Grade Builder
The editing and delivery engine behind every Grade Studio site — a hardened, component-based WordPress theme and page builder we wrote from scratch. Everything on the page is a real, editable element with real controls, and none of the third-party page-builder bloat that slows sites down and locks you in.
A builder your team actually controls.
Most WordPress sites are assembled from a stack of third-party plugins nobody fully owns — each one a dependency, an update risk and a performance cost. Grade Builder replaces that stack with a single, coherent system we build and maintain ourselves. You get the flexibility of a page builder without the lock-in, the bloat, or the black boxes.
Everything on the page is a real element.
There is no shortcode soup and no locked-down templates. A Grade page is a clean tree of sections, containers, columns and elements — each one selectable, each one with its own controls. Change anything, anywhere, and what you see in the builder is exactly what ships.
Section
The full-width band. Sets the background, width and rhythm of the page.
Container
The layout engine — flex or grid, gaps, alignment, sticky, gradients and dividers.
Column
Responsive width and alignment inside a container, down to each breakpoint.
Element
Headings, text, buttons, images, forms and more — the content itself, fully controlled.
Select an element. Edit it. Ship it.
This is the real editor interaction, running live below — pick any element in the tree or on the canvas and its actual controls appear. Nothing here is a screenshot, and nothing on a Grade page is a black box.
Built in, not bolted on.
Component-based
Reusable sections, containers and elements — build once, reuse everywhere, stay consistent.
Real controls
Layout, typography, colour, spacing, effects and motion — set on the element, not hidden in code.
A design system
Colour tokens and typography sets defined once; every element references them, so a rebrand is a single change.
Responsive by breakpoint
Tune any control per device. The page is designed for mobile, not squeezed onto it.
Dynamic content
Bind headings, images and repeaters to custom fields and queries — templates that fill themselves.
Accessible by default
Semantic markup, real headings, focus states and contrast — standards built in, not bolted on.
Fast by construction
Clean output, no render-blocking plugin sprawl — speed is a property of the build, not a later fix.
One escape hatch
When you truly need it, a single per-element custom-CSS control — scoped, safe, and never a workaround.
Every value, on the element itself.
A page builder is only as good as its controls. Grade Builder exposes the real properties of each element — no guessing, no digging through theme options.
Layout
Typography
Colour & effect
Spacing & motion
What you don’t get.
The point of building our own layer is everything it lets us leave out.
Typical page-builder stack
Grade Builder
Built for the people who keep it running.
A site you can’t maintain is a liability. Grade Builder is made to be handed over: your team selects an element, changes it, and saves — no code, no agency ticket, no surprise. And because the whole thing is one owned codebase on the Grade theme, security and updates run through a single, accountable path rather than a dozen plugins pulling in different directions.
The things people ask.
Can my team edit the site themselves?
Yes — that is the point. Every element is editable in the builder with real controls, so day-to-day changes never need a developer.
Do we actually own it?
Yes. Grade Builder is original code released under the GPL. There is no per-seat licence to lose and no vendor who can pull the rug out.
Will it lock us in?
No. There are no proprietary shortcodes wrapping your content, and the markup is clean and semantic — your content is never trapped.
Is it fast?
Fast by construction. Because there is no third-party page-builder bloat, pages ship lean output and strong Core Web Vitals without a performance rescue later.
How does it handle mobile?
Every control can be tuned per breakpoint, so the site is genuinely designed for each device rather than reflowed and hoped for.
Every Grade Studio site is built on this.
You don’t buy Grade Builder as a product — you get it as the platform behind the site we build and look after for you.
