Will there be a tutorial on building a CMS blog for beginners that maybe includes common mistakes to avoid? Also, is there an easy way to embed something like a WordPress blog in Elements?
I canāt speak for RealMac, but Iām working on The Little Book of Elements CMS, which tries to step through all the basics of the CMS.
In one respect, the CMS is pretty simple. It does what it says it does, and reliably as far as I can tell with my current experience in building out sites. But it is fussy about details that are generally manually entered at the moment.
Most ābloggersā, however, want something even dirt simpler. They just want a Web URL where they can write/edit/post stories and everything else is done automatically by something/someone in the background. My understanding is that component will eventually be produced as an extra-cost option for Elements. The problem is still going to be that you have to understand at least the Collection and Item CMS components if youāre actually going to design your Web pages. This took me awhile to figure out, but at this point Iām actually using the CMS for more than the blog once I did.
WordPress is an interesting product, but itās sort of the opposite of designing Web sites directly. WordPress is basically a SQL database managed by PHP. The WordPress API is well documented and now used by a lot of other Web products. Dave Winer (the inventor of RSS) is now trying to use that API to tie Mastodon, BlueSky, and a host of other things together to form the āwebā he originally envisioned. Doing basic WordPress setup is pretty easy. Creating and posting once WordPress is set up is pretty easy. Getting the kind of fine control we have now with Elements in terms of design is a pay grade above what I can do, and Iām Silicon Valley raised and trained.
Once the third-party portion of the Elements Store is opened, I suspect we will get someone building a WordPress component. That would be welcome, though RealMac building out the CMS fully will also be welcome.
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Canāt wait for your little CMS book! 
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I will be one of the first purchasing it 
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I just found the free micro blog in the Elements Store.
Iām a new recruit around here having just purchased. I really like what Iām seeing so far as thereās a hell of a lot of functionally. Having coded my own WordPress theme from scratch I donāt underestimate the immense amount of work gone into elements.
From my research today, Iām a little concerned to how much I can edit on the surface without getting stuck in deep to custom coding - something that drew me here in the first place! Iāve played with the microblog example and it bears a lot of similarities to what I have dabbled with in the past ā front matter etc. However I hoped that elements would be able to output pure html/js etc as an option, rather like a typical static site generator. Hopefully that may be implemented as an option.
I have other thoughts, but Iāll keep this introductory brain dump on topic!
One problem with a static blog is that it grows the site size very rapidly (Iāve got sites now over a gigabyte). Thatās because you have to add all the page and formatting information to every blog post to do it statically. In the current PHP implementation (and WordPress, for that matter), you have data and you have design, and thereās only one set of data and one design, thus youāre not duplicated the design stuff over and over.
That said, I wouldnāt be surprised to see other blog options appear for Elements, and maybe one of them will be static.
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In terms of embedding a WordPress blog inside Elements, there isnāt a direct or supported way to do that today. Elements is designed around building and managing content directly within the app, rather than acting as a wrapper around another CMS. While you could technically embed external content via an iframe, that approach has limitations and isnāt something we generally recommend for a primary blog.
Weāre thrilled youāre working on this, and have our full-support. Canāt wait to see what you come up with 
It does do this for standard pages, but the blog currently relies on PHP. That said, the CMS content itself is stored as Markdown, which keeps things nicely decoupled and opens up a lot of flexibility going forward. Markdown is a highly portable format, so it gives us plenty of room to explore additional output options in the future!
I really appreciate everyoneās feedback. Keep it coming as it all helps shape the future of Elements 
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Hi @dan & @thominator,
Thanks for all your responses and help. I must say I had a cold moment yesterday thinking whether I have made a mistake purchasing. To be clear, I totally see the value in Elements, but I was (and still am do a degree) unsure if it is actually the right fit for me right now.
I really like all of the prebuilt components & templates aspect, but as I have a website design and WordPress site Iām hoping that over time I will learn enough to transpose it out of WP, build it up in Elements. As Iām quite comfortable with HTML/CSS I would be interested in a way for me to work with it āunder the hoodā so to speak and put my HTML/CSS into Elements.
I believe that isnāt how Elements is supposed to be used and understand why, being a visual designer tool, but if there could be a way (maybe there is!) for me to get all of my HTML/CSS markup out of WordPress and put it in Elements I could get things up and running sooner and then look at how I can extend my site with Elements.
I looked at solutions like Hugo and even got it up and running, but Iām desperate for a way out of installing umpteen command line tools and configs. Elements appears to be my best hope!
Wrt the php markdown situation - I think itās a very good approach and one that I could see myself using on a bigger project. What I like though, is that it appears youāre open to adding additional functionality going forward. Maybe Elements isnāt quite right for my use case now, but Iām happy to support it with such an open mindset for the future.
I think, in my minds eye, my perfect tool would be Elements as it is, with the ability to author my own HTML/CSS from scratch, integrate markdown for my content (I have about 25 pages on my site) and then have access to the cool functionality and visualisation Elements offers. Upon publishing, extra options of whether to output a php or even js driven site, along with just a pure and clean HTML/CSS/JS site with complete portability.
It looks like Elements is real close to what I need!
@thominator - The Little Book of Elements CMS sounds really great. I certainly could do with some more information on how to use it!
Best,
Michael
nb: I know that some frown on Markdown for CMS usage etc. Like everything, I think it has itās place and is certainly a good fit for my sort of site.
