BuilderDash: an Elementor-style visual page builder for EmDash (native plugin, alpha)

[lickybuay]

Hi everyone! I've been building BuilderDash, a visual page builder for EmDash in the spirit of Elementor, and it's now open source:

https://github.com/lickybuay/builderdash

What it does

• Live preview: you edit the real page, rendered by your own site, with desktop, tablet and mobile views.
• Drag and drop from the element list, inside the preview and in a floating Structure panel.
• Elementor-like editing: a "Drag widget here" area, a hover tab on containers (add above, drag, delete), and a right-click menu with Duplicate, Copy/Paste, Copy/Paste style, Reset style and Delete, with keyboard shortcuts.
• Your site's blocks (Hero, FAQ, Pricing…) sit next to the builder's own elements: container, heading, text, image, button, divider.
• Inspector per device: spacing, size, colors (picker, rgba(), hsl(), var(--token) from your theme), border, box-shadow builder, typography, CSS ID/classes, z-index, hide per device. Every value is validated before it reaches CSS.
• Templates: a Template element that embeds a saved template by reference (like Elementor Pro's Template widget), plus copy-insert, header/footer parts, and loop protection.

Try it

It's a native plugin (it needs React admin pages), so it installs from GitHub rather than the registry. From your EmDash site:

pnpm add github:lickybuay/builderdash   # or npm install / yarn add
pnpm exec builderdash-setup --with-render

Then open a page in the admin and click Edit with BuilderDash. Please try it on a test site first.

Status: alpha

BuilderDash is not finished. It is an alpha: it already works for building pages and templates, so you can install it and try it out, but expect rough edges, and the data format may still change before 1.0. Please use a test site, not production.

Next on my list: more elements (columns, icon, video), layout presets for new containers, and upgrading the schema of older installs.

Contributions are welcome: issues, ideas and pull requests. The repo has a CONTRIBUTING guide explaining how to set it up and try your changes in a local EmDash site.

One thing I had to work around: EmDash has no extension point for the content list's Create button, so the plugin intercepts that navigation to open the builder directly. A supported hook would let me remove that; I'd be happy to propose it if there's interest.

Feedback, ideas and bug reports are very welcome, here or in the repo's issues. Thanks for EmDash!

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AI disclosure: I built and tested this with AI assistance (Claude Code, Claude Opus 5.5) for code, tests and this post; I reviewed, ran and verified everything myself.

[jacoplane]

Might want to collaborate with https://github.com/PerkyZZ999/EmVB ?

[lickybuay]

Nice, you already made a lot of progress. What do you think still missing? display conditions?