WordPress has evolved from being just a simple blogging tool into a tool that can be used to create all kinds of websites.
Whatever you can think of, someone is bound to be already building it using WordPress!
In this article you will discover the simplest visual editor for WordPress.
Drag & Drop Content Editors For WordPress
Is The WordPress WYSIWYG Editor Meeting All Of Your Web Design Needs?
With all the rapid developments that WordPress has undergone in recent years, many WordPress developers and users feel that using the WordPress visual content editor to create or edit complex web pages can be quite difficult.
(The default WordPress visual content editor is great for adding, formatting and editing “linear” content, but adding more complex layouts can be challenging!)
For example, let’s say you want to create something like the content shown below …
Creating the above in a page would require adding something that looks like this in your default WordPress visual editor …
Typically, this is not an issue … unless you have to edit an integral aspect of your layout (for example, move part of the content from box 1 into box 2, or replace the button in box 2 from bright red to light green. Then, you’re stuck having to mess around with page code or html.
The WordPress content editor is supposed to be an easy-to-use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, but as you can see, if you are trying to create more complex content elements, often what you see in the visual editor may not be the same as what you are going to get when the page goes live …
(“What You See” isn’t always “What You Get” … unless you can visualize code!)
In some instances, you may even be better off working inside the WordPress html editor tab instead of the WordPress visual editor when trying to build non-linear layouts …
Even though WordPress is extremely easy to use, this makes it hard for users without knowledge of HTML or CSS to fully manage their own content.
The fundamental challenge of using HTML and shortcodes to create content in WordPress can be summarized as follows:
1) Speed – How long will it take to create a web page using the editor?
2) Abstraction – How closely does the content in the editor resemble the “front end” content when you are creating or editing a page?
As you can see from the above, what you see in the editor does not look anything like what you see in the front end. This means that you have to mentally translate what the content will look like when working with complex layouts. Other solutions require several steps before you can begin 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 interrupts the creative process, as you wait for the page to reload.
A number of WordPress web developers have come up with various solutions with the aim of making content editing easier. Some of these alternative solutions range from WP plugins you can install on your site that add new functionality to the editor, to WordPress themes that provide built-in features like drag and drop editing …
(WordPress “drag and drop” editors aim to make creating complex content easier!)
Some solutions require so many complex page design features, that users end up with complicated-looking front end editors …
Many of these alternative editors work fine, but they still fail to address the fundamental problem with using HTML and shortcodes as described earlier. Creating and adding non-linear content 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 web pages to look “just right” quickly, this can become really frustrating.
Ask yourself this …
If there were no technical constraints, how would you like your web page builder to function?
Now that you’ve asked this question, 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 has been instantly fixed.
- You can drag and drop elements on the page, and see them exactly as they will display on the front end without having to mentally visualize shortcodes or HTML.
- You have an idea for a specific piece of content you would like to add, so you immediately start typing, and your web page gets built as you go, with no delays, with no switching of tab browsers, and without waiting for new pages to reload.
Would that not be the ideal way to build content for your web site? A true WYSIWYG content builder where all you have to do is click-to-edit and drag and drop elements around your pages and posts?
(Imagine being able to create complex web pages 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 – The Simplest, Most Intuitive Visual Content Editor For WordPress
Plugin Description
Thrive Content Builder is a unique WordPress plugin that allows users to quickly add amazing content to their posts and pages with a click-to-edit and drag and drop content editor.
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 with a sidebar menu that lets you drag and drop design elements to your page …
(Thrive Content Builder adds a new content editor to your WordPress site)
The Thrive Content And Page 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.
We will take an in-depth look at each of the above and how all of this powerful functionality works together to help you easily transform and improve your business online and create amazing marketing pages and engaging content.
Thrive Content Builder – WordPress Click-To-Edit Drag & Drop Content Builder
Thrive Content Builder lets you easily add content to your web pages using drag and drop elements …
Every aspect of your page can be built by ”clicking-to-edit” and “dragging and dropping” things around the page …
Once you have placed your elements on your page, you can then customize these without going through additional steps or complicated configuration screens …
The built-in functionality of the plugin also lets you work inside stunning landing pages that can just as easily be edited or customized …
Thrive Content Builder is simple, easy to use, and ideal for all WordPress users at all levels. In fact, designing web pages with Thrive Content and Page Builder installed is so amazingly easy, that the developers warn that you will never look back once you start using it
More info: Thrive Content Builder
The integrated Thrive Content Builder plugin was created by the same team that developed Thrive Leads, another excellent plugin for WordPress we’ve previously reviewed on this site.
To read more about the plugin, see this post:
Benefits
Below 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:
Easy & Quick To Install
Thrive Content Builder is quite easy to install. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Edit Content In Real Time
Thrive Content Builder is is not only very simple to use, it also lets you edit content in real-time.
A Truly Visual Content Editor
With Thrive Content Builder installed, what you see as you work within the editor – typefaces, visual elements, page layouts, etc. is exactly what your visitors will see on the front end of your site.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Eye-Catching Web Page Layouts With Drag-And-Drop Ease: Create any kind of layout you can imagine with intuitive drag and drop functionality.
- Add Design Elements Without Using Short Codes: 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 professional design elements that you can customizable and insert into your web pages without using short codes, such as tabbed content, content reveal feature, call to action buttons, responsive Google map embeds, etc.
- Ideal For Non-Technical Users: Not having to constantly switch tabs as you tweak content and then wait for your updates to reload frees up your attention and allows you to build the pages your business needs, quickly and without having to edit code or click through multiple layers of menus to get what you want done.
