I’ve coded, modified and reviewed more programs than I can count.

Code quality is one of those things that seem easy after the fact but is a lot of work to achieve and maintain. Similarly keeping the interface clean and easy to use is also something that’s takes a lot of, time, thought and discipline. Yet these two things mean nothing unless the system is designed to be extensible and that seems to be the case given the new features that keep coming and the ease of developing custom modules.

These are the things that drew me to Beaver Builder. These are the things, I believe, that are Beaver Builder’s biggest assets.

It’s also my experience that a quality app inspires quality community

BTW: I did a presentation this evening at my WordPress Meetup and a member asked me why one would invest in a tool that might not be around in a few years. My comment was. “In my experience a well coded application can live for a long time”
- Robby McCullough on February 19, 2016 at 9:01 am
  
  Thanks Tevye. I was telling someone about Beaver Builder recently, and they asked if we coded in house. I was taken back a bit, and I forgot that many software companies outsource their dev. We’re really fortunate to have Justin around (and the more recent, hand-picked additions to the dev team). Not only is he wildly talented, but he’s equally passionate about his craft. (I get to brag for him, because he never will 😉 )
  
  We’re definitely in it for the long run. I wonder the same thing about the software we’re using. If it helps with peace of mind, we made the decision several months ago to discontinue our client services business to focus 100% on Beaver Builder. So far it’s a sustainable model, so we’ll keep riding this train as long as we can! Also, of course, there’s the peace of mind that comes with a GPL codebase. There are almost 100,000 sites running Beaver Builder now so, god forbid we all fall off a cliff, anyone can take the code and keep it going!
David on February 18, 2016 at 11:34 pm

Great to see Danny and Ozan and the growth.

I love BB because the team are genuinely dedicated to the product and it’s supporters. There is a rarely seen maturity here. An attention to detail, respectfulness and much foresight.

Having bought from just about every big player in the WordPress space I have often cringed at how quickly many on becoming celebrated entrepreneurs have lost sight. They start taking their existing customers for grated. They stop being Santa Claus and become the January sales.
- Robby McCullough on February 19, 2016 at 8:42 am
  
  I really appreciate the insight, David. <3 I can assure you if you peeked into our Slack channel, maturity might not be the appropriate word, hehe. 🙂
darrell on February 19, 2016 at 1:19 am

@David @ Dave Porter and others

Totally agree
Hopefully the BB Theme can remove a need to use other themes and just get on with it

The BB guys are quite exceptional people in the WP space
- Robby McCullough on February 19, 2016 at 8:39 am
  
  Awe. Thanks Darrell. Much appreciated. We’re really excited about the upcoming theme update/changes!
karine on February 19, 2016 at 1:59 am

Bonjour,
J’adore beaver builder c’est vraiment du super boulot.
What’s your favorite thing about Beaver Builder?
J’aime beaucoup de chose…ce que je préfère est la possibilité de travailler en front end et de pouvoir désinstaller sans laisser de shortcode Partout.
Where did you first hear about Beaver Builder?
Au WordCamp Paris
- Robby McCullough on February 19, 2016 at 8:33 am
  
  Yay! Merci Karine! =) <3
Andrew McBride on February 19, 2016 at 7:52 am

Will you only be taking the documentation suggestions on docs day or will you guys be collecting before to compile a list of task for docs day? Will you be focused mainly on the suggestions in Slack or is there a more preferred way for easy browsing (such as a facebook post or forum thread)?

Thanks.
- Robby McCullough on February 19, 2016 at 8:33 am
  
  Andrew, great questions. We haven’t figured out all of the details quite yet, but here is what I am thinking so far:
  
  I’m thinking we’ll put up a Facebook post a few days ahead of time to get everyone on the same page. If anyone has suggestions for articles or areas that we could improve, that would be great. If anyone’s interested in writing and/or editing, that would also be awesome and welcomed. I think we’ll do the planning on Facebook, then use Slack to communicate and keep things fun the day of!
  
  And no, we’re open to any feedback on our docs any time. No need to wait, or limit, to just docs day! =) Thanks so much for asking, too.
Mel Richards on February 19, 2016 at 11:15 am

I love how well designed BB is. The usability is great. Much better than other page builders out there.

I love the great, fast support.

