Hi @Scott2Hotty,
I agree with the complex system of shortcodes, that’s the main problem in the visual composer. And editing the shortcode could destroy your page or the builder rendering if you accidentally edit and broke the shortcodes. It could also hangs and freezes, and your host will probably going to block requests since visual composer initiates too many connections. It’s been an issue since the old version of X theme where the only builder was visual composer, hence, the cornerstone is made.
As for the Cornerstone, it only generates shortcodes from the builder’s data. The cornerstone data is something users can’t edit, and the layout can’t be corrupted through accidental editing. And since it follows cornerstone data, it doesn’t need to generate the builder’s preview based on shortcodes. It simply pulls the data and generates preview instead of generating preview from the complex system of shortcodes. Shortcodes are only generated by saving your builder’s content, and for the purpose of backup content (in case the data is corrupted due to direct database editing or not-safe URL editing through database). So when that happens, there is a fallback shortcode to make sure the live page is still displaying the content.
And are you suggesting to make the builder only works on HTML code? Like manually building HTML content as static without dynamic data from database?
Like any other builder, cornerstone is affected by your host environment, memory limit, traffic, and performance. I don’t see any slowness of my live site. If you’re on shared hosting, then yes, slowness could be seen since your site shares same resources from other sites in same machine.
Thanks!
