Widgets (chapters 55-57) give editors controlled, developer-defined access to code. Page Builder goes one step further: the visual page composer built into the admin since Magento 2.3, letting editors assemble entire pages by dragging individual building blocks - "content types" - onto a stage, with no WYSIWYG directive syntax at all.

Content types: the building blocks of Page Builder

Every block an editor can drag onto the Page Builder stage - text, heading, image, banner, row/column layout containers, products, an embedded CMS block, video, buttons, tabs, slider, map - is its own content type. Core content types ship as their own small modules (Magento_PageBuilder*); a custom content type registers itself the same way, via its own etc/pagebuilder/content_type.xml.

Master format: the actual persistence form

The most important architectural difference from widgets: a widget renders freshly from the {{widget}} directive on EVERY page view (chapter 55). Most Page Builder content types, by contrast, render only ONCE, in the admin, at save time - the result, the so-called "master format" HTML (with data-content-type/data-appearance/data-element attributes for later re-editing), is written directly into the CMS page's or block's content field. On the frontend that HTML is served largely as-is - only style/attribute processing still runs at request time through Magento\PageBuilder\Model\Render\Attributes, no re-execution of the actual content's PHP.

A custom content type's files

app/code/Mironsoft/Loyalty/
├── etc/pagebuilder/content_type.xml                          # Registrierung (Kapitel 59)
├── Block/PageBuilder/PointsBanner.php                        # Master-/Frontend-Render-Block (Kapitel 59)
├── view/frontend/templates/pagebuilder/points-banner/
│   └── default.phtml                                          # Frontend-Template (Kapitel 59)
├── view/adminhtml/web/js/content-type/points-banner/
│   └── preview.js                                             # Live-Vorschau-Komponente (Kapitel 60)
└── view/adminhtml/web/template/content-type/points-banner/
    └── preview.html                                           # Knockout-Vorschau-Template (Kapitel 60)

• etc/pagebuilder/content_type.xml - registration: name, label, menu section, icon, and the component paths for preview and master format.
• Block/PageBuilder/PointsBanner.php - block class for server-side master format generation at save time AND for the frontend output - the same block+template pair handles both roles.
• view/frontend/templates/pagebuilder/points-banner/default.phtml - the actual markup.
• view/adminhtml/web/js/content-type/points-banner/preview.js plus its matching .html template - the live preview on the admin stage, completely independent of the PHP rendering (chapter 60).

Content type preview vs. widget preview

A widget has NO live preview in the WYSIWYG editor - until saved, the editor only shows a placeholder chip with the widget's label. A Page Builder content type, by contrast, renders immediately, editable, WYSIWYG-accurate right on the admin stage - that's Page Builder's actual value proposition, and exactly why a custom content type needs noticeably more files than a widget: the separate knockout preview component from chapter 60 simply doesn't exist for a widget.