WordPress has evolved from being just a simple blogging application to a tool that is now used to design all types of pages – marketing pages, portfolio pages, local business pages, etc.
Whatever you can imagine, someone is most likely already building it with WordPress!
This article will help you discover the ultimate drag and drop front end visual editor for WordPress websites.
Drag & Drop Content Editors For WordPress
Is The Default WordPress Content Editor Meeting All Of Your Content Creation And Editing Needs?
With all the rapid developments that the WordPress platform has undergone in recent years, many WordPress users believe that using the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor to create or edit complex page elements can sometimes be difficult.
(The built-in WordPress editor is great for adding, formatting and editing “linear” text and images, but adding 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 in your content would require inserting something like this inside your WordPress visual content editor …
Normally, this is not really an issue … unless you want to change a fundamental aspect of the layout (for example, move part of the content from box 1 into box 2, or change the background color in box 1 from green to gold. Then, you’re stuck having to mess around with page code.
The WordPress content editor is supposed to give users 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 more complex content elements, often what you see may not be the same as what you are going to get when the web page is published …
(“What You See” isn’t always “What You Get” … unless you can visualize code!)
In some cases, some people argue that users could be better off working inside the WordPress html editor tab instead of the WordPress visual editor when trying to add fancy layouts …
Even though WordPress is the most user-friendly CMS platform available, this makes it difficult for WordPress site owners with no knowledge of HTML or CSS to fully manage their own content.
The fundamental issue of using HTML and shortcodes to create content in the default WordPress WYSIWYG editor can be summarized as follows:
1) Speed – How long will it take to build a web page using the editor?
2) Abstraction – How closely does the content in the editor match the content in the “front end” when you are creating or editing a page?
As you can see from the above, what you see when working in the content editor doesn’t look even remotely similar to what you see in the front end. This means that users need 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 progressing, which can affect how quickly you can create your content, as you wait for your updates to refresh.
A number of WordPress web developers have come up with different solutions to try to address this issue. These solutions range from WordPress plugins you can install on your site that add new functionality to the editor, to WordPress themes that come with 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 including so many page design features, that users end up with complicated-looking front end content editors …
Many of these solutions work, but they don’t really address the fundamental problem with using shortcodes and HTML as described earlier. Creating and adding 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 layouts quickly, this can become quite frustrating.
Ask yourself this …
If there were no technical constraints, how would you like your content editor to work?
Now, visualize the following scenario …
- You spot something in your content that needs correction so you, simply click on the content and start changing it. Your content has been instantly fixed.
- You can drag and drop elements around the page, and the page looks exactly as it will display on the front end without having to mentally translate any code.
- You have an idea for some content you would like to create, so you just start typing, and your web page gets built as you go, with no delays, without switching of tab browsers, and no waiting for new web pages to republish and reload.
Would that not be the ideal way to build content for your web site? A true WYSIWYG editor where all you have to do is click-to-edit and drag and drop elements around your page?
(Imagine being able to create complex web 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 – Create Beautiful Web Page Layouts With Drag & Drop Ease In WordPress Websites
Plugin Description
Thrive Content Builder is a revolutionary plugin for WordPress that lets you easily add beautiful content to your posts and pages with true click-to-edit and drag and drop simplicity.
Thrive Content Builder is a new and incredibly easy way to speed up the process of adding content to WordPress web sites.
Once installed, the plugin adds a visual content editor with an item menu that lets you select, then drag and drop design elements to your page …
(Thrive Content Builder adds a new content editing option to your WordPress site)
The Thrive Content And Landing Page Builder plugin 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.
We will address each of the above and how these exciting features work seamlessly together to help you easily transform and improve your site and create awesome sales pages, streamlined landing pages and engaging content.
Thrive Content Builder – Click-To-Edit Drag & Drop Content Building Plugin For WordPress
With this plugin installed easily build complex web page design layouts using drag and drop elements …
Every aspect of your web page can be designed using simple “drag and drop” and “click-to-edit” …
Once you have positioned your elements on the page, you can then easily edit or customize these without going through multiple steps or switching screens …
The built-in functionality of the plugin also lets you work inside highly attractive landing pages and easily customize these …
Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages is simple, easy to use, and ideal for all WordPress users at all levels. In fact, designing web pages with the Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages plugin installed is so amazingly simple, that the developers guarantee that you will never look at creating and adding content the same way once you start using it
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 for WordPress that we have written about on this site.
See this post to read about the plugin:
Benefits Of Using Thrive Content And Page Builder Plugin
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Thrive Content Builder to speed up content creation:
Quick And Easy To Install And Set Up. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Thrive Content Builder is really easy to install. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Real-Time Content Content Creation
Thrive Content Builder is really simple and intuitive to use and lets you create and edit content in real-time.
A Truly Visual Content Builder
With Thrive Content Builder installed, what you see on the “back-end” as you work within the editor – fonts, elements, page layouts, etc. is exactly what you get in the front end of your site.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Add Stunning Layouts With Drag-And-Drop Ease: Create any layout you can imagine with drag and drop ease.
