Oxygen Builder Review – The True Visual Site Builder for WordPress

When it comes to finding easy to use platforms while searching for ways to create websites, Oxygen is one of the best options available out there. Basically, a WordPress plugin, Oxygen is one of the easiest and advanced tools to help people create their websites.  Its latest version, Oxygen 2.0 is released on 20th June.

The latest Oxygen upgrade features a complete change of your WordPress theme. It includes the feature of an illustrious drag-drop interface, which can be customized and built as per your wish.  Oxygen 2.0 has the space to allow you to redesign each and every aspect of your WordPress website.

In an overview, Oxygen 2.0 has greatly improved from its predecessor. The drag and drop feature is a huge factor that will be of use and interest for those who are ardent page builders and website developers.

If you are genuinely looking for an easy yet effective way on how to develop a website, go through this review to enrich your knowledge about how Oxygen 2.0 really works.

Oxygen Review: The Inner Workings of this WordPress Tool

Oxygen can be categorized as a “visual site builder”.  This is different from what a page builder actually is. However, with Oxygen 2.0 you can mutually use a page builder as well to develop your pages. The two tools can be used alongside without any complications.

A good feature of Oxygen is that it is not dependant on a WordPress theme. As opposed to how theme building functions with programmes like Beaver Theme or Elementor Pro, Oxygen gives you an entirely new theme for your website. There are no third party themes showing on the front face of your site, nor are they embedded in the coding of your website’s themes.

So here the question arises that if Oxygen provides you with the inbuilt theme then how do you build your website?  For this Oxygen 2.0 is designed to help you create 3 different types of content.

Templates: A template is basically designing a theme starting from square one. These are the building blocks of sites. You can create a template for:

• Individual pages, blog posts and custom post types: this is what is visible to the visitors of the website when they view singular posts.
• Archives: this is what is visible to the visitors when they see a list of posts or an archive of category/date/tag.
• Front page: a different template can be created for your front page.
• Blog post index: a new template can be created for your blog posts.

There are some features that you would like to integrate time and again in your templates known as reusable parts. For example a section or block on the website.

By using Oxygen 2.0 you can also create entirely new pages by designing them yourself, or you can also create them based on the available templates in the software.

Setting up Oxygen 2.0

Upon installation of Oxygen 2.0, you have the choice to choose from Premade Websites or to start creating your website from Blank Installation.

Currently, Oxygen has “5” pre-built sites. Each in-built site has its own pages, templates, themes, and sections that you can choose from. A pre-built site may also have up to 11 headers to choose from.

It is up to you to choose from Pre-made websites or to choose a blank installation. For this review, a blank installation is chosen so that viewers can see all the available features present in Oxygen 2.0.

Diving Right into website building with Oxygen: How To Build a Template

Up till now, you have sufficient knowledge about what a template is. Now let’s get started on creating one!

The first step for this is to go to Oxygen>Templates>Add new template

Upon creating a new template you can you have the choice to select where it can be applied to using easy to use accordions and checkboxes.

For this review, the template has been configured so that such a design is shown when a visitor of the blog post sees an individual blog post, as this one.

A super aspect is that you can apply your template to precise:

• Taxonomies
• Parent IDs

Another useful feature can also be set up called “Template Priority”. Basically, Template Priority works to your benefit in a situation where multiple templates are applicable to one post.

An example of this is that you might have:

• One template for EVERY post
• Different templates for posts in a specific category

In this case, Template Priority helps you by advising which template should be chosen first.

A vital element here is that multiple templates can be combined together if they import designs from other templates.

What makes this useful?

In this way it lets you create for example a basic template that has the design for your header and footer. After this, you can use individual templates to customize the content that lies between the header and footer by making each one of those templates adapt to the style of the header and footer template.

This technicality might take some practice and a few advanced learning skills to get used to, but once you get used to it, it opens an array of different types of templates and designs that you can use for website development.

How To use The Oxygen Visual Editor?

This is what the Oxygen Visual Editor looks like when you first open it.

There are a lot of features present in this. Here is a break down of the present features:

Towards the left side, there is an option to add new page prerequisites by clicking the +Add button. These prerequisites are broken down into further five segments:

• Basics: simple essentials such as text, containers and your own code blocks.
• Helpers: a level up of essentials such as a header builder, social icons, pricing boxes and post grids etc.
• WordPress: Specific areas in WordPress like a menu, comment form, login form, sidebar, post information etc.
• Library: this allows access to the pre-built designs set.
• Reusable: this allows access to your own previously saved reusable parts.

There is also the option which allows you to bring in other plugins content such as forms and plug-in outputs. Style plugin outputs can also be

This is how you can add dynamic data into your designs

A unique feature that Oxygen offers which other page builders don’t is adding dynamic data, or importing it from your WordPress database. You can import anything and almost everything from your WordPress site. For example:

• Title of the post, the content of the site, images etc
• Custom fields which also include Advanced custom fields, Pods etc.
• The present user display name
• Things other than these

Dynamic data can be added in two ways. Firstly, you are presented with the option to insert your data while editing certain elements. For this for example, if you are adding elements to your heading or to your content you can tick on the Insert Data button which will show all your options.

After this, you can use the option of Previewing drag-drop to choose a certain type of content to preview. For this Oxygen will automatically preview content to show you from the specified content. Here is how Oxygen shows you the content from a pseudo-post title:

You are also allowed to insert dynamic data at other parts of the website. For example, you can choose to add a section’s background image to be dynamically added as a post’s featured image:

A great ease is that Oxygen already has pre-built dynamic data that you can use without getting into the more complex feature of insert dynamic data interface:

Here is how it looks like to insert a custom field using the Custom Field element. For this reference, the element has been added through pods.

Styling & Editing Elements in Oxygen

For every element that you choose to add, it can be edited using the sidebar:

There are a lot of options here that you can set up:

• Background
• Colors
• Typography
• Spacing
• Others

Much to the liking of developers is that how easy and convenient it is to use with custom CSS/JS.  For each element you can use CSS selectors, media queries for responsive designs are also be included:

By opening the editor in the Advanced Tab, you can directly work with CSS/JS.

Once again you can use the drag-drop down to style your precise devices if the need arises.

MOVING AROUND ELEMENTS

By now you have sufficient knowledge about how you can add and then style your elements. Now we will guide you as to how to arrange those elements on your page.

Oxygen 2.0’s feature of drag and drop can be sued to drag the elements onto the page or around the page even:

By opening the Structure Area you will be shown a tree that shows all the elements on the page which includes CSS elements:

By using the Structure tree, you can easily drag and drop elements as well.

THE COST FOR OXYGEN AND FINAL THOUGHTS:

Oxygen costs $99 on client websites: The perks of which are that you will get lifetime usage and lifetime updates. This is a good deal as time moves on and updates, as well as other product upgrades, are charged.

You can also fully purchase oxygen if you want.

When it comes to theme development, Oxygen 2.0 offers more than any other website builder. Along with ease of use and convenience, Oxygen is a safe and good choice for website builders.

Try Oxygen Builder Today!