How To Access Cornerstone Templates In Wordpress

Joe Fylan

Summary

Cornerstone is a elevate-and-driblet page builder plugin for WordPress with a truly intuitive front-terminate user interface.

Cornerstone is a drag-and-drib page builder plugin for WordPress with a truly intuitive front-terminate user interface.

Pros

Intuitive front-end builder interface

Large library of page elements

Useful page layouts and block templates

Endless customization options

Live CSS editing

Affordable price

Cons

Lacking in folio templates

Fewer features and functionality than some others (eastward.g. Divi Builder)

In this Cornerstone review, we're going to accept this newly released WordPress page builder plugin for a examination drive to see what it has to offer.

While there are many WordPress page builders to choose from – including standalone plugins and some that are integrated into themes – Cornerstone aims to elevate itself above the competition past letting you carry out all your page blueprint through a 100% forepart-end user interface.

This forepart-stop approach should make the whole user experience much more intuitive and responsive than many of the other drag-and-drib folio builder tools bachelor for WordPress.

Cornerstone also includes a cracking choice of truly useful modules or elements which tin be added to your custom layouts. Furthermore, you'll find an impressive selection of pre-congenital page layouts that you can utilise to kick-commencement your designs.

If you're looking for a new WordPress page builder tool, or you've yet to join the elevate-and-drop revolution, read on to find out if Cornerstone is the all-time plugin of its kind in our hands-on review.

What Tin a WordPress Page Builder Plugin Do For You?

Cornerstone Plugin Review Example Layout

Page builders are very pop tools for WordPress, and with good reason. These tools allow you to create custom page layouts that just wouldn't be possible with the standard WordPress editor – all without the need to edit whatever lawmaking.

Instead of the standard unmarried column post or folio layout, which consists mainly of text broken up with images, page builder tools similar Cornerstone allow you to create advanced layouts of multiple rows and columns. The best tools in this category include a broad range of useful page elements that can be inserted into your custom layouts, and in this regard, Cornerstone is no exception.

A proficient WordPress page builder tool will too give you enough of customization options to assistance you create unique page designs for your website. Some tools even let you to relieve your layouts for reuse throughout your website and on other projects.

If you want to publish content on your website that won't look like the typical WordPress posts and pages you see everywhere else, and so a drag-and-drop page builder tool is probably your best option. However, with so many available tools, information technology can be hard to know which ane to choose.

To help ensure you lot cull the right tool for your needs, there are some criteria you can use when evaluating the options. These include the range of modules or elements you get admission to, the manner of the pre-built layouts, and the user experience offered by the page architect interface.

While Cornerstone certainly looks like an exciting pick, let's discover out if it'southward the best WordPress page builder plugin in our hands-on review.

Cornerstone Review: Features

Cornerstone not merely features an intuitive user interface (UI), but it also includes a varied option of content modules or elements, besides equally a growing library of pre-built page layout templates. So far, so practiced. Now let's wait at these features in more item to help you decide if Cornerstone is the best drag-and-drop page architect tool for your WordPress projection.

Cornerstone Front-end User Interface

Cornerstone Plugin Review User Interface

Equally mentioned at the kickoff of this Cornerstone review, this page builder features a 100% front-finish user interface. This ways that equally you piece of work on your site, yous'll have the same view of the folio equally your visitors will – when it's published. This is instead of having to switch back and forth between a backend interface and the frontend of your website.

The chief benefit of this approach is that you get an accurate representation of how your page design will look, helping you to save time and effort, while also fugitive unpleasant surprises.

Once you've activated the Cornerstone architect on a page y'all want to customize, you can start creating your design by building the layout from scratch. Alternatively, you tin load ane of the page templates from the library, or insert one of the cake templates.

Cornerstone Folio and Block Templates

To help yous create specific pages for your site, Cornerstone includes a few folio templates. These pre-built layouts encompass pages such equally sales or about pages, helping yous relieve time when adding these essential pieces of content to your site.

You'll too discover cake templates, which can be combined to assistance you build a wider range of custom pages. The Cornerstone block templates include sections for about pages, sample cavalcade layouts, team profiles, and much more.

Both the page and block templates can be fully edited through the user interface to ensure they match your vision.

Cornerstone Elements

Being able to create custom layouts for your WordPress website is only half the benefit of using a folio builder plugin like Cornerstone. The other main perk of the best plugins of this type is that y'all tin can add a wide range of elements to your posts and pages.

Cornerstone is no exception here, and its library of elements is very impressive. At the time of writing, there are 42 elements to choose from, with more beingness added on a regular ground.

Cornerstone Plugin Review Elements Feature Box

The characteristic box element is a bully manner to highlight your skills or the reasons why your audience should choose your business or service.

Cornerstone Plugin Review Elements Icons

The library of icon elements can help give your custom folio layouts a graphical flourish.

Cornerstone Plugin Review Elements Flip Cards

If you want to make your pages more interactive, the blithe menu elements are a practiced option.

Cornerstone Plugin Review Elements Skill Bars

The Cornerstone skill bar and counter elements tin can help convey your expertise to your visitors.

Cornerstone Plugin Review Elements Marketing

If you are selling products and services from your website, the Cornerstone marketing elements can assist brand your offers wait more bonny.

Cornerstone Inspector

With Cornerstone, you're not limited to only using the layouts and elements as they come. Thank you to the inspector characteristic, you can customize many of the settings that govern how your pages look.

After clicking on i of the elements that brand upwardly your layout, you can then use the context-sensitive sidebar panel to make your changes.

Live Code Editing

Cornerstone Plugin Review Live CSS Editing

Creating custom page layouts for your WordPress website with Cornerstone doesn't require any lawmaking editing at all. However, if you want a faster and more efficient way to customize the underlying CSS and JS of your website, using Cornerstone is a great option.

