Weeknotes #3: PhantomStudio, the Builderius Enhancement plugin, and Novamira Visual

A few genuinely fun things happened this week. PhantomStudio (formerly PhantomWP) is getting more love and attention after Paul from WPTuts released a beginner-friendly intro video about it. My Daveden Builderius Enhancement plugin continues to do a brilliant job of speeding up the building workflow. The Web Creators Toolbox ran a great session on AI and video creation, and I also spent time exploring Novamira Visual, along with the new Novamira abilities and skills for Bricksforge and Dynamic Shortcodes.

PhantomStudio is now more popular

I’ve been using PhantomStudio for a while now. In fact, this very website, in its current iteration, was built with it, and I’ve seen a dramatic improvement in loading times. Paul from WPTuts put together a wonderful explainer video, and afterwards the available licences were snapped up in a flash. Could this be the power of an authoritative voice in the industry?

The Daveden Builderius Enhancement Plugin

It’s no surprise that Builderius has been my go-to page builder for a while now. I love its fantastic dynamic data system, and the fact that, unlike other page builders, Builderius doesn’t lock you into its own CSS; every style from the page builder is exposed for you to edit. It also has a small, tight-knit group of developers behind it, and they’ve achieved so much already; I’ve written before about how Builderius has quietly completed the WordPress dev workflow.

That said, a few community members have admitted they’re reluctant to even open the editor because the UI wasn’t inspiring. I, too, as someone who wants to use the keyboard more, struggled with aspects of the builder that weren’t keyboard accessible.

So I decided to stop complaining and, as a friend suggested, actually do something about it. I started by prompting Claude via Novamira to work out how to make small tweaks to the editor itself. I gathered a few code snippets here and there: first to override the visual CSS panel, then to add a collapse-subtree button, because the main “collapse all” button wasn’t quite doing the job I wanted.

The plugin has now grown into a full collection of features and workflow improvements across various areas of the builder, including an improved contextual menu for the navigator elements and the element classes. We’ve also got a builder theme switcher (thanks to David McCan from WebTNG), some keyboard shortcuts (thanks to Martin), inline rename (thanks to Tim Gray and Israel Reyes), and many other features.

If you’d like to contribute code, suggest features or report bugs, please open a Pull Request or Issue over on GitHub.

AI in Video Creation for the Web

The Web Creators Toolbox (formerly the Elementor UK Meetup) ran a session on building better web content with AI. There were several show-and-tell segments featuring AI-driven tools for producing video shorts to promote your web design business. It was a brilliant session, and I got the chance to share some of my own YouTube content-creation experience, and why consistency matters so much.

A lot of people feel they have nothing worth sharing with the world, but that simply isn’t true. There is always someone out there who will gain something from what you share. All I ask is that you put in the effort to research your topic and make sure what you publish is factual and genuinely considered.

Novamira Visual is genuinely cool, even in its early days

I got a chance to explore the experimental Novamira Visual during a recent livestream, and it performed surprisingly well. It made a few mistakes but corrected itself afterwards. One thing that’s genuinely important when building pages with AI is to add a browser MCP, so your AI agent has “eyes” to review its own work.

The Novamira team have also introduced abilities and skills for Bricksforge and Dynamic Shortcodes. There are still a few things to iron out, but overall it works quite well.

Wrap up

That’s it for this week: a mix of community wins, a bit of workflow tinkering, and a proper look at where AI-assisted building is heading. If you missed it, catch up on Weeknotes #2, and if you’d like these notes in your inbox most weeks, subscribe to the newsletter below.