Elementor Website Builder – more than just a page builder vs TinyMCE Custom Styles

THE #1 NO CODE DRAG & DROP WORDPRESS WEBSITE BUILDER POWERING 22M+ WEBSITES WORLDWIDE, NOW WITH AI. Elementor, the leading WordPress website creation platform, empowers you to build professional, pixel-perfect websites seamlessly with its no-code, drag-and-drop Atomic Editor. Supporting the full website lifecycle, Elementor enables you to confidently build, optimize, and manage your website with extended capabilities such as AI-powered creation, image optimization, transactional email delivery, accessibility tools, performance boosters, and more. Now in version 4 – the Atomic Editor! Introducing a new generation of performance-first atomic building blocks that allow you to control every atomic part with no limits or locked layouts. Define your global design systems and reusable components once, and they apply everywhere instantly – turning hours or even days of work into single clicks. Unlock all features with Elementor One. Need fast and secure cloud hosting for your Elementor site? Try out Elementor Host Powered by Google Cloud & Cloudflare. 4.9/5 TrustPilot score. 🌟 Create professional stunning websites Intuitive drag & drop builder: Build any website with our no-code, drag-and-drop Editor. Achieve design precision with full control over layout and style. Pixel-perfect design tools: Upload SVGs, apply masks, gradients, box shadows, headline effects, shape dividers, and use built-in CSS controls for advanced customization. Template Library: Apply complete website kits for instant setups, or choose from a vast library of single pages, blocks, and pop-up templates. Advanced widgets: Access over 40 FREE widgets, including heading, image, text editor, video, button, gallery, carousels, and more. AI capabilities: Revolutionize your design and content creation process with native AI integration. Instantly create sections, text, code, and images. 🗝️ Key features Design system: Use Variables and Classes for consistent colors, typography, and design elements, ensuring a cohesive, professional look that updates everywhere globally. Responsive design: Optimize your design for every device with custom breakpoints, ensuring a seamless desktop, tablet, and mobile experience. Mask shapes: Turning any element, like an image or video, into whatever shape you desire to create standout designs. CSS transform: Use CSS Transform to rotate, scale, and skew elements, adding dynamic styling to your site. Entrance animations: Add entrance animations to elements to create engaging and interactive user experiences. Revision history: Elementor’s Revision History feature enables users to track and revert to previous versions of their designs, providing peace of mind and flexibility during the creative process. Developer-friendly: Equipped with extensive documentation, API, developer tools, and custom code areas, Elementor offers a conducive environment for developers to extend its capabilities and create custom solutions. Floating buttons: Enhance user interaction with customizable, floating action buttons that stay in view as users scroll. Components [Pro]: Reuse the same building blocks across pages and sites, and update them everywhere they appear. Including controlled content editing, allowing collaborators and clients to update only exposed content properties without breaking layout or styling. Theme Builder [Pro]: Design every part of your site—headers, footers, posts, and archives—for complete control over appearance. Popup Builder [Pro]: Create eye-catching popups with Elementor’s Popup Builder, equipped with advanced targeting and triggering options to optimize user engagement and conversions. Forms [Pro]: Design and integrate custom forms, utilizing advanced features and integrations to capture and manage submissions effectively. WooCommerce Builder [Pro]: Integrate Elementor with WooCommerce to design custom product pages, shop layouts, archives, carts, checkout pages, my account, and more, enhancing your store’s visual appeal and functionality. Dynamic Content [Pro]: Leverage dynamic content capabilities to create personalized and interactive web experiences by connecting your designs to various data sources. Notes [Pro]: Enhance team collaboration by using Elementor’s Notes feature to leave feedback and comments directly on the design interface. Custom Code [Pro]: Insert custom code to extend the functionality of your site, offering flexibility for advanced customizations. Custom CSS [Pro]: Apply Custom CSS to fine-tune the styling of elements, ensuring precise control over the design aspects. Motion effects [Pro]: Add advanced motion effects to elements for a more dynamic and engaging user experience. Custom fonts and icons [Pro]: Upload and use custom fonts and icons to match your brand’s identity. 