Introducing Elementor Library

August 16, 2016 107 Comments

When we first released Elementor, people wrote us saying they couldn't believe such a powerful page builder could be offered for free.

But now, we are making Elementor considerably more powerful, with a new feature that helps speed up not only the single page design, but your entire website workflow. We call it Elementor Library.

With Library, you can implement beautifully designed page templates with a single click, save and reuse your own page designs, and combine different sections to create entirely new page designs. In this post I would like to give an overview of the different possibilities that Library offers.

What is Library?

Library is the place where you can save the design you've created with Elementor as a template, and reuse it on a different page in the site or in a whole different website.

You can save the entire page design, as well as save a single page section. When you save the page or section as a template, an exact copy is made, including every element: images, layouts, texts, styles and widgets. You can then insert your templates into every page and website with one click.

Pre-made Beauties

The Library also comes with 20+ predesigned templates (and more templates yet to come). These are beautifully designed pages which our team of professional web designers have worked hard to design. Using the pre-designed templates is extremely helpful, as it allows you to skip the step where you stare into a blank page and think of how to get started. It gives you the head start you need to skyrocket a new design.

This is also a great way to learn how to design with Elementor, because you can trace any element made in the pre-designed page, and get familiar with the various settings required to create it. Choose a template, change the content and styling to fit your site, and customize every element on it, to add your own touch.

It doesn't matter if you are a beginner, or a master web design expert,  Library has a template that will fit your need.

Save and reuse a complete page, or a single section

Saving a complete page is great, but more often than not you won't need to recreate an entire page design, but instead only need to reuse a specific section that you have already created. This is why we have made it possible to save single sections and reuse them on new pages.

Use this feature to combine different sections you've already made to create an entirely original page design. Most websites have repeating sections on different pages. Saving sections as templates lets you utilize every section you make for different pages and websites.

Why use Library?

6 scenarios where Library comes in handy

Here are 6 examples where Library comes in handy and helps you optimize your workflow.

Create your own library of winning templates. Instead of starting from scratch every new project you start, you can create your library of templates, and reuse them for every new website you create.

Start off with a pre-designed template. Browse the various templates our professional designers have prepared for you, choose one of them and insert it with one click.

Duplicate your templates. Let's say your website offers various services, and you want to add another service page. Simply use the service page template you saved earlier to add the new service you wish to add.

Build a complete website faster. After you finish designing a homepage, save the page as a template and use it as the foundation for your other pages: contact, about, services etc.

Export / Import. With Library, You are not confined to use templates just on a single site. Export the templates on one website to create new pages for an entirely different project.

Mix and match different sections. Combine sections from different page to create entirely new page designs. The ability to save sections is really powerful, and allows for endless page design possibilities.

The best page builder just became better

Are you ready to supercharge the way you design your WordPress? Elementor Library is already available on the Elementor plugin, so feel free to download the latest version. Choose from one of our pre-designed template, or save your own designs. This is just the beginning, and we plan to expand Library with more templates and features in the near future.
Learn more
DOWNLOAD NOW

… It’s absolutely FREE!

I look forward to hearing how Library improves your workflow and design process. Feel free to send over any feedback you have in the comments.

About the Author

Ben Pines

Ben Pines is Elementor's CMO. He has been in the online marketing industry for over 10 years, specializing in content marketing. WordPress has been Ben's platform of choice since the time when it was only used to blog.

107 Responses

  11. Hi Ben

    Came across Elementor today while looking at Youtube. What a good product you have here.

    Do you recommend a theme to use with your plugin?

    Keep up the good work and I am sure you will be giving Beaver Builder a run for it’s money.

    Kind regards
    John

    Reply

  13. Thank you for the import/export feature. Now I can start using Elementor.

    I miss only the possibility to add a screenshot to Pages/Section I save, so I can find faster the
    section I need.

    Can you add a button that give us the possibility to attach a screenshot to the section we create ?

    Reply

  20. Elementor ist great, the new template library functions extraordinary.
    I think I found a bug: When I create a new post and load a custom defined template, not all elements of the template appear. Only if I save the post, go back to the dashboard and edit again with elementor, all elements appear and can be edit.
    I have also a suggestion, that should be easily implented: When I make changes in atemplate, I can’t overwrite a earlier saved template. I can only save it only with a new name and delete the old one.

    Reply

    1. When you add a template all elements should appear. This might be a specific occurrence for your website, so you are welcomed to submit it as an issue. Regarding the override of a template, this is not something that I think we will develop in the near future. It’s pretty easy to update templates. You insert it to a page, make the changes, and save it as a new template.

      Reply

  24. very impressive! and the velocity of the dev team is even more so! Elementor is in the top tier of my wordpress must have list. Keep up the great work and thanks for offering such a great product free of charge. Changing the wordpress landscape.

