Although Elementor Pro’s Theme Builder feature can be used with any WordPress theme that adheres to WordPress coding standards, there are some things to consider which may affect how well any particular theme will integrate with our Theme Builder.
If You Are Unsure If Your Theme Is Fully Compatible, Design Your Headers and Footers Together
If you decide to use Elementor Theme Builder to create a header or a footer, you should ideally use it to create both, rather than one or the other. If you would prefer to use Theme Builder to create just the header but keep your theme’s existing footer, or vice-versa, you want to use Theme Builder to design a new footer, but keep your theme’s existing header, you should send this guide to the developer of your theme.
What Is The Developer Guide All About?
Elementor provides a Theme Locations API for theme developers. Although Elementor can edit headers and footers by default on most themes, it is still necessary for themes to register additional locations to allow users to edit other theme components with Elementor Theme Builder. Theme developers can choose to support all core locations, just some locations or even create their own custom locations. For example, if theme developers want to allow users to edit the sidebars with Elementor, they can simply register the sidebar location via our API.
What Could Happen If You Only Design A Header But Not A Footer With Elementor Theme Builder (Or Vice-Versa)?
WordPress theme developers often tie the header and footer code together by opening a div in the header and then closing that div in the footer. If Theme Builder replaces the header but not the footer, or vice-versa, it is possible that the opening and closing tags will become mis-matched. If a tag is not closed, the structure of the code breaks and the page will break as well.
Summary
Many themes have chosen to fully integrate Elementor locations into their themes. You can see a list of themes that have been specifically designed to work well with Elementor.
Elementor Theme Builder can enable you to replace headers and footers of almost any theme that has been written with WordPress coding standards in place. If these themes haven’t yet used the Elementor Theme API to register Elementor locations, you should probably use Theme Builder to replace the the theme’s header and its footer at the same time. Replacing only one or the other with Theme Builder could cause your page to break.
However, if you design both your header and your footer with Theme Builder, your newly designed header and footer will replace both the theme’s header and its footer code. This ensures that all div tags in the header and footer will be opened and closed appropriately, and your page should not break.
If you prefer to only design the header or only design the footer with Theme Builder, then you should ask the theme developer to use our Theme Locations API to register locations. Likewise, if you would like to use Elementor Theme Builder to design other areas of the theme such as the sidebar, ask your theme developer to register those locations as well, using the Theme Locations API.