WordPress has evolved from being just a simple blogging tool into a tool being used to create all types of web sites.
Whatever you can think of, someone is most likely already building it with WordPress!
This article will help you discover the simplest WYSIWYG editor for WordPress.
Drag & Drop Content Editors For WordPress
Is The WordPress Content Editor Meeting All Of Your Page Design Needs?
Using the default WordPress visual content editor to create or edit sophisticated web site pages can be quite challenging for non-technical website owners.
(The WordPress visual content editor is great for adding, formatting and editing conventional text and media, but adding complex page elements can be challenging!)
For example, if you look at the screenshot below …
To create the above layout, you would normally have to add short codes to your content for each of the page elements you want to display on your page …
Generally, this is not really an issue … unless you want to reconfigure your layout (for example, move some of the content from box 3 into box 2, or replace the button in a box from bright red to purple. Then, you’re stuck having to mess around with code.
The WordPress visual editor is supposed to give non-technical users an easy-to-use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, but as you can see, if you are creating with more complex content elements, often what you see is not what you get …
(“What You See” isn’t always “What You Get” … unless you can visualize code!)
In some instances, some people argue that you may even be better off working inside the WordPress text editor tab instead of the WYSIWYG editor when trying to create complex page elements …
Even though WordPress is very user-friendly, this makes it difficult for WordPress site owners with no knowledge of HTML or CSS to have full control of their own content.
The fundamental problem with having to use HTML and shortcodes to create content with WordPress can be summarized by asking 2 questions:
1) Speed – How long does it take to build a page using the editor?
2) Abstraction – How closely does the content in the ”back end” resemble the “front end” content when you are creating or editing a page?
As you can see from the above screenshot, what you see when working in the content editor looks nothing like what you see in the front end. This means that users have to mentally translate what the content will look like when working with complex layouts. Other solutions require taking a number of steps before you can start configuring your page layout, or endlessly going back and forth between browser tabs and performing updates to see how your content is progressing, which interrupts the creative process, as you wait for your updates to refresh.
Many WordPress developers have tried to come up with different solutions to try to make the visual editor more intuitive. These solutions range from plugins you can install on your site that add new functionality to the editor, to themes that include built-in features like drag and drop editing …
(WordPress “drag and drop” editors aim to make content creation easier!)
Some solutions include so many page-building features, that users end up with complicated-looking front end editors …
Many of these solutions work, but they don’t really seem to address the fundamental issue of using HTML and shortcodes as described earlier. Creating and adding sophisticated content elements on a web page becomes overly complicated, involves multiple steps and doesn’t match what users expect to see on the “front end.”
If you want your page content to look “just right” quickly, this can start to become really frustrating after a while.
Ask yourself this …
If there were no technical constraints, how would you like to build and edit your web pages?
Now, visualize this …
- You see something in your content that needs to be corrected so you, just click on the content and start changing it. Your content has been instantly changed.
- You can just drag and drop elements on the page, and see them exactly as they will display on the front end without having to mentally translate shortcodes or HTML.
- You have an idea for a specific piece of content you’d like to create, so you immediately start typing, and you build your page on the fly, with no delays, without switching of tab browsers, and without waiting for pages to refresh.
Would this not be the ideal way to create content for your website? Just click-to-edit and drag and drop elements around your pages?
(Imagine being able to create complex web page layouts in real-time for your web content with no technical skills required!)
If you are ready to change the way you create content in WordPress site, then here is a plugin that you may want to consider using …
Thrive Content Builder Plugin – Create Beautiful Web Page Layouts With Drag & Drop Ease In WordPress Sites
Plugin Description
Thrive Content Builder is a unique plugin for WordPress that lets you easily create and change content on your posts and pages using true click-to-edit and drag and drop simplicity.
Thrive Content Builder is a new and exciting way to set up conversion-focused pages on your WordPress website.
Once installed, Thrive Content Builder adds a visual content editor and an item menu that lets you select, then drag and drop elements to your page …
(Thrive Content Builder adds a new content editing option to WordPress)
The Thrive Landing Pages And Content Builder plugin is actually a combination of the Thrive Content Builder and Thrive Landing Pages plugins rolled into one, plus an additional plugin feature called Thrive Lightbox.
Let’s examine all of the above and how these features work together to help you transform and improve your business online and create amazing sales pages and content.