😍 Elementor FREE widgets Unlock the potential of Elementor with our comprehensive suite of free widgets and tools, designed to empower your website creation process and elevate your design capabilities: Heading: Add eye-catching headlines. Image: Control the size, opacity and more. Text Editor: Just like the WordPress text editor. Video: Add YouTube, Vimeo, VideoPress, Dailymotion or self-hosted videos. Button: Create interactive buttons. Link in Bio: Build link in bio components to promote your business / services. Image Box: A box with image, headline and text. Testimonials: Customer testimonials. Icon: Place one or more of 600+ icons available. Icon Box: An icon, headline, and text with one widget. Social Icons: Link to your social pages with the Facebook/X (formerly Twitter) icons. Image Gallery: Display your images in a grid. Image Carousel: Create rotating carousels or sliders for chosen images. Icon List: Use any icon to create a bullet list. Counter: Show numbers in an escalating manner. Progress Bar: Include an escalating progress bar. Nested Tabs: Display content in vertical or horizontal tabs. Nested Accordion: Display any type of content in collapsible sections. Rating: Display how many stars (or another icon) other visitors gave. Alert: Include a colored alert box to draw visitor’s attention. HTML: Insert code into the page. Shortcode: Insert shortcodes from any plugin into the page. Menu Anchor: Link any menu to this anchor. Read More: Set the Read More cut-off for the excerpt in archive pages. Sidebar: Add sidebars onto the page. Google Maps: Embed maps into the page. SoundCloud: Add SoundCloud audio bits. Divider: Separate content with a designed divider. Spacer: Add space between elements. Text Path: Attach your text to a path. And counting… 🚀 Enhance your website High-performing websites: Website performance impacts your visitors’ experience and search result ranking. Elementor, in partnership with Google Chrome, continuously enhances performance without compromising design. Key features include: Reduced DOM output: Streamlined HTML structure for faster rendering. Improved media file loading: Optimized loading of images, videos, and other media assets. Reduced CSS and JS files: Minimized stylesheets and scripts individually loaded only on demand for quicker loading times. Lazy loading: Deferred loading of non-critical resources to improve initial page load speed. Faster font loading: Efficient delivery of web fonts to enhance text rendering speed. Optimized front-end asset loading: Efficient loading of assets like JavaScript and CSS to minimize render-blocking. Element caching: Cache frequently accessed design elements to reduce server response time and enhance overall performance. 🔥 Elementor Editor Pro features Create unparalleled websites while saving time, money and resources with Elementor Editor Pro’s full website builder. Get access to 100+ professional widgets, features, and tools. Editor Pro design widgets: Posts: Display your blog posts with customizable layouts and styles. Share Buttons: Allow visitors to easily share your content on various social media platforms. Portfolio: Showcase your work or projects with stunning portfolio layouts. Slides: Create dynamic slideshows with custom animations and transitions. Form: Design and customize advanced forms for user interaction and data collection. Login: Add a login form or user registration module to your website. Nav Menu: Customize and style your website’s navigation menu for better user experience. Animated Headline: Create attention-grabbing headlines with animated effects. Price Table: Display pricing plans or packages in a structured and visually appealing format. Price List: Showcase a list of prices or services with customizable styling options. Gallery: Create beautiful image galleries with various layout options and lightbox support. Flip Box: Add interactive flip animations to highlight content or features. Call to Action: Encourage user interaction and conversions with compelling call-to-action sections. Media Carousel: Showcase a carousel of media files such as images or videos. Testimonial Carousel: Display client testimonials in a carousel format for social proof. Nested Carousel: Create nested carousels for more complex content organization. Loop Carousel: Display content in a looped carousel for continuous viewing. Table of Contents: Generate a table of contents for longer articles or guides to improve navigation. Countdown: Add countdown timers to create urgency for promotions or events. Facebook Page: Embed your Facebook page feed or content onto your website. Blockquote: Highlight quotes or testimonials with stylish formatting options. Template: Save and reuse design templates for consistent branding and layout. Reviews: Showcase customer reviews and ratings to build trust and credibility. Facebook Button: Add buttons to promote interactions with your Facebook page or content. Facebook Embed: Embed Facebook posts or content onto your website. Facebook Comments: Enable Facebook comments on your website’s pages or posts. PayPal Button: Integrate PayPal buttons for easy online payments. Stripe Button: Integrate Stripe payment buttons to facilitate secure online transactions. Lottie Widget: Add Lottie animations to enhance visual appeal and engagement. Code Highlight: Display code snippets with syntax highlighting for better readability. Video Playlist: Create and customize playlists for video content on your website. Mega Menu: Customize advanced menus for better navigation and displaying complex content. Off Canvas: Create off-canvas areas that slide in to show extra info or menus without cluttering the main layout. Editor Pro theme widgets: Build and customize