WordPress has evolved from being just a simple blogging tool to a tool being used to create all kinds of sites.
Whatever you can think of, someone is bound to be already building it using WordPress!
In this article you will discover the most intuitive WYSIWYG editor for WordPress.
Drag & Drop Content Editors For WordPress
Is The WordPress WYSIWYG Editor Still Meeting All Of Your Web Design Needs?
Using the built-in WordPress visual content editor to build or edit complex web pages can sometimes be difficult.
(The WordPress WYSIWYG editor is great for adding, formatting and editing conventional content, but adding more complex layouts can be quite challenging!)
For example, if you look at the illustration below …
Creating the above content in a page would require typing something that looks like this inside your default WordPress content editor …
Generally, this is not an issue … until you have to change some part of your layout (for example, move part of the content from box 3 into box 2, or replace the button inside box 2 from dark green to purple. Then, you’re stuck having to mess around with page code.
The WordPress editor is supposed to give users an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor, but as you can see, if you are creating with more complex page elements, what you see on your editor screen may not be the same as what you get …
(“What You See” isn’t always “What You Get” … unless you can visualize code!)
In some cases, users could even be better off working directly with the html source itself instead of the WordPress WYSIWYG editor when trying to create fancy layouts …
Even though WordPress is very user-friendly, this makes it difficult for non-technical website owners to have full control of their own content.
The fundamental challenge of using shortcodes and HTML to create content in the default WordPress editor can be summarized as follows:
1) Speed – How long will it take to create a page using the editor?
2) Abstraction – How closely does the content in the editor resemble the content in the “front end” when you are creating or editing a page?
As you can see from the above screenshot, what you see in the back end doesn’t look anything 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 sophisticated 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 coming along, which can interrupt the creative process, as you wait for your content to reload.
A number of WordPress web developers have tried to come up with different solutions with the objective of making content editing more intuitive. Some of these solutions range from plugins you can install on your site that add new functionality to the editor, to themes that offer built-in features like drag and drop editing …
(WordPress “drag and drop” editors aim to make creating complex page layouts easier!)
Some solutions end up requiring so many complex page-building features, that users need to learn how to work with complicated-looking front end content editors …
Many of these editors work fine, but they don’t really address the fundamental problem with using shortcodes and HTML as described earlier. Adding and editing sophisticated content elements on a 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 ”perfect” quickly, this can become really frustrating after a while.
Ask yourself this …
If there were no technical constraints, how would you like your page builder to work?
Now, imagine this …
- You look at your content and if you spot something that needs to be fixed, simply click on the content and start typing. Your content is then instantly changed.
- You can drag and drop items on the page, and see them exactly as they will appear 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 as you go, with no delays, with no tab switching, and without having to wait for new web content to refresh and reload.
Would that 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 page layouts quickly for your web content with no technical constraints!)
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 – The Simplest, Most Intuitive WYSIWYG Editor For WordPress Websites
Plugin Description
Thrive Content Builder is a truly intuitive click-to-edit drag and drop content and page editing plugin for WordPress.
Thrive Content Builder provides you with a new and incredibly easy way to set up conversion-focused pages on any WordPress website.
Once installed, Thrive Content Builder adds a visual content editor with an item menu that lets you drag and drop elements on your page …
(Thrive Content Builder adds a new content editor to WordPress)
The 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.
In this article we’ll take an in-depth look at all of the above plugins and how all of this powerful functionality works together to help you transform and improve your web presence and create awesome marketing pages and content.
Thrive Content Builder Plugin For WordPress
With this plugin installed easily add content to your web pages using drag and drop elements …
Every element of your page can be built and changed using simple ”click-to-edit” and “drag and drop” …
Once you have positioned elements on a page, you can then continue to edit them without having to go through additional steps or switching screens …
The built-in Landing Pages editor also lets you create stunning 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 installed is so amazingly simple, that the developers warn that once you start using it, it’ll ruin the experience of using any other content editor forever, and you’ll 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 excellent plugin we’ve reviewed on this site.
To read about this plugin, see this article:
Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Thrive Content Builder to speed up your page design and content creation process:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Thrive Content Builder installs like every WP plugin. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your admin user login and activate.
Add And Edit Content In Real Time
Thrive Content Builder is simple and intuitive to use and lets you add content right inside your pages in real-time.
What You See Is Truly What You Get
With Thrive Content Builder installed, what you see on the “backend” as you work within the editor – fonts, visual elements, layouts, etc. is exactly what your visitors will see in the front end of your site.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Attractive Layouts With Drag & Drop Ease: Create any layout you can imagine with drag and drop ease.
- Add Design Elements Without Short Codes: With the Thrive Content Builder plugin you not only get an amazing drag and drop content editor, but the plugin also includes a collection of functional and attractive design elements that you can customizable and add to your layouts without using short codes, like tabbed content, table of contents builder, section dividers, HTML code insert boxes, etc.
- Ideal For Non-Technical Users: Not having to deal with technical stuff for your new content to load frees up your attention and allows you to build the content your business needs, quickly and without having to edit code or click through multiple layers of menus to get what you need done.
(Insert, edit and customize web page elements like testimonials, content toggle, styled lists, section dividers, countdown timers, etc.)