(Create, edit and customize page elements like testimonial boxes, tabbed content, star ratings for review pages, buttons, custom HTML and CSS, etc.)
Thrive Content Builder Features
Thrive Content Builder offers many powerful features to web site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Built-In Content Editor Functionality Is Still Available: You have access to all of the built-in content editing options that you are used to (e.g. underlines, paragraph formatting, headings, etc.),
- Drag And Drop Multi-Style Elements: The plugin adds a “drag and drop” list of multi-style elements to your post or page screen for editing content.
- Conversion-Boosting Elements: The plugin includes various attention-grabbing and customizable elements that will help increase your conversions, including buttons and call-to-action elements, testimonials, and guarantee forms. In addition to customization options, various elements also offer multiple design options.
- Responsive Element Design: Add responsive columns, guarantee boxes, content dividers, e.g. which will adjust to display correctly on different device screens.
- Add Animation Events To Web Pages: The plugin’s Event Manager feature lets you insert animated content elements, trigger lightboxes and more!
(Add Animated Elements To Your Web Pages)
Thrive Landing Pages Plugin – Landing Page Template Sets
Landing page sets are web 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 lets you add conversion-optimized pages to your site)
Thrive Landing Pages Plugin – Benefits
- Hosted on your own WordPress site
- Save time designing and customizing pages
- 100% conversion-optimized web pages
- No web coding skills required
- Works with all themes
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 landing page templates and fully customizable …
(Landing page sets that work together logically and use the same conversion-optimized design language)
There are currently over thirty templates available, with more templates planned for future release. In addition to the templates shown above, expect to see new templates in the future for email lead generation, sales pages, training pages, personal branding pages, webinar pages and more.
Customize Your Landing Page Template Sets
Normally, to be able to have fully customizable 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 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 creating conversion-optimized web pages.”
Thrive Landing Pages gives you great-looking pre-designed web page templates that are fully optimized and ready to go, and complete design freedom that lets you change or customize any aspect of the page …
With the landing page template sets included with this plugin, you can:
- Change text in all bullet points, buttons, headlines, etc.
- Remove text, images or any other component of the landing page
- Change all background images and background color
- Change the color of buttons, links, text, etc.
- Choose your own fonts
- Select your own images and graphics
- Edit content area size
- Rearrange the order of web page elements
- Translate everything on the page into a different language
- Add any kind of custom content anywhere in your pages
- Use pre-designed, customized pages, or create your own landing pages from scratch and save them as new page templates.
(Change or edit any aspect of your page templates)
Thrive Lightbox – Transform Your Web Site Into A Powerful Marketing Machine
The Thrive plugin combo includes the Thrive Lightbox plugin, which lets you add fully customizable two-step opt-in forms and animated elements to your website …
(Add opt-in forms and animated elements to your marketing pages with the Thrive Lightbox plugin)
2-Step Opt-in Forms
A two-step opt-in process helps improve your conversion rates. Visitors click on a button or image, and then 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 opt-in forms appear when when visitors click or hover over a button or graphic elements, or when someone reaches a certain point on the page. You can also use the Event Manager to animate images on your page, using a range of effects (e.g. zoom in from the page center, slide in from right to left, rotate, etc.
(Set up and manage events on your WordPress website with the Thrive Lightbox plugin)
Lightboxes and events are created automatically for your landing pages, but you also have complete control over events, triggers and design.
Testimonials From Plugin Customers
Here are just some testimonials and feedback that plugin customers have submitted regarding 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. Note, however, that you cannot use Thrive Content Builder to edit content that was not created with the plugin installed.
You can add WordPress shortcodes inside Thrive Content Builder or Thrive Landing Pages and they will display correctly on the front end.
Thrive Lightbox works with any content you build with Thrive Content Builder.
Thrive Content Builder Support
Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages comes with free updates, new landing pages and upcoming features. The plugin developers are constantly working on adding new features and improving existing ones.
Thrive software is really well-supported, and users get unlimited software updates, plus 1 year unlimited support with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, thirty day, complete money-back guarantee.
This is an exciting product for WordPress users that will just keep getting better.
Product Cost
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 License – This option allows you to set up the plugin on one web site only. Cost includes full feature set, unlimited updates and 1 year of unlimited support. Price = $59.00.
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This enables you to use the plugin on all web sites that you own. Includes full feature set, unlimited updates and 1 year of unlimited support. Price = $87.00.
- Agency Edition – Use on all your web sites & on all your client web sites. Pricing includes access to Thrive Content Builder, plus all Thrive Themes & Thrive Plugins. Price = $247.00 per year.
Note: The cost of purchasing Thrive Content Builder can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the price when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price set by the product seller when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Plugin Info
The Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages plugin developers repeatedly 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 web page elements and template sets that help to make designing your content faster, and on the other hand, you also have complete control over the design process and the ability to edit anything and everything on your page, using the plugin’s visual content editor, which allows you to work unhindered by overly complicated options.
For demo videos showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Thrive plugins website.
Get This Plugin …
If you want to edit something, simply click on the element and start editing. If you want to change something, do it, and you’ll see the change happen instantly. If you want to move something, all you need to do is drag it and drop it into its new position. There are no overly complicated steps involved.
If you want to transform and improve your business online and create awesome sales pages and content, this plugin delivers an incredible conversion-boosting package with a single, inexpensive plugin.
For complete details, visit the plugin website:
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