    Reply

  25. Yes, very impressed. I was thinking the same thing about a nice addition would be providing a way to add our own thumbnails for a template to find the look that much easier. Another awesome feature would be a way to save out section or template specific custom css.

    Curious, wonder if I could just save and html block with an inline style inside the template and then move it to my child theme once imported and client approves layout. It’s a little bit of work but portability of refined content blocks is what excites me as a front end developer.

    Reply

    1. Update: My workflow now is to build out an entire page using Elementor and at the top, I use a section with an html element to provide inline custom css that is portable with export/import. I also do the same thing for custom js at the bottom of the page. When the design is finished I moved this out of the the production pages into static theme files but my templates are fully portable, css, js and all. I love this plugin!!!

      Reply

  26. Ben, Would be great if you could provide a central library in the cloud. Or, some way the user with multiple domains could have their library from all sites in one central location. I really LOVE the ability to save sections into the library. Now, if I could have 1 Library for ALL my sites I would be ECSTATIC@!

    Reply

    1. I understand this need, and it might be developed in the future. For the time being you’re going to have to cope with Import / Export.

      Reply

    2. hy ben,
      i would also love to see such a central library. by now i am working on a multisite network – would be great to have a setting here to allow all sites in the network to share their templates in one library 🙂

      Reply

  27. +1 for User central library. I also send the same suggestion some days ago.

    I hope Elementor will be the first FrontEditor to have this feature.

    Reply

      1. 1. You actually do have the ability to import a complete page.
        2. Duplicating a complete website is currently not on our scope.

        Reply

  28. Hi, what I was talking about is after the coverage of his video. You’ve saved your sections and you want to add them to an existing template or build a fresh template using saved sections. This is the ideal – I think unique to elementor – way to build lots of sites where say 2 sections are different. Thanks david

    Reply

  29. like, thank you very much. this is the best gift i have gotten this week. i really appreciate this tool all the way from Nigeria. Its beyond beneficial. may God bless and reward your efforts. wooooow. gonna make my tutorials to high school kids over here simpler.

    Reply

  30. Many thanks to the team for this great plugin – I’m loving it 🙂

    A couple of questions:
    Where are my templates saved to – in the plugin/database or remotely?

    Any plans to allow for the exported templates to be bundled with a theme and either be auto detected by the plugin or maybe an API to auto import them upon theme activation?

    Regards,
    Zulf

    Reply

    1. The templates are saved as post types to the DB. We haven’t thought of such bundling with a theme, but it’s an interesting idea.

      Reply

  31. Hello,
    nice Library! Really good work. Do you plan to make a free template to use with elementor and then deploy different website templates for different cases (sport, restaurant, business, agency, school and so on.

    Reply

      1. I downloaded Elementor and I like it. I also prepaid for the pro version coming out 12/12. Unfortunately my pre designed template library is EMPTY. I see online other folks with the same problem but the problem has not been answered. can you explain how to get the pred esigned templates if they don’t exist with installation of Elementor? thanks

        Reply

  32. I’m not sure what the issue is, but I’m unable to see any of the pre-made templates in the Library, either through the side panel on a page I want to edit or in the WP dashboard. I went over the documentation and the video for the Library several times and even downloaded the plugin from your site rather than through WP, but the issue is still the same. There are no templates in the Library for me to tinker with. Have you run into this before? How can it be rectified? I’m really interested in using Elementor.

    Reply

        1. This is a question better suited to send to support at elementor dot com.
          I can suggest:
          1. Update to the latest version of Elementor.
          2. Turn off all other plugin.
          3. Change to a different theme.
          See if that helps.

          Reply

  34. Industry game changer! Excellent work. Fastest editor I’ve seen. Keep the widgets and templates coming. Looking forward to seeing the 3rd party market emerge too!

    Reply

  36. All looks good. I have started a website using Ultimatum but would like to implement Elementor. Can the two be used together?

    Reply

    2. Like Ultimatum, Elementor let’s you drag and drop widgets in a page grid and as long as you create layouts in Ult that include the wp loop you should be good to go. I have been using Ultimatum for many years but due to stagnant development I’ve moved on.

      Reply
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  38. I compared Elementor to the other major pagebuilders and I can say: this is my favorite! The template library certainly also is a strong point.

    Question: is there a fast way in the editor to change the background (overlay) images of templates? Off course one can replace the image in the uploadsfolder, but I guess there is a better way.

    Reply

    1. The easiest way I can think of is to insert the template, change the background overlay and save it as your own template. From there you can export that template to the .json file and use it on any site.

      Reply

  40. First off, awesome work on Elementor!

    My question is about limiting access to templates. Let’s say you have a bunch of contributors whom you’d want to be able to create pages or posts with Elementor, but only allow them to use certain templates to keep the site’s uniformity or for whatever reason. Is this currently possible?