Thrive Content Builder Features
Thrive Content Builder provides many features to website owners. Below we have listed just some of these features:
- Built-In Content Editor Functionality Is Still Available: You have all of the regular WordPress content editing options that you are used to (e.g. bold, paragraph formatting, font styles, etc.),
- Drag And Drop Elements Menu: The plugin makes a “drag and drop” list of multi-style elements available on your post or page screen for creating or editing content.
- Conversion-Boosting Elements: The plugin includes various eye-catching and customizable elements that will help increase the effectiveness of your sales pages, including buttons and call-to-action elements, testimonials, and guarantees. In addition to customization options, multiple design options are also available for various elements.
- Responsive Design: Add responsive elements like column layouts, guarantee boxes, content dividers, e.g. which will resize and display correctly on different device screens.
- Add Animation Events To Pages: Thrive Content Builder’s Event Manager feature lets you create animated content elements, trigger lightboxes and more!
(Add Animated Elements To Your Web Pages)
Thrive Landing Pages Plugin – Landing Page Sets
Thrive Landing Pages provides sets of templates that work together logically and use the same conversion-optimized design language to take your visitors from initial signup to purchase, product download and more.
(Thrive Landing Pages plugin gives you access to conversion-optimized web page templates)
Thrive Landing Pages Plugin – Benefits
- Hosted on your own WordPress site
- Save time and money creating and customizing landing pages for your WordPress site
- 100% conversion-optimized landing page templates
- No tech skills required
- Works with any WordPress theme
Thrive Content and Landing Page Builder not only lets you create beautiful-looking content in your WordPress posts and pages, but you can also choose from dozens of beautifully 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 currently over thirty templates available, with more templates being worked on. 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.
Fully Customizable Landing Page Template
Normally, in order to fully customize landing page templates, 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 how to edit the page code 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 creating conversion-optimized web pages.”
Thrive Landing Pages gives you beautiful pre-built pages that are fully optimized and ready to go, and complete design freedom that allows you to change or edit any element of your page …
The landing page template sets included with this plugin let you do the following:
- Edit text in all bullet points, buttons, headlines, etc.
- Remove text, images or any other component of the landing page
- Replace any background images and edit colour
- Edit the color of links, text, buttons, etc.
- Choose your own fonts
- Use your own images
- Edit the size of the content area
- Rearrange the order of elements on your page
- Translate everything on the page into a different language
- Add any kind of custom content in any of the pages
- Start with a blank page and create your own page templates, or even build a custom landing page templates library.
(Change and edit anything on the page template)
Transform Your Web Site Into A Marketing Machine With Thrive Lightbox Plugin
The Thrive plugin package also includes Thrive Lightbox, which lets you add fully customizable 2-step opt-in forms and events to your web pages …
(Add opt-in forms and animation to your web pages with Thrive Lightbox)
Two-Step Opt-in Forms
A 2-step opt-in process helps increase your conversion rates. Visitors click on an image or button, and then they are presented with your opt-in form …
(Capture more leads and subscribers with a two-step opt-in process)
Event Manager
An “event” consists of a trigger and an action. You can make an opt-in form appear when when visitors click or hover their mouse 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 images on your web pages, using various animation effects (e.g. fade out, slide in from left to right, roll out, etc.
(Set up and manage events on your web pages with the Thrive Lightbox plugin)
Lightboxes and events are created automatically for your landing pages, but you also have complete control over all events, triggers and design.
Feedback From Users
Below are a few of the testimonials users have provided for the Thrive Content Builder plugin:
”You guys are simply awesome I am loving everything you are doing at the moment. Keep up the great work you really are making such a big difference in this field. Jule Fuller”
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“I’m blown away by the plugin. Keep up the incredible, WordPress changing work, guys! Dean Phillips”
Thrive Content Builder Plugin – Useful Tips
Thrive Content Builder works with any WordPress theme, not just with the Thrive Landing Pages plugin. Note, however, that you cannot use Thrive Content Builder to edit content that was not created with the plugin.
You can add WordPress short codes inside the Content Builder or Landing Pages plugin and they will display correctly on your website.
Thrive Lightbox works with any content you build using Thrive Content Builder.
Support
Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder provides free updates, new landing templates and upcoming features. The plugin developers are constantly working on adding new features and improving existing ones.
Thrive products are really well-supported, and users get unlimited upgrades, plus 1 year unlimited support with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 100% refund guarantee.
This is an exciting product for WordPress users that will just keep getting better.
Software 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 allows you to install the plugin on a single domain. Includes full feature set, unlimited updates and 1 year of unlimited support. Price = $59.00.
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This option allows you to install the plugin on all of your personal domains. Includes full feature set, unlimited updates and one year of unlimited support. Cost = $87.00.
- Agency License – This lets you run the plugin on all of your own web sites and your client web sites. Includes access to Thrive Content Builder, plus all Thrive Themes & Thrive Plugins. Cost = $247.00 per year.
Note: The price of the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Information
The Thrive 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 time-saving features like ready-made page elements and templates that help to speed up content creation, and on the other hand, you have complete control over your design process and the freedom to edit and customize anything and everything on your page, using the plugin’s click-to-edit and drag and drop features, that lets you get things done without having to open multiple dialog boxes.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the plugin website.
The Bottom Line …
If you want to edit something, just click on the element and start editing. If you want to change something, you will see the change happen immediately. 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 site and create amazing sales pages, streamlined landing pages and engaging content, this plugin delivers an incredible conversion-boosting package with a single, inexpensive plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin website:
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