all the key parts of your website including headers, footers, 404 page, global archives, and more… Post Title: Customize the title of individual blog posts or pages. Post Excerpt: Display a brief summary or teaser of your blog posts. Post Content: Customize the main content area of your blog posts or pages. Featured Image: Set and customize featured images for blog posts or pages. Author Box: Display author information and bios on blog posts. Post Comments: Customize the appearance and functionality of comments sections on your website. Post Navigation: Add navigation links to adjacent posts for easy browsing. Post Info: Display additional information about blog posts, such as author and date. Site Logo: Upload and customize your website’s logo for branding purposes. Site Title: Customize the title of your website. Page Title: Customize the title of individual pages. Search Bar: Add a search bar to allow users to search your website’s content. Breadcrumbs: Display hierarchical navigation paths for better user navigation. Sitemap: Generate a sitemap for better search engine indexing and user navigation. Loop Grid: Design and customize grid layouts for blog post archives or product listings. Editor Pro WooCommerce widgets: Design and customize a complete online shopping experience across your entire website. Product: Display individual products with customizable layouts and styles. Breadcrumbs: Display hierarchical navigation paths for better user navigation within your store. Product Title: Customize the title of individual products. Product Images: Set and customize images for product listings. Product Price: Display the price of individual products. Add To Cart: Add customizable add to cart buttons for easy purchasing. Product Rating: Display ratings and reviews for products. Product Stock: Display stock availability for products. Product Meta: Display additional information about products, such as SKU and categories. Product Content: Customize the main content area of product descriptions. Short Description: Display brief summaries or teasers of products. Product Data Tabs: Organize product information into tabbed sections for better organization. Additional Information: Display additional details about products, such as dimensions and weight. Product Related: Showcase related products to encourage additional purchases. Upsells: Promote upsell products to increase average order value. Products: Display a grid or list of products with customizable settings. Custom Add To Cart: Customize the add to cart button for specific products. WooCommerce Pages: Design and customize WooCommerce-specific pages, such as the cart and checkout pages. Product Categories: Display product categories for easy navigation within your store. Menu Cart: Display a cart icon in your navigation menu for easy access to the shopping cart. Cart: Customize the appearance and functionality of the shopping cart page. Checkout: Customize the appearance and functionality of the checkout page. My Account: Customize the appearance and functionality of the customer account area. Purchase Summary: Display a summary of purchases during the checkout process. WooCommerce Notices: Customize the appearance and functionality of WooCommerce notices, such as order confirmation messages. Build professional websites with Elementor Editor Pro! 🔒 Security and compliance Elementor places a paramount focus on security, evident through our acquisition of industry certifications such as ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27017, ISO/IEC 27018, ISO/IEC 27701, and SOC 2 Type II. These certifications underscore our commitment to implementing robust security measures and highlight our dedication to adhering to recognized industry standards. We encourage ethical security research through our Bug Bounty program. We collaborate with leading bug bounty services to provide opportunities for researchers to report vulnerabilities in our services. Our bounty programs include a triage team available 24/7/365. For more information: Trust Center. ♿ Accessibility best practices Elementor offers accessibility tools and enhancements to help you provide a better experience for all users. Including HTML 5 semantic, full keyboard navigation menu, ongoing improvement of features, widget, and more. 🌐 Translated to 63+ languages, includes RTL support Elementor supports multiple languages, typographies, and RTL, with editor translations in over 63 languages. It’s also compatible with WPML, Polylang, TranslatePress, Weglot, and more. To contribute, add a new language via translate.wordpress.org. See our guide on how to translate and localize the plugin. 🧩 Use of 3rd-party services To improve the user experience, Elementor may use the following 3rd party services if the required feature is enabled: Google Fonts are loaded to add additional fonts to your website. Google’s TOS and Privacy Policy apply. Some Elementor features require loading assets from Elementor.com. These assets are not used for tracking unless explicitly stated, and require your approval and manual opt-in. Learn more in our TOS and Privacy Policy. 📧 Related products by Elementor Image Optimization: Superior image compression for faster, high-quality website performance. Email Deliverability: Reliable email management without SMTP plugins, keeping your communications streamlined and efficient. Web Accessibility: Enhances website usability for individuals with disabilities. Ally is designed to help web creators make their websites more inclusive. It scans, detects, and remediates key accessibility violations, working seamlessly on all WordPress and Elementor websites. 📣 See what our users have to say “Elementor is hands down the best page builder out there” – ★★★★★ Graphicvision1 “An incredibly user-friendly plugin” – ★★★★★ Hyeyoga “Easily, my most used WP plugin” – …