Thrive Content Builder Plugin For WordPress
With the Thrive Content Builder plugin, you can easily add content to your web pages using drag and drop elements …
Everything on your web page can be created by ”clicking-to-edit” and “dragging and dropping” things around the page …
Once you have positioned elements on your page, you can then continue to customize or edit them without going through multiple steps or complicated configuration screens …
The built-in Thrive Landing Pages also lets you build beautiful landing pages that can just as easily be edited or customized …
Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder is simple, easy to use, and ideal for all WordPress users at all levels. In fact, working on content with Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages installed is so amazingly simple, that the developers guarantee that once you start using it, it’ll ruin the experience of using any other content editor forever, and you will never look back!
More info: Thrive Content Builder
Thrive Content Builder and Thrive Landing Pages were created by the same team that developed Thrive Leads, another fantastic plugin we’ve previously recommended on this site.
See this article to read more about the plugin:
Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Thrive Content Builder to speed up the process of designing pages and creating content for your WordPress web site:
Easy To Install
Thrive Content Builder is very easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Real-Time Content Content Editing
Thrive Content Builder is is not only very simple to use, it also lets you add content right inside your pages in real-time.
A Truly Visual Content Editor
With Thrive Content Builder installed, what you see as you work within the editor – fonts, elements, page layouts, etc. is exactly what you get on the front end of your site.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Beautiful Page Layouts With Drag & Drop Ease: Create any type of layout you can imagine with drag-and-drop ease.
- Customizable Elements Included: With Thrive Content Builder you not only get an amazing click-to-edit WordPress content editor, but the plugin also includes a jaw-dropping collection of customizable web design elements that you can insert into your web pages without using shortcodes, like flat design elements, borderless content, buttons, responsive maps, etc.
- More Enjoyable Content Creation: Not having to deal with technical stuff for the new content to refresh frees up your attention and allows you to build the web pages your business needs, quickly and without having to deal with code or click through multiple steps to get what you want done.
(Easily add, edit and customize page elements like testimonials, tabbed content, styled lists, dividers, Google Map embeds, etc.)
Thrive Content Builder Features
Thrive Content Builder offers a number of great features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- All WordPress Content Functionality Is Still Available: You have all of the regular WordPress text editing options that you are used to (e.g. bold, paragraph formatting, headings and font sizes, etc.),
- Drag And Drop Multi-Style Elements: The plugin makes a “drag and drop” list of elements available on your post or page screen for editing content.
- Conversion-Boosting Elements: The plugin includes a range of attention-grabbing and customizable elements that will help you increase your conversions, including buttons and call-to-action elements, testimonial boxes, and guarantees. In addition to customization options, various elements also offer multiple design options.
- Responsive Web Element Design: Add mobile-friendly elements like column layouts, guarantee boxes, section dividers, e.g. which will resize and display correctly on different device screens.
- Add Animation Events To Your Pages: The plugin’s Event Manager feature lets you insert animated page content, trigger lightboxes and more!
(Add Animated Elements To Your Pages)
Thrive Landing Pages – Landing Page Templates
Thrive Landing Pages provides sets of templates that work together logically and use the same conversion-optimized design language to take your visitors from signup to purchase, product download and more.
(Thrive Landing Pages provides you with conversion-optimized web page templates)
Thrive Landing Pages – Benefits
- Hosted on your own WordPress site
- Save time designing beautiful pages for your WordPress site
- 100% conversion-optimized web page templates
- No web coding skills required
- Works with any WordPress theme
Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages not only lets you create beautiful content in your WordPress posts and pages, but you can also choose from dozens of professionally designed, conversion optimized web page templates and fully customizable …
(Thrive Landing Pages provides sets of templates that work together logically and use the same conversion-optimized design language)
There are over thirty templates available, with more templates scheduled for future release. In addition to the templates that are currently available, expect to see new templates in the future for email lead generation, sales pages, lesson pages, personal branding pages, webinar pages and more.
Customize Your Landing Page Template Sets
Typically, to be able to have a fully customizable landing page template, you would need to either hire a web developer to do the work, or learn web coding languages like HTML and CSS and figure out what to do yourself.
As Shane Melaugh, co-founder of Thrive Themes says …
“There are many ways to get a pre-designed page published quickly, but the problem comes with customization. Total design freedom requires either hiring web developers to do the work for you, or learn how to do it yourself, which involves learning how to mess around with code or use complex editors. Customizable usually means complicated, expensive or time-consuming. So, you can either have something that is fast and easy to set up, or something that is customizable and flexible. But you couldn’t have both … until now! With Thrive Landing Pages you get the best of both worlds for building conversion-optimized web pages.”
