WordPress has evolved from being just a simple blogging application to a tool that is now used to create all kinds of websites.
Whatever you can think of, somewhere around the world someone is bound to be already building it with WordPress!
This article will help you discover how to create stunning content with drag & drop ease in WordPress websites.
Drag And Drop Content Editors For WordPress
The WordPress Content Editor – Is There An Easier Way For Designing Web Pages In WordPress?
With so many improvements that WordPress has undergone in recent years, many WordPress developers and users feel that the WordPress content editor is not really suitable for creating or customizing complex web page layouts.
(The WordPress visual content editor is great for adding, formatting and editing conventional content, but adding complex layouts can be challenging!)
For example, let’s say you want to create something like the layout shown below …
To create the above layout, users would normally have to add shortcodes to the content for each page element they would like to add to their page …
Normally, this is not an issue … unless you decide to reconfigure the layout (for example, move part of the content from box 3 into box 2, or change the button inside a box from red to light green. Then, you’re stuck having to mess around with code.
The WordPress visual editor is supposed to be an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor, but as you can see, if you are trying to add complex layouts, often what you see in the visual editor 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 may even be better off working inside the WordPress text editor tab instead of the WordPress WYSIWYG editor when trying to add something other than simple layouts …
Even though WordPress is very user-friendly, this makes it difficult for non-technical users to fully manage their own content.
The fundamental problem about using HTML and shortcodes to create content in the default WordPress editor can be summarized as follows:
1) Speed – How long does it take to build a page using this 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 image, what you see when working in the editor does not look even remotely similar to 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 a number of steps before you can start configuring your page layout, or endlessly switching tabs and performing tweaks and updates to see how your content is coming along, which can impact how quickly you can create your content, as you wait for your updates to reload.
A number of WordPress developers have come up with various solutions with the objective of addressing this issue. These solutions range from plugins you can add to 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 content easier!)
Some solutions end up combining so many page-building features, that users end up with complicated-looking front end editors …
Many of these alternative editors work, but they don’t really seem to address the fundamental challenge 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 ”perfect” quickly, this can become really frustrating.
Ask yourself this …
If there were no technical constraints, how would you like to build and edit your web content?
Now that you’ve asked this question, visualize this …
- You see something in your content that needs changing so you, just click on the content and start changing it. Your content is instantly edited.
- You just drag and drop items around the page, and the page looks exactly as it will appear on the front end without having to mentally translate any code.
- You have an idea for a specific piece of content you’d like to add, so you immediately start typing, and you build your web page on the fly, without delays, no switching of tab browsers, and no waiting for new web content to refresh and reload.
Would this not be the perfect way to build content for your WordPress website? Just click-to-edit and drag and drop elements around your 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 – The Fastest Way To Create Stunning Content In WordPress Web Sites
Plugin Description
Thrive Content Builder is a ground-breaking WordPress plugin that allows you to quickly add content to your posts and pages with a powerful 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, Thrive Content Builder adds a visual content editor and an item menu that lets you select, then drag and drop design elements on your page …
(Thrive Content Builder adds a new visual editor to your WordPress site)
Thrive 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.
We’ll take an in-depth look at all of the above and how all of this powerful functionality works together to help you easily transform and improve your business online and create awesome marketing pages, streamlined landing pages and engaging content.
Thrive Content Builder
With the Thrive Content Builder plugin, you can easily add complex design layouts 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 edit them without going through multiple steps or opening new settings windows …
The built-in Thrive Landing Pages also lets you create highly attractive landing pages that can also be easily customized …
Thrive Landing Pages and 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 Landing Page Builder installed is so effortlessly simple, that the developers guarantee that you will never look back once you start using it
To learn more about the plugin go here: 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.
To read more about the plugin, see this post:
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the benefits of using Thrive Content Builder to speed up content creation:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Thrive Content Builder is very easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Real-Time Content Content Editing
Thrive Content Builder is is not only very simple and intuitive to use, it also lets you 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, visual elements, page layouts, etc. is exactly what you get on the front end of your site.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Stunning Web Page Layouts With Drag And Drop Ease: Create any type of layout you can imagine with intuitive drag-and-drop functionality.
- Design Elements Included: With the Thrive Content Builder plugin you not only get an amazing click-to-edit WordPress content builder, but the plugin also includes an impressive collection of professional web design elements that you can customizable and add to your layouts without using shortcodes, for e.g.: columns, content reveal feature, testimonials, responsive maps, etc.
- Ideal For Non-Technical Users: Not having to constantly switch tabs as you tweak content and then wait for pages to reload frees up your attention and allows you to build the pages your business needs, quickly and without having to deal with code or click through multiple layers of menus to get what you need done.
