Open Builder

A genuinely free, open-source visual website builder for WordPress.

Open Builder is a drag-and-drop front-end builder for WordPress aimed at people who just want to build a decent-looking site without hitting a paywall. It is free, not freemium — there is no "Pro" version, no locked widgets, no upgrade nag. Everything in the repo is everything you get.

It's an alternative to the popular commercial builders (Elementor, Breakdance, Divi, and friends) for smaller sites that need solid basic front-end functionality — sections, columns, headings, buttons, images, forms, a theme header/footer, popups — without the weight, cost, or sprawling integration surface of the big builders. If you're building a marketing site, a small business site, or a landing page and you don't need a hundred third-party integrations, this is for you.

This is an open-source project I'm building in the open with Claude Code. The commit history reflects that collaboration.

Warning

Open Builder is in beta. Please try it on a fresh page or a staging site first — not straight on your live homepage.

By design, Open Builder only affects pages you actually build with it. It leaves pages built with your theme or another builder (e.g. Elementor) untouched. Site-wide theme templates (headers/footers across every page) are opt-in under Open Builder → Settings and off by default.

If you hit any unintended effect, deactivate the plugin (your content is safe — deactivating immediately restores your previous output) and please open an issue on GitHub with what you saw. Bug reports are very welcome and genuinely helpful while the plugin matures.

Project status

Open Builder is under active development. It's already usable, but I'm still refining the core feature set. Once I'm happy with the base functionality, I plan to submit it to the official WordPress.org plugin directory so it can be installed for free, directly from the WordPress dashboard — keeping with the free, no-paywall goal of the project. Until then, install it manually with the instructions below.

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Why it exists

Most "free" WordPress builders are really free trials: the genuinely useful controls — spacing, typography, a theme builder, popups, dynamic data — sit behind a yearly subscription. Open Builder's goal is to cover the basic front-end development needs of a small website with no paywall:

• Visual, icon-based style controls (not raw CSS text boxes).
• A single, honest feature set — what's here is free and stays free.
• Lightweight and original: no build step, no proprietary code, and not derived from any commercial builder.
• Security-first: sanitize on input, escape on output, capability-gated custom code, nonce-guarded REST.

It is not trying to be an enterprise page builder. If you need deep WooCommerce theming, hundreds of integrations, or a marketplace of add-ons, a commercial builder will serve you better. Open Builder is deliberately focused on the basics, done cleanly.

Features

• Live drag-and-drop editor with a real-time, server-rendered canvas (true WYSIWYG — the same PHP renderer drives the editor and the front end).
• 32 widgets across Layout, Basic, Media, Marketing, Interactive, Dynamic and Advanced groups — including Video, Gallery, Accordion, Tabs, Counter, Progress Bar, Testimonial, Star Rating, Icon Box, Icon List, Social Icons, a keyless Google Map, and a Shortcode widget for embedding any registered WordPress shortcode.
• Widget search in the editor panel — filter the widget list by name as you type.
• Form builder with Text, Email, Phone, Number, Textarea, Dropdown, Radio, Checkbox, Date, File upload and Hidden fields — database storage, email notifications (with file attachments), a spam honeypot, an admin entries viewer, and post-submit actions (redirect, webhook, auto-reply to the submitter).
• Visual style controls: icon button-groups, slider + unit pickers, linked padding/margin box, colour popover, border/shadow builders, background (colour/image/gradient), per-breakpoint responsive controls with configurable tablet/mobile breakpoint widths.
• Layers tree with drag-to-reorder/re-nest, inline text editing, right-click context menu, copy/paste and keyboard shortcuts.
• Theme builder: design Headers, Footers, Single, Archive, Search and 404 templates and assign them with a display-conditions engine — and edit the header/footer in context inside the page builder.
• Popups with triggers (load, exit-intent, scroll depth, click, inactivity), display conditions, frequency capping, and an accessible front-end dialog.
• Dynamic data binding: bind any text/link/image control to post fields, custom fields (post meta), ACF, or site data, with a fallback.
• Query Loop: design one card and repeat it over a query (post type, count, columns, order, taxonomy/term filter); each card binds to its own post.
• Saved / Global Blocks: design a block once and reuse it across pages; editing the block updates it everywhere it's used.
• Section library: insert ready-made section layouts (hero, CTA, features, testimonial) and edit them.
• Import / Export: export a page or block as JSON to back up or move between pages and sites; import JSON to replace content.
• Responsive visibility: hide any element on desktop, tablet, or mobile.
• Global brand settings (colours, fonts, sizes) as CSS variables, plus a site-wide custom CSS box.
• SEO helpers (per-page meta title/description/OG image) that automatically defer to Yoast / Rank Math / AIOSEO / SEOPress when one is active.
• Accessibility: alt-text prompts, a heading-order linter, colour-contrast hints, a skip link, and focus-visible styles.
• Form builder with database storage, email notifications, a spam honeypot, and an admin entries viewer.
• Performance: compiled CSS is written to cacheable files (with an inline fallback), not re-inlined on every request.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.2 or newer
• PHP 8.0 or newer

