He mentioned if I really want to do this then he should create a separate test version of my site and install the plugin here so the website can be tested etc.. what do you guys think or is it okay to just install anyway?
Your developer is simply being cautious and asking you to NOT test things out on a live site. By doing this on a separate “test” site, you’ll avoid the possibility of an unknown incompatibility or some other error bringing down your live site. This is sound advice and considered a “best-practice”.
But, of course, it’s your site… and if you don’t mind your site breaking (and being offline as you find a fix), or having to pay your developer to fix it for you should something break beyond your ability to fix it yourself, then you’re free to go against your developer’s advice ??
Also he mentioned page builders can cause seo issues? Not sure what to think of this comment, I think it’s fine.
Though rare, any plugin, including page builder plugins, that hasn’t specifically been tested with a specific version of a theme and a specific version of WordPress has the potential to “cause issues”. Such “issues” can range widely from simple styling inconsistencies to the malfunctioning of a specific feature(s) — eg drop-down menu not working — to complete malfunctioning of both the front and backend of a site.
But most of the time, things work normally and there are no “issues”.
And the choice is really yours… but… whatever you do, please make sure to maintain good backups all the time, so you can easily roll back if any “issues” occur.
As for page builders causing SEO issues, sure some page builder plugins have all kinds of problems — from bloated DOM to slow performance — that may affect the speed and end-user experience of a website, and consequently, SEO.
But there is one “SEO issue” that is endemic to ALL page builder plugins that is often overlooked. I tend to liken this to putting power tools and pre-marked wood patterns in front of a wannabe woodworker: yes, they can build amazing projects even though they’re not PROs, but they can also hurt themselves immensely (because they’re not PROs and don’t know how to use the tools well).
Here’s a simple example to illustrate my point:
It’s generally understood in various contexts (SEO, accessibility, and even plain common sense) that the main headline of a page… representing the highest level of the document’s hierarchy, must use an H1 tag.
A theme developer may have taken care to enforce this H1 by fetching the WordPress page title separately and placing it in an H1 tag. And this will be respected as long as you use the native WordPress editor (Gutenberg or classic).
But when a page builder is used to build a page, this cannot be enforced any more — the WordPress title is often ignored completely on the page itself (I’m not talking of browser title here, but the main headline)… and it’s up to the person building the page to understand and ensure that the main title/headline placed on the page builder should use an H1 tag.
Sadly, most users only concern themselves with the size of the text, but not the semantic meaning within the document’s hierarchy (ie wether this text should be H1, H2, etc or even a Paragraph). And it’s not uncommon, when troubleshooting SEO issues on WordPress sites built with these page builder plugins, to scan a whole page and not find even a single use of a headline tag (H1-H6)!
This is just one example of how, arguably, page builders can cause such “SEO issues”… the argument being whether we should blame the page builder plugin or the experienced user who doesn’t know about the SEO and accessibility implications of their actions.
