Which design system is the best one to use and why?
Hello Mak, and the Divi community.
Over the last couple of months of amazing updates of both Sitekrafter Pro and Krafter design systems, it feels like it's a good time to finally start building websites from scratch with these design systems. I'm excited to get started!
Mak has made many videos for learning sitekrafter pro 7.5.1 and now Krafter 2.2, but I've become a little confused differentiating the two, and deciding the best path forward for all my brand new websites.
I know SiteKrafter pro is a class based design system, and Krafter is a preset based design system, but what system is best to use and why? Is Krafter simply an improved version of Sitekrafter Pro that is easier to use, and perhaps the best one to use? It certainly seems Krafter is the way to go. Should we just stick with Krafter and forget about everything else? Do we use them together in the same wordpress?
There is also a Krafter presets template to download. Is this needed too?
Can anybody shed some light on all of this please? I have a few fresh WordPress and Divi sites ready to go, and just want to make sure that the installations and getting off the ground to start designing is done correctly.
Mak, could you do a video explaining these issues? Maybe some of the community may be having the same questions.
Cheers Mak! Mike
I have some of the exact same questions. I made another post in this community area about how difficult and wonky SiteKrafter seems to be...I would really like to start using this to build out sites, but it seems too unstable still. Bummer.
Michael,
I don't have a definitive answer for your question, but I will say that at this moment I find Krafter easier to use than SiteKrafter and well-suited to my needs. Creating classes for everything in SiteKrafter was tedious and time-consuming for me and it wasn't always easy to get a class configured correctly on the first try. For that reason, I prefer Krafter. How that stands up or changes will depend on the direction Mak takes these two tools. That said, my guess is that Krafter will become the focal point for some users and SiteKrafter will have more appeal for others, depending on how they prefer to design sites. Using both simultaneously may have a specific use case that will reveal itself over time as we experiment and share our successes and failures with each other.
I am glad that I am not the only one who is confused - I thought it was because of my Long Covid Brain Drain that explained why I can't get my head around SiteKrafter, Krafter, and how they interact with the ever-modified Divi 5 Beta platform. There are clearly lots of moving parts, which is the nature of the beast when Mak is trying to design a system(s) that will be ready to go when the official Divi 5 platform is released.
Mike, I like your suggestion that Mak do a video for those of us who are on that train with him, that explains the difference. I find his videos to be extremely useful to me (which is why I signed up to be a lifetime member in the first place), and expect that if he were to do this, I'd feel smart again.
Sitekrafter is a child theme where the CSS code is written in hard. If you design sites for customers, he will not be able to easily modify this code. More tedious to use but you have a guarantee that the customer will not break everything.
Krater uses presets, which is easier, but your customer can easily change them and your site can become anything if he doesn't know what he's changing.
In terms of maintenance, sitekrafter is more suitable and guarantees stability.
In terms of creation, krater is faster.
Make your choice according to the purpose of who manages the site afterwards.
I would add that it is possible to combine the 2 at the same time.
Sitekrafter would fix what is not possible to change for the client. And krater would be more flexible for new client additions with the ability to modify the defined presets. Note: when the presets are modified, error or not, it is impossible to restore them to their original state only manually.