WordPress has evolved from being just a simple blogging application into a tool that can be used to design all types of pages – landing pages, product showcase pages, local business pages, etc.
Whatever you can think of, someone is bound to be already building it using WordPress!
In this article you will discover the simplest, most intuitive visual content editor for WordPress websites.
Drag And Drop Content Editors For WordPress
Is The WordPress Visual Content Editor Still Meeting All Of Your Web Design Needs?
Using the built-in WordPress visual content editor to create or edit sophisticated website pages can sometimes be quite difficult, especially for non-technical website owners.
(The default WordPress WYSIWYG content editor is great for adding, formatting and editing conventional content, but adding complex layouts can be quite challenging!)
For example, let’s say you want to create something like the layout shown below …
Adding the above boxes with text and buttons would require entering something that looks like this into your WordPress content editor …
Generally, this is not really an issue … until you choose to reconfigure your layout (for example, move some of the content from box 1 into box 2, or replace the background colour inside box 3 from dark green to light green. Then, you’re stuck having to mess around with page 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 create complex content elements, often what you see on your screen may not be what you are getting when the page is published …
(“What You See” isn’t always “What You Get” … unless you can visualize code!)
In some situations, some people argue that you would probably be better off working inside the WordPress html (text) editor tab instead of the WordPress WYSIWYG editor when trying to build something other than simple page elements …
Even though WordPress is the most user-friendly CMS platform available, this makes it hard for WordPress site owners with no coding skills to fully manage their own content.
The fundamental challenge with using shortcodes and HTML to create content with WordPress can be summarized by asking 2 questions:
1) Speed – How long will it take to create a web page using this 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 you have to mentally translate what your content will look like when working with complex layouts. Other solutions require several steps before you can begin configuring your page layout, or endlessly switching tabs and performing updates to see how your content is progressing, which can interrupt the creative process, as you wait for pages to load.
Many WordPress web developers have tried to come up with various solutions to try to address this issue. These range from stand alone WordPress plugins you can add to 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 content creation easier!)
Some solutions combine so many page design features, that users need to learn how to work with complicated-looking front end editors …
Many of these alternative solutions work, but they don’t address the fundamental challenge of 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 page content to look “just right” quickly, this can become very frustrating after a while.
Ask yourself this …
If there were no technical constraints, how would you like your web content editor to function?
Now that you’ve asked this question, imagine the following …
- You see something in your content that needs fixing so you, simply click on the content and start writing. