WordPress has evolved from being just a simple blogging tool to a tool that is now being used to design all types of web pages – landing pages, product showcase pages, local business pages, etc.
Whatever you can think of, somewhere around the world someone is bound to be already building it with WordPress!
In this article you will learn how to create stunning content with drag & drop ease in WordPress websites.
Drag And Drop Content Editors For WordPress
Does The Default WordPress WYSIWYG Editor Meet All Of Your Page Design Needs?
Using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor to build or edit complex website pages can be difficult.
(The WordPress WYSIWYG editor is great for adding, formatting and editing conventional content, but adding more complex page elements can be quite challenging!)
For example, if you look at the illustration below …
To create the above boxes with text and buttons, you would have to add short codes to your content for each element you want to display to visitors …
Generally, this is not an issue … until you choose to change your layout (for example, move some of the content from box 3 into box 2, or replace the button inside a box from bright red to gray. Then, you’re stuck having to mess around with code.
The WordPress visual editor is supposed to be an easy-to-use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) content editor, but as you can see, if you are trying to edit complex content elements, what you see on your screen may not be the same as what you are going to get when the page is published …
(“What You See” isn’t always “What You Get” … unless you can visualize code!)
In some cases, you would probably be better off working directly inside the WordPress html editor tab instead of the visual editor when trying to add something other than simple page elements …
Even though WordPress is extremely easy to use, this makes it difficult for non-technical users to have full control of their own content.
The fundamental challenge about having to use shortcodes and HTML 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” match 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 editor doesn’t look at all 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 several steps before you can begin configuring your page layout, or endlessly going back and forth between tabs and performing tweaks and updates to see how your content is coming along, which can interrupt the creative process, as you wait for the updated content to refresh.
Many WordPress developers have tried to come up with various solutions with the aim of addressing this issue. Some of these range from plugins you can install on your site that add new functionality to the editor, to WP themes that include built-in features like drag and drop editing …
(WordPress “drag and drop” editors aim to make content creation easier!)
Some solutions end up requiring so many complex page-building features, that users end up with complicated-looking front end content editors …
Many of these alternative solutions work fine, but they don’t really address the fundamental challenge of using HTML and shortcodes as described earlier. Creating, adding and editing non-linear content 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 to create or edit complex page layouts quickly, this can start to become quite frustrating after a while.
Ask yourself this …
If there were no technical constraints, how would you like your web content builder to behave?
Now that you’ve asked this question, imagine this …
- You look at your content and if you spot something that needs changing, just click on the content and start changing it. Your content has been instantly edited.
- You simply drag and drop items around the page, and see them exactly as they will appear on the front end without having to mentally visualize code.
- You have an idea for an item of content that you’d like to create, so you immediately start typing, and you build your web page as you go, without delays, no tab switching, and without having to wait for new web content to refresh and reload.
Would this not be the ideal way to build content for your web site? Just click-to-edit and drag and drop elements around the page?
(Imagine being able to create complex pages quickly 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 Stunning Content Faster With Drag & Drop Ease In WordPress Sites
Plugin Description
Thrive Content Builder is a truly intuitive WordPress click-to-edit drag-and-drop content builder plugin.
Thrive Content Builder is a new and exciting way to set up conversion-focused pages on your WordPress website.
Once installed, the plugin adds a visual content editor and an item menu that lets you click, then drag and drop elements to your web page …
(Thrive Content Builder adds a new visual editor to WordPress)
Thrive Landing Pages And Content Builder is actually a combination of the Thrive Content Builder and Thrive Landing Pages plugins merged into one, plus an additional plugin feature called Thrive Lightbox.
Let’s examine all of the above and how these exciting features work seamlessly together to help you easily transform and improve your business online and create amazing sales pages and engaging content.
