🎙️ VMPro Podcast Episode #004: Why I’m Still Using Oxygen Builder in 2025

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

What’s up folks, Fabrizio Van Marciano here with another episode of the VMPro Web Design Podcast.

If you’re tuning in for the first time, my name is Fabrizio Van Marciano and I’m the creator of Van Marciano Pro memberships, and I will be your host for this show and I have a pretty interesting topic to talk about in this episode, so sit back, grab your favorite beverage and let’s get into it.

OK so welcome, welcome to Episode #4. It’s been a while since the last show. It has been a long Winter, it still is winter… unfortunately, I hate Winter in the UK.

Anyhow, I took some time off to focus on updating a lot of the content here on the membership site, so that is still an ongoing effort, and I’m slowly getting there. And of course, working on the upcoming Bricks design module which we’re edging closer to the release of.

OK, so let’s get to it.

As a few of you listeners may know, I’ve been using Oxygen Builder for coming up to six years now almost, boy time does fly, and here I am still messing around with WordPress, huh?

Anyway, so yes, Oxygen wasn’t actually the first page/website builder that I started using, I was using something else at the time called Thrive Theme Builder from Thrive Themes.

Now you may or may not know what that is or even be familiar with Thrive Themes, they were once a pretty reputable company and served the WordPress community very well. They then sold out and it’s not been the same since. But that’s a story for another time.

So yes, I used a lot of Thrive Themes products back in the day before, of course, discovering Oxygen Builder, so anyway.

Oxygen has come a long old way since it first started back in 2013, I believe, I could be wrong. Though I don’t recall ever hearing about it in the WordPress world, so of course, it wasn’t as popular as it is now.

So let me talk about updates and where I think we are with Oxygen in 2025.

We’ve had a lot of cool amendments with Oxygen over the recent years but things are slightly different now. The updates are less frequent, at least since 2023. We’ve had a few bug fixes and enhancement updates, some of which has been incredibly useful, but nothing life changing.

We saw a nice right click feature added and advanced query now supports multiple properties for ‘order by parameter’. Some of these I will cover in tutorials for the blog later.

And of course, we also have Bricks Builder, which is an absolute monster of a WordPress theme design tool for WordPress. And then we have Breakdance created by the same team who gave us Oxygen.

So, anyone new coming to the WordPress scene have quite a few options to choose from if they’re interested in designing their website using a visual tool. I don’t want to go too deep into what I think which tool would be best for someone new, because I want cover this separately in a video.

I’m not disregarding other website builder tools such as Elementor and DIVI and whatnot. But I never really took the time to use those tools properly, and probably never will. I played around with Elementor for a while but it just wasn’t for me.

I come from a coding background and I still like to build websites the old fashioned way sometimes, and if it wasn’t for page builders, I think I would have given up on WordPress long ago.

Anyhow, back to Oxygen Builder.

It’s 2025. So why on earth would I continue using Oxygen Builder when there’s plenty of other more capable alternative tools out there?

Bricks is the one that everyone seem to be using so why am I even bothering with Oxygen, and why not even consider Breakdance over Oxygen?

So the other thing I should mention also, Oxygen is now built on a redundant framework that being Angular.js (what I mean by redundant is that support have ended for this framework though it will probably be good for a few years to come since it’s the most complete, I do believe.)

And let’s face it, there will be a time when it will have to be put to rest. But, that is not anytime soon in my opinion.

So here’s the thing, I get asked so many times: Fabrizio, why do you keep creating content using Oxygen when everyone else has moved over to something else entirely?

Why have I not followed the flock of beautiful sheep! I mean that in a good way although it probably sounds condescending.

Well firstly, and this is an important one… it’s a personal choice, at least if I’m building a personal website.

Secondly, Oxygen works if you don’t need a ton of complexity. And it is also battle tested to work with almost anything out there.

I rarely have an issue with plugin conflicts or bugs with Oxygen. I can’t speak for anyone else. But the websites that I’ve built for myself and my clients have been bug free, for the most part.

For my clients, over at Van Marciano Dot Co, I will almost always put Bricks first, unless the project is simply going to be a brochure website, in which case I would use Oxygen. So in short, it depends on the scope of the project.

I don’t want to sound obnoxious, or offend anyone that is a fan of other builders, but I like Oxygen because it just works. And let’s be honest, it is still a powerful builder.

I know other builders work, most of the time, but as I said, I’ve had few problems using Oxygen even with complex builds I might add.

I’m not going to begin comparing Oxygen with Bricks Builder here, because Bricks has a lot of things going for it, it’s built on a modern framework, it comes with a ton of customizable options, there is a vast library of add-ons you can use, we now have components, and more.

Regardless, I’ve used both of these builders for long enough to be able to decide which one I like to use the most, and as I mentioned, sometimes I will use Bricks other times I will use Oxygen. And I’ve not really started digging properly into Breakdance, though that will change this year.

So, to clarify once more, if I’m building a very simple website with minimal BS, Oxygen will do the job very nicely. If I’m building a complex website such as a holiday booking website or eCommerce site, I will use Bricks almost all of the time.

The other reason I like using Oxygen for less complex projects is because it is much simpler to use than other Builders, although Breakdance is now the most user-friendly Builder in my opinion. But Oxygen doesn’t have the complex features of Bricks, and that is fine, for the most part.