Thank you to the real-time feedback you go, using the live editing feature of Cornerstone can be a great mode to improve your coding skills. This is thank you to the fashion you can immediately meet what effects your changes to the code are having on your page.

Uniform with Any WordPress Theme

Although this page builder plugin was get-go launched as an integral part of the X WordPress theme – besides from the ThemeCo team – at present that Cornerstone is available equally a standalone plugin, it should work with any WordPress theme.

Other Highlights of Cornerstone

In add-on to its intuitive frontend interface, swell selection of elements, and useful page and block templates, Cornerstone has a few other notable features. These include:

Ability to create custom layouts for both posts and pages
Like shooting fish in a barrel way to control admission to Cornerstone by user function
Online support documentation and forum
Migration of Cornerstone content between sites
Fully mobile responsive layouts and designs
Created past a reputable development team

There'south besides a growing library of add-ons bachelor for Cornerstone. These optional extras allow you to practice a lot more with Cornerstone, including publish testimonials, create logo showcases, improve social media integration, and create restaurant menus, to name just a few.

Cornerstone Plugin Review: User Experience

As Cornerstone should work with whatever WordPress theme, later uploading and activating the plugin on your site, you tin get-go creating posts and pages with custom layouts and designs.

Once the Cornerstone user interface has loaded, you can start your blueprint past either calculation a section to the folio or loading one of the available page templates or blocks.

If y'all choose to start with a bare sail, the first stride is to add together a department to your page. Y'all can then add a row to the section, before deciding how many columns that row should include.

While yous're working, you can switch betwixt the wireframe view and the front-finish view of your folio. Unlike about WordPress page builders, this doesn't require saving your work, switching tabs, and refreshing windows.

By simply clicking on the wireframe button on the sidebar console, the user interface is switched between the frontend and wireframe views – all without any page loads or refreshing. You're free to work in either mode, and both take their pros and cons. The wireframe view makes it easy to examine the underlying components of your layout, while the pure frontend view makes it piece of cake to see how your design will wait when information technology goes live.

Clicking on a row or column displays the setting for that element in the sidebar panel. Y'all can then utilise the context-sensitive controls to customize the appearance of the element you are working on. As you make changes, the results are displayed in existent-time, giving you instant feedback on your blueprint choices.

In one case your custom page layout contains at least 1 section, you tin can then showtime adding the Cornerstone elements to your design. After browsing the elements section of the sidebar panel, yous tin can then elevate-and-drop the desired element into your layout.

Editing of the elements takes identify through the sidebar console, and again, you get a live preview of your changes equally you make them. Fifty-fifty calculation text to your page takes place in real time and is a huge comeback over the standard WordPress post editor backend/frontend interface.

The amount of control you take over the elements varies. However, in general, you can make many changes through the visual controls, with the option of calculation custom CSS for even more customization possibilities.

Through the Cornerstone user interface, you can also control the general settings of the page you're working on. These settings cover the title, the post status, and whether or non to permit comments.

Through the general page settings on the Cornerstone UI, y'all tin can besides add custom JS and CSS. When doing so, you become real-time feedback to show what effect your customizations are having.

Being able to meet instantly how your custom CSS is changing the folio is helpful. This is especially truthful if you lot're new to CSS and you want to exist sure y'all're inbound the code correctly.

The Cornerstone UI features a handy view switcher to aid you to preview how your page layout will look on a range of devices.

As Cornerstone is fully responsive, you lot tin can be certain that your custom page layouts volition wait peachy on a range of devices, from smartphones to widescreen monitors. Still, it'south good to be able to see for yourself how your layouts will look. While you are working, you tin likewise hide the sidebar panel at the touch of a push, to get a meliorate idea of how your design will expect to your visitors.

In one case you're happy with your design, y'all can hit the save push button. If your post status is set to publish, then the new version will be available to your visitors.

If you're creating a custom homepage layout for your website with Cornerstone, yous can simply apply the WordPress Reading Settings to set that page every bit the forepart page of your website.

It'south worth pointing out that in one case you outset working on a postal service or page with Cornerstone, you can't hands switch back to editing it through the standard WordPress editor. You can make changes to the content of a mail service that you created Cornerstone in the standard WordPress editor. However, if you so re-open that post or page in Cornerstone, whatsoever changes made in the standard editor will be overwritten.

As you tin can see, due to the shortcodes that Cornerstone relies on to build your custom layouts, if you lot do disable the plugin, your designs will no longer exist attainable to your visitors. This is typical with about all WordPress folio builder tools and isn't something that's unique to Cornerstone.

Cornerstone WordPress Plugin Review: Pricing

The Cornerstone WordPress folio builder plugin is available from the CodeCanyon market place for $35. This includes lifetime admission to updates and 6 months of support from ThemeCo, the plugin developers. Y'all tin extend this support period to 12 months, for an actress $10.50.

With the best-selling Visual Composer page builder plugin available for a similar price, and the powerful Divi Builder plugin bachelor for $89 (along with a whole library of other useful plugins and themes), Cornerstone is competitively priced.

Cornerstone Page Builder Review Determination

If you desire a elevate-and-drop WordPress page builder plugin that offers real-time feedback while you work, Cornerstone is hard to crush. The live CSS code editing characteristic should come in handy for both beginners and experienced users, besides.

The elements that you can insert into your layouts are all very useful, and while the selection of folio templates is small compared to some other page builder plugins, the cake templates should cover most of your needs.

Overall, Cornerstone combines a slap-up user interface with a useful set up of features to brand it ane of the easiest-to-employ folio builder plugins for WordPress.