Thrive Content Builder Plugin
With this plugin installed easily add content to your web pages and build complex page layouts using drag and drop elements …
Everything on your page can be created and changed using simple ”click-to-edit” and “drag and drop” …
Once elements have been added to your page, you can then further edit or customize these without going through additional steps or switching screens …
You can also work inside highly attractive landing pages that can also be easily edited …
Thrive Content and Landing Page Builder is simple, easy to use, and ideal for all WordPress users at all levels. In fact, working on content with Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder installed is so effortlessly simple, that the developers guarantee that you’ll never look at the process of creating content the same way once you start using it
More info: Thrive Content Builder
The integrated Thrive Content and Page Builder plugin was created by the same team that developed Thrive Leads, another excellent plugin for WordPress we’ve reviewed on this site.
Go here to learn more about using this plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Thrive Content Builder to speed up your page design and content creation process:
Easy, Quick & Simple To Install
Thrive Content Builder installs just like every plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your admin account and activate.
Edit And Create Content In Real Time
Thrive Content Builder is really simple to use and lets you edit and build content in real-time.
What You See Is Exactly What You Get
With Thrive Content Builder installed, what you see on the “backend” as you work within the editor – fonts, elements, layouts, etc. is exactly what your visitors will see in the front end of your site.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Beautiful Web Page Layouts With Drag And Drop Ease: Create any kind of layout you can imagine with drag-and-drop ease.
- Add Customizable Elements With No Shortcodes Required: With the Thrive Content Builder plugin you not only get an amazing click-to-edit content builder, but the plugin also includes a very decent collection of functional and attractive web design elements that you can customizable and use on your content layouts without using shortcodes, such as columns, table of contents builder, buttons, credit card icons, etc.
- Distraction-Free Content Creation: Not having to wait for your content to load frees up your attention and allows you to build the web pages your business needs, quickly and without having to edit code or click through multiple layers of menus to get what you need done.
(Add, edit and customize web page elements like testimonials, tabbed content, table of contents builder, dividers, responsive videos, etc.)
Thrive Content Builder Features
Thrive Content Builder provides WP users many great features. Below we have listed just some:
- Regular WordPress Content Functionality Is Still Available: You have all of the built-in content editing options that you are used to (e.g. underlines, paragraph formatting, font sizes, etc.),
- Drag And Drop Elements: The plugin adds a “drag and drop” table of elements to your post or page screen when editing content.
- Conversion-Boosting Elements: The plugin comes with various eye-catching and customizable elements that will help increase your sales conversions, including buttons and call-to-action elements, testimonial boxes, and guarantee forms. In addition to customization options, various elements also offer multiple design options.
- Mobile-Friendly Design: Add responsive columns, guarantee boxes, content section dividers, e.g. which will resize and display great on different device screens.
- Add Animation Events To Web Pages: The Event Manager feature lets you add animated page content, trigger lightboxes and more!
(Add Animated Elements To Your Web Pages)
Thrive Landing Pages Plugin – Landing Page Template Sets
Landing page template sets are web page templates that work together logically and use the same conversion-optimized design language to take your visitors all the way from initial signup to purchase, product download and more.
(Thrive Landing Pages gives you access to conversion-optimized web page templates)
Thrive Landing Pages Plugin – Benefits
- Hosted on your own WordPress site
- Save time designing beautiful-looking pages for your WordPress site
- 100% conversion-optimized web page templates
- No coding skills needed
- Works with all WordPress themes
Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages not only can be used to create beautiful-looking content in your WordPress posts and pages, but you can also choose from dozens of professionally designed, web page templates that are conversion-optimized and fully customizable …
(Thrive Landing Pages provides sets of templates that work together logically and use the same conversion-optimized design language)
There are 30+ templates available, with more templates scheduled for release. In addition to the existing templates, the developers plan to release new templates for email lead generation, sales pages, course pages, personal branding pages, webinar pages and more.