(Thrive Content Builder lets you easily add, edit and customize web page elements like testimonials, tabbed content, borderless content, page section dividers, Google Map embeds, etc.)
Thrive Content Builder Features
Thrive Content Builder provides a number of features to site owners. Below we have listed just some of those:
- Built-In Content Editor Functionality Is Still Available: You have all of the regular text editing options that you are used to (e.g. underlines, justified paragraphs, heading styles, etc.),
- Drag And Drop Elements Menu: The plugin adds a “drag and drop” list of elements to your post or page screen when editing content.
- Conversion-Boosting Elements: The plugin includes a range of attention-grabbing and customizable elements that will help increase your sales conversions, including buttons and call-to-action elements, testimonial boxes, and guarantees. In addition to customization options, multiple design options are also available for various elements.
- Responsive Design: Add responsive elements like column layouts, text boxes, section dividers, e.g. which will adjust to display great on different device screens.
- Add Animation Events To Pages: The plugin’s Event Manager feature lets you create animation in buttons, trigger lightboxes and more!
(Add Animated Elements To Your Pages)
Thrive Landing Pages Plugin – Landing Page Template 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 lets you easily add conversion-optimized pages to your site)
Thrive Landing Pages Plugin – Benefits
- Everything is hosted on your own WordPress site
- Save time building professional web pages
- 100% conversion-optimized pages
- No tech skills required
- Works with any theme
Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder 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, conversion optimized landing page templates and fully customizable …
(Landing page template sets that work together logically and use the same conversion-optimized design language)
There are currently over 30 templates available, with more templates planned for release. In addition to the templates shown above, the developers plan to release new page templates for email lead generation, sales pages, course pages, personal branding pages, webinar pages and more.
Completely Customizable And Flexible Landing Page Template Sets
Normally, in order to fully customize a landing page template, you would need to either hire a web 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 creating conversion-optimized web pages.”
Thrive Landing Pages gives you beautiful pre-built web pages that are fully optimized and ready to go, and complete design freedom that allows you to change and edit any element of your page templates …
The landing page templates included with this plugin let you do the following:
- Modify text in all headlines, buttons, bullet points, etc.
- Remove text, images or any other component of the landing page
- Replace all background images and edit colors
- Edit the color of text, buttons, links, etc.
- Select your own fonts
- Use your own images
- Edit content area size
- Change the order of elements on the page
- Translate pages into a different language
- Add any type of custom content in any of the pages
- Use pre-designed, customized pages, or create your own from scratch and save them as new page templates.
(Change or edit any element of your page templates)
Thrive Lightbox – Transform Your Site Into A Marketing Machine
The Thrive package also includes Thrive Lightbox, which lets you add fully editable two-step opt-in forms and events to your website …
(Add opt-in forms and events to your sales pages with Thrive Lightbox)
2-Step Opt-in Forms
A two-step opt-in process can help increase your conversion rates. When visitors click on a button or image they are presented with your opt-in form …
(Opt-in forms help increase your conversion rates.)
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 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 page, using a range of effects (e.g. fade out, slide in from right to left, 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 events, triggers and design.
Feedback From Users
Below are a couple of the testimonials and feedback that users have provided for the Thrive Content Builder plugin:
“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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“I’m blown away by the plugin. Keep up the incredible, WordPress changing work, guys! Dean Phillips”
Useful Tips
Thrive Content Builder works with any theme in WordPress, not just with the Thrive Landing Pages plugin. Note, however, that you cannot use Thrive Content Builder to edit content on pages or posts that were not created using the plugin.
You can add WordPress shortcodes inside Thrive Content Builder or Thrive Landing Pages and they will display correctly on your website.
Thrive Lightbox works with any content built with Thrive Content Builder.
Support
Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages 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 well-supported, and users get lifetime software updates, plus one year unlimited support with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, 30 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 option allows you to activate the plugin on one site only. Pricing includes full feature set, unlimited updates and one year of unlimited support. Cost = $59.00.
- Unlimited Sites License – This option enables you to run 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 Edition – Use on all your domains & on all your client websites. Includes access to Thrive Content Builder, plus all Thrive Themes & Thrive Plugins. Price = $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 pricing above was current when this content was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product developer when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Info
The Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages 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 web page elements and beautiful, conversion-optimized template sets that help to make designing your content faster, and on the other hand, you also have complete control over your design process and the freedom to edit everything on your web page, using the plugin’s visual content editor, which lets you work unhindered by overly complicated steps.
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.
The Bottom Line …
If you want to edit something, you just click on the element and start editing. If you want to change something, you can see the change happen immediately. 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 website and create amazing marketing pages and engaging content, Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder delivers an incredible conversion-boosting package with a single, inexpensive plugin.
For more information, visit the plugin website here:
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