JetEngine by Crocoblock is a WordPress plugin offering over 12 modules and a range of core features designed to build even the most complex, highly dynamic, bespoke websites.
From creating custom post types (CPTs), meta fields, and taxonomies and displaying them on the front end to creating custom queries, custom database tables, user profiles, and even working with REST API – all without needing any coding skills, offering a user-friendly visual interface.
JetEngine is fully compatible with Block Editor, Elementor, and Bricks.
What’s even cooler is that JetEngine, as part of the Crocoblock suite, acts as the driving force behind around 20 other seamlessly compatible plugins. Together, they form a powerful stack for building professional websites of any complexity, whether for booking, appointments, eCommerce, memberships, events, or other types of sites.
To understand the functionality of JetEngine, let’s break down its core features and modules that can be switched on and off for the sake of performance.
Contents
ToggleJetEngine Default Functionality
Here are core features, starting from the most basic to more complex or specific ones.
- Custom post types and taxonomies creation.
There’s a complete functionality for visually creating custom post types and taxonomies to structure your website’s data.
- Custom field generation: Provides the ability to generate over 20 different types of custom fields, including repeaters for advanced content structures. You can add them to any post type.
- Meta boxes: This feature is for creating groups of custom fields that can be assigned to specific post types or users and comes with conditional visibility options for fine-tuned control.
- Relations: Using it, you can establish different types of relationships between post types, users, or taxonomies, allowing for more interconnected content.
- Listings and Components: To fetch dynamic data on the front end, there are listing templates and lomponents. Using Listing templates, you can configure what exactly to display using tons of querying conditions for any type of content, modify the way they are displayed, style them, and then fetch them on the website pages. Components, in turn, are reusable block sections that can have as many instances as needed at the same time, with centralized control over the parent section.
Listings and Components can be edited using Block Editor, Elementor, Bricks, and even Twig for the cleanest code and best performance.
- Query Builder: A unique JetEngine tool for generating even the most complex queries without coding. You can select post type, user, and taxonomy and set up as many query conditions as you need. You can even select a collection of entities at once by querying data directly from the WordPress database, either visually or by writing SQL commands. Saved queries can be saved and reused as a source for displaying data on the front end.
- Option Pages: The tool for creating and modifying existing global Option Pages is available anywhere on your website to reuse data without the need to duplicate it. They can also be used as a data source for queries.
- Shortcode generator: If you’re using a builder other than Block Editor, Elementor, or Bricks, or if you want to integrate CPTs, CCTs, queries, and other JetEngine-generated elements into custom code, you can still do so by generating shortcodes and placing them wherever needed.
- Glossaries: It’s a small but very handy feature – metadata sets that can be created once, saved, and reused as sources of options for filters, forms, and Select/Checkbox/Radio custom fields instead of entering them anew every time. It not only saves you time but also helps you avoid mistakes and have centralized control over data.
- Skins Manager: A tool for easy import and export of all kinds of entities created by JetEngine.
JetEngine Modules
In addition to the default features described above, which are always activated, JetEngine provides 20 different modules that you can activate or deactivate to optimize the performance of your website. Some of them are really powerful pieces of functionality that can be compared with full-fledged plugins, such as Profile Builder or REST API module, while others serve more auxiliary roles.
Let’s begin with the more advanced modules:
- Custom Content Types: It’s a JetEngine-specific content entity that deals with large amounts of data without losing performance. Unlike custom post types that generate many rows in at least two different WordPress databases, Custom Content Types create one DB table per entity, which dramatically reduces the number of database calls and, thus, improves website performance.
- REST API and Custom Endpoints:This module substitutes a fully-fledged REST API plugin to integrate third-party services, custom apps, or external websites. You can easily display the received data on the front end as well. No coding skills are required.
- Profile Builder: A powerful tool for creating personalized user profile pages with customly designed and generated blocks, fields, and layouts. It works seamlessly with JetFormBuilder to support front-end user dashboards and building membership websites.
- Data Stores: Enables storing user data, e.g., bookmarks or wishlists for both logged-in users and guests using the database, cookies, or browser cache.
- Dynamic Visibility: This module allows you to set the visibility of widgets, columns, and sections depending on the values of the meta fields, the role of the user, and other conditions.
Now, let’s proceed to the more auxiliary modules:
- Map Listings: Allows dynamic queries to be displayed on maps.
- Slider and Grid Gallery for Dynamic Fields: It allows images from the Gallery meta field to be displayed in either a slider or grid format, offering various settings and filters.
- Post Expiration Period: Lets you set expiration dates for posts submitted via JetEngine or JetFormBuilder, making it a great feature for managing time-sensitive or paid content.