- Add Customizable Elements With No Short Codes Involved: With Thrive Content Builder you not only get a visually exciting drag and drop content editor, but the plugin also includes a collection of web design elements that you can use on your content layouts without using short codes, for e.g.: tabbed content, feature grids, section dividers, responsive videos, etc.
- More Enjoyable Content Creation: Not having to deal with technical stuff, or wait for your updates to load frees up your attention and allows you to be more focused while you build content or click through multiple layers of menus to get what you want done.
(Add, edit and customize page elements like testimonials, flat design elements, star ratings for review pages, page section dividers, responsive videos, etc.)
Thrive Content Builder Features
Thrive Content Builder offers web site owners many features. Here are just a few of these:
- Regular WordPress Content Functionality Is Still Available: You have all of the regular WordPress editing options that you are used to (e.g. underline, centering text, heading styles, etc.),
- Drag And Drop Elements Menu: The plugin makes a “drag and drop” table of elements available on your post or page screen when editing content.
- Conversion-Boosting Elements: The plugin provides you with various attention-grabbing and customizable elements that will help you increase the effectiveness of your sales pages, including buttons and call-to-action elements, testimonial boxes, and guarantees. In addition to customization options, various elements also offer multiple design options.
- Responsive Design: Add responsive elements like column layouts, text 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 create animation in images, 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 signup to purchase, product download and more.
(Thrive Landing Pages plugin gives you conversion-optimized web page templates)
Thrive Landing Pages – Benefits
- Hosted on your own WordPress site
- Save time and money creating pages for your WordPress website
- 100% conversion-optimized pages
- No coding skills required
- Works with all WordPress 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 beautifully designed, web page templates that are conversion-optimized 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 being worked on. In addition to the existing templates, expect to see new templates in the future for email lead generation, sales pages, lesson pages, personal branding pages, webinar pages and more.
Completely Customizable And Flexible Landing Page Template Sets
Typically, in order to have completely customizable landing page templates, you would need to either pay a web site 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 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 stunning pre-designed page templates that are fully optimized and ready to go, and complete design freedom that allows you to change and customize any aspect of the page template …
With the landing page template sets included with this plugin, you are able to:
- Change text in any bullet point, button, headline, etc.
- Remove text, images or any other part of your landing page
- Replace the background image or background colour
- Edit the color of links, buttons, text, etc.
- Use your own fonts
- Use your own images and graphics
- Change content area size
- Rearrange the order of elements on your pages
- Translate pages into different languages
- Add any kind of custom content anywhere inside the pages
- Use pre-designed, customized pages, or create your own from scratch and save them as new web page templates.
(Change or edit any element of your page templates)
Thrive Lightbox Plugin – Transform Your Site Into A Powerful Marketing Machine
The Thrive package includes Thrive Lightbox, which lets you add fully editable 2-step opt-in forms and events to your pages …
(Add opt-in forms and animated elements to your web pages with the Thrive Lightbox plugin)
Thrive Lighbox Two-Step Opt-in Forms
A 2-step opt-in process can help increase your conversion rates. When visitors click on an image or button they are presented with your opt-in form …
(Capture more leads and subscribers with a 2-step opt-in process)
Thrive Lightbox Event Manager
An “event” consists of a trigger and an action. You can make opt-in forms appear when your visitor clicks or hovers their mouse 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 attention-getting elements on your pages, using a range of effects (e.g. zoom out, slide in from right to left, rotate, etc.
(Set up and manage events on your sales pages with Thrive Lightbox)
A lightbox and event is created automatically for your landing pages, but you also have complete control over events, triggers and design.
Feedback From Users
Below are a few of the testimonials customers have written 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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”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 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 installed.
You can add short codes inside the Content Builder or Landing Pages plugin and they will be displayed correctly when published.
Thrive Lightbox works with any content built with Thrive Content Builder.
Product Support
Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder Plugin comes with free updates, new landing templates and upcoming features. The plugin developers are constantly working on adding new features and improving existing ones.
Thrive plugins are very well-supported, and users get lifetime updates, plus 1 year unlimited support with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, 30 day, full money-back guarantee.
This is an exciting product 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 License Edition – This allows you to run the plugin on 1 site only. Price includes full feature set, unlimited updates and 1 year of unlimited support. Price = $59.00.
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This allows you to configure the plugin on all of your personal web sites. Pricing includes full feature set, unlimited updates and 1 year of unlimited support. Cost = $87.00.
- Agency License – Use on all your websites & on all your client websites. Includes access to Thrive Content Builder, plus all Thrive Themes & Thrive Plugins. Price = $247.00 per year.
Please Note: Price details for Thrive Content Builder depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin retails for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Info
The developers of the Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages plugin 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 time-saving features like ready-made web page elements and template sets that help speed up content creation, and on the other hand, you also have complete control over your design process and the freedom to change and customize anything and everything on your page, using the plugin’s visual content editor, which allows you to work unhindered by overly complicated options.
For ”how-to” videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the plugin website.
Get This 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 need to do is simply drag it and drop it into its new position. There are no unnecessary steps involved.
If you want to transform and improve your business online and create awesome marketing pages, streamlined landing pages and engaging content, Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder delivers an incredible conversion-boosting package with a single, inexpensive plugin.
For full details, visit the plugin website:
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