Please someone take over maintaining this plugin, or it will get abandoned – with over 9.000 active installations. I’m now 69 and although retired, all my time is taken up with other projects, while I still have the energy for them. Why you might want to take it over? It’s really useful: Make your editing experience as simple and good as possible by improving the way you work with the TinyMCE visual editor (including Gutenberg Classic block). This plugin adds custom CSS file(s) to the frontend and to the TinyMCE editor; and it allows you to populate TinyMCE’s ‘Formats’ dropdown with your own styles. The features in more detail: 1. Installs two CSS stylesheet files into your chosen location (so you can still do updates of the active theme and this plugin and even switch to another theme). In general you will need to fetch the auto-created stub files via FTP, edit them locally and upload them, overwriting the previous versions. editor-style.css is used for styling your TinyMCE Editor editor-style-shared.css is used for styles to be used by the frontend AND in your TinyMCE editor (so you do not have to copy) To use this feature, you have to write your own CSS code into these files. 2. The main feature of this Plugin is to offer a Backend-GUI to create custom styles for TinyMCE (‘Formats’ dropdown) dynamically. Easy to add, change and delete styles No editing of source code required (excepting the CSS stylesheets) Allows you to add block- and inline elements which are not provided by TinyMCE, e.g. , , etc. The plugin’s backend page contains a lot of description and some links to help you define your styles correctly Note that each style can have both CSS Classes and/or CSS Inline-Styles. The latter (excepting color) will even be applied to the Formats dropdown menu items. However, I do not recommend inline styles as they are inserted into the text of the post/page and remain unchanged if you later alter the style in the plugin settings – so in general stick to Classes! How the two stylesheets are applied The shared style sheet file is enqueued to be included on frontend pages (via the usual tag in the area) using the standard WordPress function wp_enqueue_style. So, as with most other stylesheets, the statements in it will automatically apply to the whole HTML page. So define class names which will not collide with any already in use by the theme – and do not define styles for HTML elements without a limiting class name unless you want them to apply to all elements of that tag type (including in header, footer, sidebar…). Both stylesheets are passed to TinyMCE by calling: add_filter(‘mce_css’, …) What this causes to happen is that they are linked in to the HTML document which is the source for an , which is the editing area of TinyMCE. So they should definitely only apply to HTML in the iframe – although I have heard that some situations, e.g. a cache plugin, may break this mechanism. Gutenberg classic blocks As of version 1.1.1 this plugin works for the Gutenberg classic block. WordPress MultiSite Although it does not check for MultiSite, the plugin works in the MultiSite environment, since WordPress uses a separate Options table for each MultiSite. You can reuse the same CSS files (by supplying the same custom directory in each Site), or add separate ones for each Site. Current Languages – en_US – de_DE (Tim Reeves) Background Information Then and Now This plugin was originally written by David Stöckl in 2013 – long before Gutenberg had been conceived, and at a time when several different plugins all tried to enhance the TinyMCE editor in different ways. It was abandoned a year later by David and I forked it in 2016, renamed to TinyMCE Custom Styles” (“TCS”). Most of those other TinyMCE-related plugins, notably WP Edit, are now abandoned; apart from this plugin, only TinyMCE Advanced, now also handling Gutenberg and renamed to Advanced Editor Tools (abbreviated hereafter to “AET”) seems to still be notably active in this area. AET is a great plugin – you can also check out its companion for developers Advanced TinyMCE Configuration. I use AET myself on most websites – but there are a few things it’s not designed to do, and that’s where this plugin fills the gap. You can consider it as AET’s sidekick 🙂 TinyMCE and the WordPress theme The goal is to configure the TinyMCE backend editor so that its ‘Visual’ tab displays content as closely as possible to how it will look on the content area of the actual website. To this end, WordPress has for years provided a feature which can be used by themes, called ‘editor styles’. This allows a theme to make known to WordPress one or more CSS files, which should contain a subset of the theme’s styles, those which