Whilst we’re mentioning Bricks in this episode. Bricks in my opinion, dare I say it, seems to be more geared towards web designers and agency owners that want to develop WordPress sites thoroughly. I think that’s the best way I can put it.

Some folks are going to tell me that I’m wrong, I don’t know what I’m talking about and all the rest of it. I can tell you now, from the feedback I’ve received from Van Marciano Pro members, my community, and of course my web design clients, Bricks is NOT a beginner-friendly website builder.

Yes, it is a breeze to use once you’ve figured out how to use every status effect, I mean feature, status effect – what am I going on about even, too much gaming… Once you’ve worked out how to use all of the features properly. Until then, starting with Bricks can be a rollercoaster ride, which is why I created my Bricks Builder Mastery Course.

So yes, if you are NOT a designer, or have no experience or knowledge of web development, perhaps you are looking to build a website to increase awareness about your brand and have no idea where to start with WordPress, or you’re substituting your theme for Bricks. Bricks is going to drag you through hell and back before you figure out what every feature does.

You have to dedicate some time to learning Bricks, the same way as other page builders, and, thankfully, there is a lot of great content out there for all levels, not just web designers but for regular folks, entrepreneurs, small businesses, startups, etc. Again, that is one of the reasons why I created my courses to help everyday folks get the most out of these powerful tools.

I know I’m drifting slightly off topic here, but Oxygen Builder, although we’ve had very few notable updates, new features, and improvements since 2023, from 4.1 to 4.9, is still a tool I will continue using for years to come. At least I hope so.

And if you remember, or you may not know this – I designed Van Marciano Pro with Oxygen Builder early last year. This was quite a complex project being a membership site, with SureCart, and SureMembers, but it works.

I could have done it with Bricks or something else, but I chose Oxygen for the simple reason that most things work without conflict with Oxygen, right out of the box.

So there you have it, all hail the old dog Oxygen Builder.

There are plenty of things you can still do with Oxygen. You don’t need to feel restricted, though some features are still missing, such as forms, accessibility features, etc. but most of these issues can be fixed with some add-ons, custom code, etc.

You can also use something like Core Framework or create your own framework with CSS, have your variables and utility classes, etc. Yes, it takes a little bit more work but doable.

So, yes, for me Oxygen is still a force to be reckoned with and I will continue to use for many years to come, hopefully.

I keep saying this and I know there are folks probably listening, wondering should they continue to use Oxygen Builder?

I know a lot of people left and migrated to something else, that is fine. But if your website is still built with Oxygen, really you don’t need to move it unless there is something critically wrong with the builder, or your goals and objectives have changed.

If you are concerned about about responsive design, adding custom breakpoints or meda queries, maintainability, accessibility and all of those things. You can still do all of that with Oxygen, though it takes a little bit of work, as I mentioned.

Finally, I want to quickly mention a few things regarding Breakdance. Why not use Breakdance over Oxygen?

I would recommend giving Breakdance a try if you’re coming from the Oxygen universe. I’ve had a little bit of experience with Breakdance, and it is by far the easiest builder out of Bricks and Oxygen.

I have started creating tutorials for Breakdance but you can expect a lot more to come on Van Marciano Pro throughout 2025.

OK, so, I’ve talked about why I love using Oxygen, the fact that it is user-friendly, uncomplicated, even though it is missing some features, let’s dive a little bit deeper as to what I think makes Oxygen an all-around rock solid page/ website builder. And this is primarily for you, if you are only just discovering Oxygen and need a little bit of inspiration to create a great looking website.

1. Complete suite of drag-and-drop design elements and options – And even by today’s standards, Oxygen’s elements library still rocks, I don’t care what anyone says.
2. Responsive design tools – Which means you can customize several of the default breakpoints provided, sadly, no custom breakpoints, but you can create your media queries using some CSS, no big deal.
3. Complete flex and grid layout control – So you can create simple or complex responsive layouts, the choice is yours. And I do have some tutorials on how to use both the flex and grid layout feature in Oxygen.
4. Performance and SEO tools – So you have things like default WP bloat eliminator, Google font face limiter, selectable HTML tags, and more.
5. WooCommerce tools – giving you complete control over the layout and design of your WooCommerce pages, including cart, checkout, and my account.
6. Client accessibility tools – Such as edit only builder mode and client access control.
7. Optimized workflow and UI, although it probably looks a little dated now.
8. Dynamic data – Which is one of Oxygen’s core feature and very powerful, including repeaters, query builder, conditions, advanced custom fields integration, and more.
9. Advanced developer tools (HTML CSS JS, pseudo states and classes, stylesheets)
10. Pricing – Finally, the pricing is the icing on the cake. At the time of publishing this episode, Oxygen Builder, in 2025, is still cost effective at $179 one-time with lifetime updates. That is unbeatable.

Template management is still a bit of a nightmare in Oxygen, but once you used to it, and can accept it’s few flaws, then you’re fine. And as I said, there is no forms element which means you have to use something like WSForms or Fluent Forms to add a simple contact form to your website.

OK, so that about wraps it up for this short episode. I hope you’ve found this episode interesting. If you want to learn more about my Oxygen Builder 5.0 Visual Design Mastery Course and other useful content regarding visual web design, check out my courses and membership options.

Go to vanmarciano.pro/pricing to learn more. At the time of publishing this episode, I do have a 25% off promotion. OK, that’s it, thanks again, see you in the next episode.