- Dynamic Charts: Effortlessly transforms dynamic data into interactive charts.
- Dynamic Tables: Transforms dynamic data into tables that can be edited and styled.
- Calendar Widget: Displays both default and custom post types and fields within a dynamically populated calendar, making it perfect for event-related or time-sensitive posts.
- Listing Grid Injections: A handy marketing feature that lets you insert selected items into dynamically generated listings – ideal for promotions.
- Layout Switcher: Adds a widget/block to switch between two different layouts of dynamic listings, e.g., between a grid and a list.
- QR Code Dynamic Field Widget: Easily generates QR codes from the text content of meta fields.
- Trim String Callback: Display the pieces of text from meta fields, options, and other sources trimmed by the chosen string length value.
- Attachment File Link by ID: This module adds a new callback to the Dynamic Field widget to display download links for .pdf, .zip, and other file formats.
How Does JetEngine Work?
As you can see, JetEngine has plenty of different tools, all designed for effective work with dynamic data and the most custom solutions. It will help to lay the proper foundation for a website with a custom and optimized data structure, then fetch and display that data on the front end.
Let’s say you want to create a website for a real estate agency. You could use JetEngine to create custom post types for properties, agents, and neighborhoods. You could then add custom fields to store information about each property, such as its location, price, number of bedrooms, and square footage. You could also create taxonomies to categorize properties by type (e.g., houses, apartments, condos) and location (e.g., city, neighborhood).
You can also use Custom Content Types for the data that doesn’t require individual pages, for example, partner companies; thus, this data can be displayed in a grid or inserted into other pages without bloating the database.
Once you have created your content structure, you can use Query Builder to retrieve and display properties on your website according to certain criteria. Using Map Listings, the properties can be displayed on the map. You can display other pages or blocks as a grid or slider.
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Using the Relations feature, you can connect agents with properties and other post types and taxonomies. Thanks to the Dynamic Field widget by JetEngine, you don’t have to create pages for each property or agent manually. Instead, you can build templates where data will be displayed dynamically, such as related items, maps, photos, addresses, and all the other information.
Agents can register, create their profiles, and add listed properties using the Profile Builder module by JetEngine. You can also collect the required information from remote websites using the REST API module.
Finally, you can also use another Crocoblock plugin – JetSmartFilters, to allow users to filter properties by price, location, number of bedrooms, and other criteria if needed. It works seamlessly with JetEngine. If it’s a booking website, JetBooking is what you need, and it’s also perfectly compatible with JetEngine, extending its functionality.
JetEngine and Website Performance
JetEngine is a lightweight plugin, especially considering its extensive functionality. It’s designed with performance in mind and includes several optimizations. For instance, you can turn off support for unused builders like Elementor, Bricks, or the Block Editor so they don’t load unnecessarily.
Enabling the “Optimized DOM” option further enhances performance by stripping away extra HTML wrappers from JetEngine elements, reducing DOM bloat.
Additionally, JetEngine supports Timber/Twig, which allows you to create cleaner code and faster-performing Listing Templates. You can also use it for custom widgets and reusable sections. However, some coding knowledge is needed to work with Twig.
Given the extensive range of tools JetEngine offers, it’s important to use them thoughtfully, especially when displaying data on the front end. For instance, creating triple-nested loops in a Listing Template built with Elementor can lead to inefficiencies, as Elementor adds extra HTML wrappers, impacting performance. So, by following basic optimization principles and applying common sense, you can easily avoid any issues related to webpage speed.
JetEngine Pricing
The price of JetEngine is $43 per year for one website and $88 for unlimited WordPress projects.
However, it seems more feasible to buy the full Crocoblock subscription for 20 plugins; the price is $199 per year for one website and $399 for unlimited projects. Or, the Lifetime offer for $750 (up to 500 websites) or $999 (unlimited websites) seems even better.
In addition to all the 20 plugins, including JetEngine, JetSmartFilters, JetBooking, and others, you will get 14 dynamic templates (premade complex websites), 47 design templates, and 50 interactive pop-up templates.
Final Thoughts
JetEngine is packed with powerful features and modules; it is quite intuitive and doesn’t require any coding skills. It can easily replace over ten different plugins, starting from those for custom post types and custom fields to membership and dynamic tables plugins. Does it have a learning curve? Yes, it definitely does, especially for beginners, but it offers detailed documentation, many educational videos, great support, and an active Facebook community. When you master JetEngine, you can even create custom combinations of its features, thanks to its flexibility.
The fact that it also comes as a bundle with 19 other Crocoblock plugins makes it even more effective for any type of WordPress project of any complexity.