Juggling several website design projects at once? Having trouble figuring out how to make simple design tweaks with CSS? Want that headline to appear just a little bit bigger?
Table of Contents
CSS Hero: Quick Review
CSS Hero is a plugin that lets you customize the look of themes and plugins on your WordPress website using a point and click interface. Aside from the core plugin it has two modules – Inspector and Animator.
I did an in-depth review of CSS Hero for Design Bombs that you can read through for more information or head over to CSS Hero’s Tutorials to learn more about what you can do with it.
A Developer’s Perspective
My first impression of CSS Hero was mainly positive. I immediately liked everything about it from its interface to the built-in modules that actually made it easy to quickly tweak page elements. And since I was working on developing and designing five WordPress websites at the time, it was evidently a life-saver … that is until I realized that the plugin wasn’t fully compatible with the theme that was activated on one of the sites.
Another feature that I found myself using all the time was its ability to load/store presets. All in all, CSS Hero is super easy to work with and can save you a ton of time that you would otherwise spend adding CSS code manually to your theme’s (or plugin’s) stylesheets.
Pros
- You don’t have to write/edit CSS code for simple design tweaks.
- Saves you time switching between stylesheets and preview screens.
- Lets you export the normal and minified CSS.
Cons
- Isn’t compatible with all WordPress themes and plugins.
An Average User’s Perspective
As an average end user, I appreciate CSS Hero’s immersive fully front-end experience. Unlike other CSS plugins that I’ve used in the past that work from the WordPress back-end and give you a “live” preview of the page you’re editing, CSS Hero lets you work completely from the front-end and preview the modifications you make in real-time.
When I update my website’s design, I like to try out different color combinations for buttons, headlines, and paragraph text and mess around with their size and spacing. CSS Hero is great for this. It lets me roll out changes and revert back to an old design if I don’t like the most recent design I’ve concocted. As far as the interface is concerned, it takes a little getting used to and even when you get the hang of it you’ll still find yourself trying to remember how you did that one thing that one time.
Pros
- Great for 90% of the design modifications you’ll have to make to your website.
- You can add or edit CSS without knowing any CSS.
Cons
- Can take a little getting used to.
To Sum It Up
So, who should get CSS Hero?
If you’re a full-time WordPress developer then you might find that $199 per year isn’t that high of a price to pay especially when you consider how much time you’ll be saving.
And if you’re an average user who needs to make tiny modifications to your WordPress website every now and then, dropping $29 per year is a lot easier than hiring a developer or making a developer-friend.
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