Thrive Landing Pages gives you stunning pre-built web pages that are fully optimized and ready to go, and complete design freedom that allows you to change or customize any element of your page template …
The landing page templates included with this plugin let you do the following:
- Edit text in all bullet points, headlines, buttons, etc.
- Remove text, images or any other component of the landing page
- Change the background image and edit color
- Edit the color of buttons, links, text, etc.
- Use your own fonts
- Select your own images
- Modify the size of the content area
- Change the order of web page elements
- Translate everything on the page into different languages
- Add any kind of custom content anywhere inside any of the pages
- Use pre-designed, customized pages, or create your own landing pages from scratch and save them as new web page templates.
(Change or edit any aspect of the page templates)
Thrive Lightbox – Transform Your Website Into A Marketing Machine
The Thrive plugin combo also includes Thrive Lightbox, which lets you add fully configurable two-step opt-in forms and animated objects to your web pages …
(Add opt-in forms and animation to your pages with Thrive Lightbox)
2-Step Opt-in Forms
A 2-step opt-in process helps increase your conversion rates. When visitors click on an image or button they are presented with your opt-in form …
(Visitors click on a button and are presented with an opt-in form)
Event Manager
An “event” consists of a trigger and an action. You can make an opt-in form appear when your visitor clicks or hovers over a button or graphic elements, or when someone scrolls down to a certain point on the page. You can also use the Event Manager to animate attention-getting elements on your web pages, using various animation effects (e.g. fade in, slide in from bottom to top, rotate, etc.
(Set up and manage events on your web pages with the Thrive Lightbox plugin)
A lightbox and event is created automatically for your landing pages, but you also have complete control over your events, triggers and design.
Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials and feedback that plugin users have published about Thrive Content Builder:
“I have had nothing but the best experience imaginable with this tool since I purchased it. This is by far one of, if not the best plug-in I have purchase to date and it has definitely made working with WordPress a whole new experience. Jim Bond”
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”Your stuff is beautifully designed, fast and has great options for marketers that you just don’t see with other themes. Great, great job! Absolutely love Thrive! David Coleman”
Thrive Content Builder – Tips
Thrive Content Builder works with any theme in WordPress, not just with Thrive Landing Pages. You cannot use Thrive Content Builder to edit content that was not created with the plugin.
You can add WordPress short codes inside Thrive Content Builder or Thrive Landing Pages and they will display correctly when published.
Thrive Lightbox works with any content you build with Thrive Content Builder.
Thrive Content Builder Support
Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder provides free updates, new landing pages and upcoming features. The Thrive team is constantly working on adding new features and improving existing ones.
Thrive software is really well-supported, and users get unlimited software updates, and one year unlimited support with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, 30 day, full refund guarantee.
This is an exciting product for WordPress users that just keeps getting better.
Plugin Pricing
At the time of writing, the pricing information shown below includes all three components described above (Thrive Content Builder, Thrive Landing Pages & Thrive Lightbox):
- Single Site Licensing – This lets you use the plugin on a single web site. Includes full feature set, unlimited updates and one year of unlimited support. Price = $59.00.
- Unlimited Sites License – This lets you set up the plugin on all of your personal domains. Cost includes full feature set, unlimited updates and one year of unlimited support. Price = $87.00.
- Agency License – Use on your web sites & on client sites. Price includes access to Thrive Content Builder, plus all Thrive Themes & Thrive Plugins. Cost = $247.00 per year.
Note: Current pricing for Thrive Content Builder can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price shown above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the software seller when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing information here:
Additional Information
The Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder plugin developers repeatedly assert that the plugin’s architecture gives you the “best of both worlds,” and help bring back the “joy of creating content.”
On the one hand, you have the time-saving benefits of ready-made page elements and conversion-optimized template sets that help speed up content design, and on the other hand, you have 100% control over your design process and the freedom to change everything on your page, using the plugin’s visual content editor, that lets you get things done without having to go through multiple steps.
For a demo video of the plugin, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Thrive website.
Our Recommendation …
If you want to edit something, simply click on the element and start editing. If you want to change something, you will see the change happen instantly. If you want to move something, simply drag it and drop it into its new location. There are no unnecessary steps involved.
If you want to transform and improve your business online and create awesome marketing pages and engaging content, this plugin delivers an incredible conversion-boosting package with a single, inexpensive plugin.
To learn more, check out the plugin here:
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