    If not yet, what’s a quick work around?

    Thanks.

    Reply

    1. Roles is something we will be addressing in future releases. There is no workaround I can think of. You can save the templates you want them to use under “My Template”, and inform them to only use them and not the other tab.

      Reply
  41. Pingback: #NewInElementor: Think wider. Get full width with one click - Elementor

  42. Hello Ben,

    First of all, many thanks to you and the team ELEMENTOR for such a fun and easy to use builder, you guys have something great.

    Ben, I am going crazy all day long, trying to figure out a way to create a template for my post pages, archive page and a way to directly add my posts into my Elementor pages. Is this even possible?

    I do see some widgets you offer, however, those widgets cannot be modified by adding an Elementor custom template. Is there a way to design a custom Elementor template, use that custom Elementor template for adding onto my pages while editing with Elementor.

    All I’m trying to accomplish is…… have a custom looking page for my post archives, my posts as they post within WordPress and have the ability to created a custom template with Elementor that will insert all my post details as they would with WordPress.

    Please help and many thanks in advance.

    Have a wonderful day Ben and All.

    Reply

    1. In a couple of months we will release the pro version which will have a posts widget. In the meantime, you can use Pojo themes, that include a widget for posts built in for Elementor. You can also edit your posts page with Elementor, but this will only edit the external frame of the page and not the posts themselves.

      Reply

  43. Help, I can’t seem to access the pre-designed templates in the library (it says I don’t have any, that I need to save some.) I saved the page and published it, everything’s working as far as that goes. When I open the library (using the library folder icon on the left pane or the button that says templates) the library opens up but says that it’s empty. Is there some outside source I could try importing the JSON files from or am I simply missing something

    Reply

    1. Try to follow these steps:
      1. Update to the latest version.
      2. Go to Elementor > Sync Library and press the button.
      3. See if the templates appear.
      If this doesn’t work, try to look into any conflicting plugins. Disable all other plugins and see if this helps. Otherwise, send us more details about the issue to support at elementor dot com

      Also, make sure you are not using any other page builder. I noticed your site uses Divi, this might cause this error.

      Reply

  44. Thanks, the problem is likely some sort of firewall issue with the free hosting provider I used. Currently most of my sites are hosted on Github because they’re simple static sites. I used to use Divi and came across your plugin and was curious so I got a free hosting solution with PHP to check it out. When I went to a different host the library showed up fine. Thanks for your help, I really like this plugin, it feels a lot like Divi (which is good.)

    Reply

  48. Love Elementor, fantastically easy to use. Are there any built in, sticky or floating widgets or sections? If not, is there a plugin that would make for an easy work around? I want to add a floating sidebar, or social icon

    Reply

  49. Hi, great job with Elementor but i’m experimenting problems with templates. I can’t insert predifined ones, undefined error message appears. I can save my own templates and insert in other pages but not use yours. Regards.
    (using Twenty sixteen theme)

    Reply

    1. This is a problem often experienced when hosting in sub domain free hosting. Please contact us at support at elementor dot com with more details, and try to turn off all other plugins, and update Elementor to the latest version.

      Reply

    1. Have you tried adding the templates without importing? Just pressing ‘Add Template’ on the editor? Please send this problem to support at elementor dot com

      Reply

  55. I ran into this problem when I came across Elementor for the first time and installed WordPress on a free hosting solution. I couldn’t get the library to show up. I got some weird cryptic message that suggested it might be some sort of firewall issue with my host (free host.) I tried it on another free hosting solution and it worked. I also got a paid hosting solution and it also worked just fine. I haven’t been able to resolve EXACTLY what the issue is but I hope the above description I provided you gives you some help.

    Reply

  56. The predesigned templates in the template library aren’t loading in my websites when using elementor after updating to the latest version. Please, can help me out with any idea?

    Reply

    1. Please send the issue to [email protected]

      Reply

  57. I think that the library need some rethinking.
    Something not work right. I think that there is to be a way like WordPress themes, that Elementor library give ability everyone submit his own templates for public and it can be searched and listed on elementor library.

    Reply

    1. Please contact our support, you definitely should have your Pro templates! [email protected]

      Reply

  62. hi pls trying to edit other pages of my wesite with elementor but it is not editing, it edited only the frontpage of my website but will not edit other pages what should i do please.

    Reply

  63. Hi, I am using Elementor Restaurant template. But I want to change the header/hero image and I cannot do that. Any way I can change the image to my own image.

    Reply

  65. Love the templates! I’m using one for a Coming Soon page (also love the maintenance mode feature!) and I want to keep the image that’s provided – are the images in the templates copyright free? Is there a license use file somewhere to show I have permission to use the image on my website? I don’t want to run into photo copyright issues, but I really love the image you’ve chosen for this layout!

    Thanks!
    Lisa

    Reply

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