Letās break some of this down.
- āwant to put my HTML/CSS into Elements.ā One of the things that surprised me when starting to work with the CMS was that some embedded HTML I had in my Markdown ājust worked.ā As for CSS, thatās something Iām still struggling a little bit with, but note that components have an Advanced/CSS Classes capability in the Inspector.
- āisnāt how Elements is supposed to be used.ā Iām pretty sure that Realmac isnāt trying to force you do work only one way and only using their pre-built components. Iām also pretty sure that the documentation for āgoing furtherā or ādoing it differentlyā isnāt there yet.
- āopen to adding additional functionality.ā Weāre all counting on @dan to fulfill his implied and explicit promises in that respect, but I think that some of that wonāt start to show up until the third parties can use the store. Weāve got a couple of developers whoāve built out-of-store add-ons, but it will really be linkage of everything in one spot that fuels the real rocket ship Elements is likely to become.
- āI have about 25 pages on my site.ā I have, at last count, over 10,000 pages (Iāve been at this since the dawn of the public WWW). I have your problem in spades. It took me awhile to find how Iām going to deal with that, and yes, Markdown is part of the answer because I can strip my current pages down to Markdown with an automated tool. So I have 10,000+ .md files to deal with in Elements ;~).
- āLittle Bookā¦sounds really great.ā Thanks. Itās well in progress, and Iām going hold @dan to his private promise to me so that we can eventually get it widely distributed. I need Realmac to have to stop answering some basic questions over and over and get working faster on that Markdown component, remote CMS tool, third-parties-in-store, and a bunch of other planned things.
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Glad to hear that your Markdown ājust workedā. I was hopeful it would. Markdown is pretty darned simple and gladly so. The Advanced CSS Classes I noticed but not sure how to implement yet ā this is all really new to me.
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Again, good stuff. Iām hopeful that I can ultimately do āmy thingā for now and then add components and other goodies to the mix. Iām a long way out w that atm. I built my site in 2019 and has been kind to me. However my markup/css is very specific and I think it might be easier to recreate rather than try and shoehorn it in to Elements. Iām chewing it all over atm.
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Thatās all news to me. Iām unsure what the true roadmap is. Iāve been watching dev videos and the like, but a lot of info to absorb all in one go!
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10,000! OMG! I couldnāt fathom that amount of data. Years ago I worked on a project for a big London based shipping insurance company. They had insane amounts of data. Luckily for me, I was involved in the GUI/UX side and never got close to adding it all in!
My site is my personal sound design work with some simple design. However I have YouTube videos, audio players, blogs and cart running. I gotta be really sure about not reinventing the wheel and not upsetting the apple cart. For now I need to get off the lousy PayPal integration and get Paddle or equivalent working. My next plan is to redevelop with an eye for the future away from WordPress. I like WP but databases bother me, updates, security bother me and I get a general unease of doing anything new or drastic in fear of breaking it!
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Good luck wrt the āLittle Bookā. I will certainly look at it when available. I really want a slick and smooth experience in a new site, something I feel comfortable updating locally and pushing live. A flat markdown based static site is in my minds eye, preferably output in pure html.
On another note. I think Iāve finally understood what Tailwind is. Being out of the web loop for some years it wasnāt really around when I built my site. It was SCSS. I tried my best to make things look good, but the SCSS code I have is a bit like a Jenga tower! I fear it big time.
Best,
Michael
PS - Hereās my Jenga SCSS - Yikes!
Iām going to age myself a bit, but the old WP_Blog plugin by Nilrog was a pretty awesome plugin for itās time way back in the day. It worked great for embedding a WordPress blog inside a RapidWeaver theme as a front-end wrapper. I used it a bit back then and it just worked.
Nostalgia aside, I donāt think Iād recommend trying to do the same here in 2026. I worked with WordPress over the years in a professional capacity (pre working here) and Iāve grown to dislike it. Too bloated, too many shoddy plugins floating around, too many security vulnerabilities being found pretty much on a weekly basis that are being actively exploited.
The amount of WordPress sites Iāve had to fix/clean up due to hacking because the user had no idea what they were installing or how to secure it is just mind-boggling.
Plus a lot of power users complain when they have 30 plugins installed on a complex site setup and then expect to have sub 1 second page load speeds, and if they donāt they blame the web host, which is annoying.
In the end if you needed something with more bells and whistles than what the built-in CMS/Blog system offers, youād probably be better off using a different headless CMS solution. There are several good ones nowadays to choose from.
To what @differentdan said, Iād add three things:
- Because of the complexity/security issues, sites all tend to use the same plug-ins and end up looking the same. Thatās sort of like ānot designing a siteā, if you get my drift.
- The folk I talk to keep complaining about costs of all the things they end up buying to run their WP site, most of which are all subscription (because they constantly need security updating).
- At its base WP uses mySQL, so you either need to be managing that, or have someone else managing it for you.
Iām liking the Elements CMS more and more the deeper I get into it, mainly because itās dirt simple and the only real vulnerability is PHP, which is pretty much on every server and my host actually is pretty aggressive about pushing updates that I just have to accept or deny (i.e. I donāt install them).
The reason why Iāve been writing The Little Book of Elements CMS is to show just how simple the CMS really is once you understand it. Itās usable by individuals without geeking too much.
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