Fully Customizable And Flexible Landing Page Template
Normally, to be able to fully customize a landing page template, you would need to either hire a web site designer 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 beautiful pre-designed web 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 template …
The landing page template sets included with this plugin let you do the following:
- Modify text in all headlines, buttons, bullet points, etc.
- Delete text, images or any other part of the landing page
- Change the background image or background colors
- Change the color of links, buttons, text, etc.
- Choose your own fonts
- Use your own images
- Change the size of the content area
- Rearrange the order of web page elements
- Translate everything on the page into different languages
- Add custom content in the pages
- Use pre-designed, customized pages, or create your own web pages from scratch and save them as new page templates.
(Change and customize anything on your page)
Thrive Lightbox Plugin – Transform Your Web Site Into A Powerful Marketing Machine
The Thrive package also includes the Thrive Lightbox plugin, which lets you add fully configurable 2-step opt-in forms and animated objects to your website …
(Add opt-in forms and events to your marketing pages with Thrive Lightbox)
Thrive Lighbox 2-Step Opt-in Forms
A 2-step opt-in process can help increase your conversion rates. Visitors click on an image or button, and then they are presented with your opt-in form …
(Visitors click on a button and are presented with an opt-in form)
Thrive Lightbox 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 over a button or an image, or when someone scrolls down to a certain point on the page. You can also use the Event Manager to animate images on your pages, using a range of animation effects (e.g. zoom in, slide in from left to right, roll in, etc.
(Set up and manage events on your WordPress site with the Thrive Lightbox plugin)
A lightbox and event is created automatically for your landing pages, but you also have complete control over the events, triggers and design.
Feedback From Users
Below are a couple of the testimonials that plugin customers have published about Thrive Content Builder:
”Wow! This is just getting better & better. This plugin is making my websites look so professional. Keep up the great work and thank you for the new features. Ladonna Ragalin”
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”Great stuff! I am really impressed by all the new additions. You guys have shown a true commitment to making these themes and the Content Builder awesome. Michael Johnson”
Plugin Tips
Thrive Content Builder works with any WordPress theme, not just with Thrive Landing Pages. Note, however, that you cannot use Thrive Content Builder to edit content on pages or posts that were not created with the plugin installed.
You can add WordPress short codes inside Thrive Content Builder or Thrive Landing Pages and they will display correctly on on your site.
Thrive Lightbox works with any content you build with Thrive Content Builder.
Support
Thrive Content Builder Plugin comes with free updates, new landing templates and upcoming features. The Thrive team is constantly working on adding new features and improving existing ones.
Thrive software is very well-supported, and users get unlimited upgrades, plus one year unlimited support with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 100% money-back guarantee.
This is an exciting product that will just keep getting better.
Product 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 Edition – This license lets you configure the plugin on one domain only. Pricing includes full feature set, unlimited updates and 1 year of unlimited support. Price = $59.00.
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This option lets you set up the plugin on all of your personal sites. Includes full feature set, unlimited updates and 1 year of unlimited support. Price = $87.00.
- Agency License – Use on your domains and on client web sites. Includes access to Thrive Content Builder, plus all Thrive Themes & Thrive Plugins. Cost = $247.00 per year.
Note: Price details for Thrive Content Builder can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price shown above was correct at the time this article was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details:
Additional Information
The Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder plugin developers emphatically maintain 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 make designing your pages faster, and on the other hand, you have complete control over your design process and the ability to change everything on your page, using the plugin’s visual content editor, that allows you to get things done without having to open multiple dialog boxes.
For demo videos showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Thrive plugins website.
Get The Plugin …
If you want to edit something, just click on the element and start editing. If you want to change something, you’ll see the change happen immediately. If you want to move something, all you have to do is drag it and drop it into its new location. There are no unnecessary steps involved.
If you want to transform and improve your web presence and create awesome sales pages, streamlined landing pages and engaging content, this plugin delivers an incredible conversion-boosting package with a single, inexpensive plugin.
For complete details, check out the plugin here:
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