I love how the team is so dedicated to creating a product based on our feedback and always adding new features on a regular basis.
- Robby McCullough on February 19, 2016 at 8:08 pm
  
  Thanks for the comment, Mel!
Jane on February 19, 2016 at 11:53 am

I just bought BB today, so I can’t say yet what my favorite thing is. I transitioned to a WordPress site a year ago from blogger and Weebly. I loved being in control with Weekly since I am a small, creative biz. But I couldn’t import my blog. A year into WP and I feel very clumsy with my website. I am looking forward to having control over my website again. I Googled drag and drop and read a number of articles before choosing BB.
- Robby McCullough on February 19, 2016 at 8:09 pm
  
  Hey Jane! That’s great! Let us know if you have any questions. Welcome to the family. =)
  
  http://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com/contact/
Roy on February 24, 2016 at 11:43 am

Roadmap is great communication
Jon on February 24, 2016 at 12:32 pm

I am pretty sure I got in early. I love you guys and how easy you have made it for me to go from a desktop HTML tool to WP. Like a Discover Card, it would be cool to see Member Since20… in my acct area. Maybe with a number designating how early a member got in (ex. #25 or #225)
Making sites has never been easier and more fun.
Thanks
J
- Robby McCullough on March 2, 2016 at 3:34 pm
  
  Haha! That’s a great idea. I always notice that “Member since” line on my debit card and it makes me want to stay with my current bank. I’ll see what we can do! 😉
Bryan on February 24, 2016 at 12:50 pm

What’s your favorite thing about Beaver Builder?
The built in mobile responsiveness is just so good. I love this part the most.
second most is the ease of use and low learning curve.

Where did you first hear about Beaver Builder?
I wish I could remember!! if someone referred me, i want to thank them!
- Robby McCullough on March 2, 2016 at 3:35 pm
  
  Thanks, Bryan!
Athlone Harris-Compton on February 25, 2016 at 2:14 am

What’s your favorite thing about Beaver Builder?
The ease of use without a doubt and the power, you only start to grasp it after using it and if you’ve been using other pagebuilders that truth hits home almost instantly! I LOVE BB :).

Where did you first hear about Beaver Builder?
This article from Chris Lema about WordPress pagebuilders: http://chrislema.com/wordpress-page-builders/

With the theme getting attention of late it’s going to make the BB Theme + Plugin a hard combination to beat. Thanks again for the really wonderful tool.
- Robby McCullough on March 2, 2016 at 3:38 pm
  
  Hey Athlone, thanks for the comment. This is certainly not the first (nor the last I assume) time I’ve heard someone find us through Chris Lema’s blog (http://chrislema.com), haha! 🙂
steve729 on March 3, 2016 at 10:52 am

Beaver Builder has so many great features. But one thing that stands out is that it’s fast and easy to work with because you can pretty much see what you’re getting as you go along.

With other builders such as Divi you just get a rough schematic representation of each section, module, and the overall page layout. With Beaver Builder, I can see what all elements look like immediately as I build my page. No more surprises. No more “Oops… I deleted the wrong module!”

No surprises = saved time = saved money

No surprises = getting the design I have in mind = better design = happier customer + happier me
- Robby McCullough on March 5, 2016 at 8:44 am
  
  Hey, Steve! Thanks for the comment. Phew, that’s a lot of math, haha. =) Glad you worked it out and not me! 😉
Orlando Garcia on March 11, 2016 at 12:25 am

Thanks for the commentary. As a non IT and no experience building websites I decided to learn Wordpress. I took a long course by Tyler and somehow was fed BeaverBuilder ads to use. I was completely lost and found BB extremely confusing. I invested $500 and never used the product again. I reached out to support and no response or reply as they seemed to be too busy or thought I should be on some forum searching for answers. I will give it another shot as I believe this article was provocative enough for me to see if I can endorse it.
- Robby McCullough on March 11, 2016 at 8:53 am
  
  Hey Orlando,
  
  Really sorry to hear about this. Can you shoot me an email at robby [at] fastlinemedia [dot] com. I would be happy to look into this for you. It sounds like you did get a response from our support team if they asked to search the forum. Is that right? I really want to dig in and find out what happened here.
Kyle M Brown on January 12, 2017 at 9:43 pm

How did the Docs Day work out for your team? Are you still doing it?
- Robby McCullough on January 13, 2017 at 2:27 pm
  
  Hey Kyle! It went pretty well. The best part of that announcement was that we found someone to join our team to help out with docs. 🙂