I have people that have emailed me privately and I said I would ask the forum again
Can I give away my custom components?
Is it a problem?
Thanks
Yes, lots of people share custom components here on the forum, it’s not prohibited. 
ok, I thought you can only share custom components if they are not Elements Packs, has this changed
@dan I have asked/mentioned this 3 times now, with no answer, will this ever be implemented within Elements
First of all, I really appreciate the work you are doing. I’ve seen a lot of your material being published here, and I think the effort and contribution you are making to the community deserve to be recognised.
My concern, beyond having the highest possible number of components available, is that they should be actively supported by their developers, who continue to follow the development of the application (as happened with Elements 3 and Tailwind 4), and that the developer remains available in the years to come to provide support and updates.
Otherwise, there is a risk that products could eventually become incompatible, and I do wonder what the consequences would be if this were to lead to a loss of confidence in the overall quality of the Store. I’m mainly concerned about the possible economic impact this could have, both for the company and for professional developers.
Having some clear guidelines around this would be very helpful, so that I also know how to approach these situations in the future.
And, of course, this is not specifically about you or your components. I’m simply using this as an opportunity to raise a more general point: anyone publishing a product here should consider whether they will still be around and willing to support it for the long term, potentially even for five years or more.
yes, Custom components are a great alternative
If I read the tea leaves correctly, I believe this comes down to how the components are packaged. Components that are simply built within Elements are not optimized for distribution.
So it appears to me that in order to distribute a free component, it would need to be built as an Elements Pack using the official build tools. But what was not clear is if there is some sort of vetting process involved before they can be given away.
I am in the process of building all of my custom components with the build tools so that they are fully optimized. My feeling is this is going to give me the best performance characteristics for them. I use these across all of my sites, so it is worth the effort. Plus, the build tools are extremely handy when working on a component. Not to mention the fact that you can use global controls to get the same property management as the built-in ones, which is a huge plus for consistency with other components. And of course the user experience.
To be fair I was referring to the quick and easy custom components that people put together in a short amount of time, either by themselves or using AI, for their own purposes that they think are useful and others might benefit from. We’ve already had several people sharing their creations in that way.
I wasn’t talking about professionally developed custom components that people build with the official build tools and package for the store and so forth.
Any manual or video how to make these quick and easy custom components?
@differentdan @MichaelDroste I assumed Michael meant he had a dev component, but again I might be wrong
https://forums.realmacsoftware.com/t/can-i-give-away-my-pdf-viewer-dev-component/57020?u=upssjw
I write all my components in the Tailwind 4 play ground first, Allmost all 95% just use Tailwind, I was testing them in Elements pointing to the cdn. Most of my components are between 2 and 20 lines of code, rely on Elements do all the heavy lifting if possible. If I could share more easily I would include all the code with the component. I have been here since day one of Elements, my subscription was just paid, original number who joined first. I have a large number of components that just add a little extra to current components. Some are standalone to cover what is not currently in Elements. They are simple and easy to update. So they would always be available to update.
@MichaelDroste
Micheal, interested in your mention of AI to create the devpack, I have only my created my own devpacks. Was it able to create all the files required. How much work did you have to do to final component
Hi @upssjw
I use Claude to completely managed my DevPacks now. I haven’t done any real dev pack coding for a long time, I just tell Claude what I want and it does it.
Just point Claude at the Elements documentation and maybe an example DevPack you have already setup and it should be good to go.
You can also get Claude to review DevPacks you have already done and suggest / do improvements and bug fixes.
Seems ok to share - nobody said no…
I’m using Claude - ask the prompt to be compatible with elements 3.0 and the latest api
It is a moving target - I have a feeling that some aspects were updated even yesterday
I used Claude code and ultra code mode - then have it review and make changes and updates…
In one devpack CMS audio player I wanted the text and second line to be centered under the cover art…
It found other issues as it asked for access to the web api and documents by elements….
So like Michelangelo stated - you need to stay on top of the code as things change…
Not a big deal- but something to check every month or so - and Claude is able to batch process and work and find changes for all the devpacks in one process
To create the WindyTown audio CMS devpack took 8 minutes - but it used the other CMS audio devpack as a starting point then added the new features and options
I’d be interested in your PDF Component.
I think @PMUK made a PDF viewer awhile back too?
I was not going to use AI to code, I normally start in tailwind playground, then drop in Elements build all the controls good to go, just so just need to drop into the devpack, maybe AI could just do the last step for me
I have built the devpacks myself
That’s good to know
It has been mentioned devpacks are not optimised, if it’s ok to share I can create slightly more complex custom components, not sure how to share either drop in here or private link
WindyTown CMS Audio
going to zip them