apply to the display of content in the content area (i.e. excluding styles applying to headers, sidebars, footers, archives, comments, …). If the theme provides this feature, that CSS file (or files) are loaded to TinyMCE to achieve the goal. The default location is one file named ‘editor-style.css’ in the theme’s root directory. In fact, WordPress seems to find this file, if present, even if the theme does not register it. All good modern themes provide this feature. Advanced Editor Tools The really good plugin ‘Advanced Editor Tools’ (“AET”, from and maintained by Andrew Ozz, a WordPress core developer, now attributed to Automattic, the company effectively behind WordPress) helps with one of the problems noted above: It gives you complete freedom to select which buttons and dropdowns are displayed in TinyMCEs header – in particular you can just drag the ‘Formats’ dropdown into one of the bar areas, exactly where you want it. AET also has a number of other options, for example to prevent TinyMCE from removing tags and minifying the text in the ‘Text’ tab, which is very useful when you need to look at the HTML and do any manual adjustment. Shortcomings in the standard setup There are some regrettable weaknesses in the unenhanced situation: Any custom CSS which you set in the WordPress Customizer is not applied to TinyMCE (it is written out as direct styles in the of each website page). The styles which the theme provides for TinyMCE are applied to the HTML displayed by the editor. This is fine with fixed styling of elements like , or . But a theme may also include optional styles to change or enhance the display of an element – e.g. ‘.small’, ‘.screen-reader-text’, ‘.beforelist’, ‘.hilitebox’ and so on. In this case, and without help from any plugin, there is no way to select any of them from the menu or toolbar of TinyMCE in order to apply them to an element, so a user would need to know the style names and apply them manually in the ‘Text’ tab – not good. See below ‘importcss’, but note that it overwrites anything other plugins have put in the ‘Formats’ dropdown. In the standard configuration (i.e. without enhancer plugins) TinyMCE is not even configured to show the ‘Formats’ dropdown, which we need to apply custom styles to elements in the text. The TinyMCE Formats dropdown Internal name: ‘styleselect’. By default, this dropdown is not displayed. You can add code e.g. to your theme’s functions.php, to have it shown. Its default contents are 4 entries with corresponding submenus: Headings, Inline, Blocks and Alignement. TCS always registers the ‘Formats’ dropdown to TinyMCE’s second toolbar, this does not seem to be a problem for AET. It is in this area that TCS is really usefull: It allows you to create named styles, so you can name them descriptively, e.g. to show if the style is a block or inline style, if it uses the Wrapper option, and so on. Basically you will be adding styles to the dropdown which are defined in a stylesheet from the theme, or in your ‘editor-style-shared.css’, to allow you (or your customer) convenient and understandable access to them while editing. The TinyMCE JavaScript plugin ‘importcss’ When the AET plugin is active, it offers an option “Create CSS classes menu” (subtitle: Load the CSS classes used in editor-style.css and replace the Formats menu). When checked, a TinyMCE JavaScript plugin called ‘importcss’ is loaded to the frontend, which parses the CSS loaded to TinyMCE (i.e. from your theme’s ‘editor styles’ and this plugins ‘editor-style.css’) and populates the ‘Formats’ dropdown with a selection of those styles. Styles applying directly to HTML elements without a class name are skipped. Styles applying to a tag and containing a class, e.g. “h1.page-title” will be included and work as expected. But for classes not limited to a tag, it has no way of knowing if the class is intended to be applied to a block element or as an inline element, nor to which tags it should apply or should use, so it simply offers them as inline elements, which may or may not be their intended use. Styles with a pseudo-class or pseudo-element (e.g. ‘:hover’, ‘::before’) will be omitted. The bottom line is, that however good the themes editor styles are, we end up with a sub-optimal population of the Formats dropdown: It will be too long (including many styles we don’t need or don’t understand), and some valuable styles will be missing or wrongly classified as inline styles. Given all these shortcomings, I have not found this feature to be of much use in practice. Credits This plugin is a fork of TinyMCE Advanced Professsional Formats and Styles which has been abandoned by the original author. Initially I just fixed a JavaScript bug so that it worked again, and cleaned up the code and messages a bit. Since then, a number of further improvements, see the changelog. I was born in 1954 and would be glad if someone else would now take over this plugin and further improve it. Translations are also very welcome. David Stöckl, Vienna, the original author. Many thanks! The plugin icon (Der Bitkönig) was drawn by Gabriele Meischner, muchas Gracias! Rawrly for providing security updates. Report Security Bugs Please report all security bugs found in this project by following the vulnerability disclosure process.