Installation

Open Builder is a normal WordPress plugin. There is no build step — the editor is plain JavaScript that runs the moment the plugin is active.

Option A — Upload the ZIP (recommended for most users)

1. Download this repository as a ZIP: click the green Code button above → Download ZIP (or grab a release).
2. The ZIP will contain a folder like open-builder-main. Rename that inner folder to open-builder and re-zip it (WordPress expects the plugin folder to be named open-builder). If you cloned with git, skip this — the folder is already named correctly.
3. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
4. Choose the ZIP and click Install Now, then Activate.

Option B — Install manually via FTP / file manager

1. Download or clone this repo.
2. Copy the plugin folder into your site at: wp-content/plugins/open-builder/ (so that wp-content/plugins/open-builder/open-builder.php exists).
3. In WordPress admin go to Plugins and Activate "Open Builder".

Option C — Clone with git

cd wp-content/plugins
git clone https://github.com/shaksphere/open-builder.git

Then activate it from the Plugins screen.

Usage

1. After activating, edit any page or post and click "Edit with Open Builder" (also available from the Pages/Posts list and the Open Builder admin menu).
2. Drag widgets onto the canvas, style them with the visual controls, and save.
3. Use the Open Builder admin menu for global brand settings, the Theme Builder (headers/footers/templates), Popups, and form entries.

Your page data is stored as a sanitized JSON node tree in post meta, and the front end is rendered by the same PHP renderer used in the editor, so what you design is what visitors see.

Roadmap & scope

Open Builder already covers the core of what most smaller-business sites need: full-site design (pages, plus headers / footers / single / archive / 404 templates with display conditions), forms, popups, dynamic content (data binding + query loops), saved / global blocks, a section library, SEO and accessibility helpers, import/export, and responsive controls including hide-on-device. The goal is a complete, no-paywall front-end builder for full site customisation on smaller sites — not an enterprise everything-tool.

To stay lightweight, some larger or more niche capabilities are intentionally not part of the core and may arrive later as optional extras (or not at all):

• WooCommerce / e-commerce widgets (product cards, cart, checkout, a Product template type) — only useful for online stores. Parked as a possible future add-on so the core stays lean for the majority who don't run a shop.
• Entrance / scroll animations and sticky elements.
• Loading only the assets a page actually uses.

If one of these would be valuable to you, please open an issue — interest helps prioritise what's worth adding without bloating the plugin.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. The guiding principles:

• No build step — keep the editor as plain JS that runs from plugins/.
• Original code only — no code copied from commercial builders.
• Single source-of-truth renderer for both the front end and the editor.
• Security first — sanitize on input, escape on output, gate anything that writes CSS/JS, and nonce every write.
• Backwards-compatible data — never break an existing saved page tree.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. Open Builder is independent software and is not affiliated with, derived from, or containing code from Breakdance, Elementor, or any other commercial builder.