I would like to beautify my site graphically. For this I have placed an order on upwork.com. A web developer recommends that I switch to Gantry 5. I have looked into it and do not yet understand what Gantry is exactly. Is this a completely different CMS, or does it run together with GRAV?
My site is relatively simple in design. No interactive stuff or anything. Just text, images, and maybe embedded YT videos.
@Henning007, I’m not a Gantry user and only had a brief experience with it to get a little familiar.
Warning: I’m not a fan of page builders in general…
This is my perception of Gantry:
It’s a page builder like many others, like Gutenberg of WordPress, or Visual Composer, etc. Gantry is build by the same team that builds Grav.
With Gantry you can design a page layout (aka theme) by dragging and dropping particles into the page layout. Think of dragging a menu particle to the top of the layout, or a footer particle at the bottom.
You can create custom particles and customise a particle’s style. A Gantry theme can be deployed for Joomla, WordPress and Grav. There are some limits to its portability though.
Gantry is a plugin for Grav and extends the Admin plugin. A separate Gantry theme can then be installed and edited using the Gantry plugin.
The number of members on this forum using Gantry is maybe a handful as far as I know.
In short: A page builder is a tool that simplifies the creation/adaptation of the design of a web page. It does not add anything extra to the UX of the visitor.
Why don’t I use a page builder you might ask.
Personal reasons:
- I’m proficient enough in PHP, css, typescript/js and like coding.
- I don’t need portability.
- The themes I create don’t need to be easily customised by non-developers.
- The arrival of Gutenberg, the page builder for WordPress, was the reason for me to move away from WordPress.
Common perception:
- A tool cannot be both easy to use and provide flexibility/power at the same time.
- You’re tight to the philosophy of the tool.
- Page builders have a reputation of creating spaghetti code and hurting performance.
That might be because of badly designed reusable snippets and/or end-users who think anything can be dragged onto a page.
Anyway, you have already build a website using the ZSimplex theme and according a previous post, you only need to spice up the UX of it. If none of the existing themes fulfil your needs, it requires a custom theme with templates, css and js.
The question is:
- Do you personally need the functionality offered by a page builder?
- Will the design be cheaper when build with a page builder?
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@Henning007 : personally I find Grav and Gantry 5 a winning combination. Gantry is a plugin working in GRAV that enables you to beautify your website, making it easier the use of Google fonts, colors etc. Gantry is highly configurable and works using particles, which are snippet of codes. I’m quoting Ivo words ( he is the creator of Inspire Theme)
So, what exactly is a particle - particles make it easy to create, configure, and manage content blocks. Basically, everything that you would create a Custom HTML module for is now coded in to a particle. You no longer need to copy/paste long HTML codes and edit them, you just need to click here and there and fill out fields in the Admin. And since the Gantry 5 Framework is totally platform independent, all of the particles will work out of the box on Joomla, Wordpress and Grav!
All these particles enable you to create a flexible template, which can be used for everything, from a blog to a portal website.
I started with Gantry many years ago (it was still the gantry 4 version) in addition to Joomla. Now I’ve converted all my websites in GRAV, because of the speed of this CMS if compared to Joomla or WP, but I still use Gantry-now the version 5 - to make my websites good-looking.
Of course there is a learning curve both for Gantry and GRAV, but once you manage it, making websites is a piece of cake!
If you want to play in localhost you can download the Helium Skeleton from here: it’s completely free and you can have an idea of how things work in the administrative panel and what you need to change to beautify your website.
An example? This is the last website I built using Helium, Gantry5 and GRAV. If you want to spend some quid you can also pay for a membership in Rocket theme or the above Inspire Theme: both offer gorgeous GRAV themes and their support for issues is really stellar.
@anon76427325 : I’m not a fan of page buiders too. I tried SP Page builder in Joomla, but it was really awful… a lot of dirty code which made the site sooooo slow…
But Gantry isn’t really a page builder: I remember an interview to Andy Miller, the founder of Rockettheme and the Lead developer of GRAV, where he clearly explained the differences between a page builder and Gantry.
Sorry for the long post, but you’ve probably understood that I’m a fan of both GRAV and Gantry5 
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