What Happened to Visual Composer? The Brain-Twisting Story of our Confusing Name Change
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We’re Deeply Sorry for the Confusion Created Around Visual Composer
And, most important, we’re sorry for not explaining what caused this mess from the very beginning. Secondly, we wrote this post to finally explain what caused it from the very beginning. As you’ll see, it’s quite a brain-twisting journey that led us onto this path. Things happened gradually, and the more we tried to “fix” problems along the way, the deeper they got.Where It All Started: Changing the Name of Visual Composer Page Builder
You’ve probably seen that name dozens of times, on every major WP theme page. It was included as a premium plugin in many of your favorite themes. So why would we decide all of the sudden to change the name our best-known product? Short answer – we didn’t have a choice. As for the long answer, you can watch the story unfold in the video or you can read it below. It all began with our new product, the Visual Composer Website Builder. This is a different tool from the Visual Composer Page Builder and we wanted to make that crystal clear to our users (clearly, that did NOT go according to plan). The Page Builder was an Envato-exclusive product with lifetime license (like all products sold with Envato). The Website Builder, our new product, was meant to go in a different direction. We tried to move away from the lifetime license model, because our new product was more complex in features, and built for a growing part of our users whose website building needs have rapidly evolved. All this and the new React.JS technical stack meant much higher development costs that could only be sustained with a yearly license model. We also wanted to be directly in touch with our users to offer them stronger, faster support. But what happened next was anything but what we had planned:We Missed One Key Detail That Forced Us Into a Difficult Decision
And that “detail” was our contractual limitations with Envato. In short, we couldn’t sell another product under the name of Visual Composer outside their platform. So we had to choose between 2 options: 1. We tone down our new product to fit the lifetime license model and put it up on the marketplace, or… 2. We change the name of the product we already had on Envato, Visual Composer Page Builder, so we could lift our contractual limitations. So we thought long and hard about this, and eventually decided to change the name of the Visual Composer Page Builder, the plugin we had on the marketplace, to WP Bakery. It was a tough decision, but it was the only way we could maintain the quality of our new product.And That’s How the Visual Composer Page Builder Became WP Bakery
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What is Visual Composer Website Builder and What Does it Do?
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So What Exactly Are the Differences Between Visual Composer Website Builder and WP Bakery?
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![4](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/2018/12/4.jpg)
- it allows you to generate clean code;
- it doesn’t get messy if you disable the plugin (like it happens with shortcode-based plugins).
WDD Staff
WDD staff are proud to be able to bring you this daily blog about web design and development. If there's something you think we should be talking about let us know @DesignerDepot.
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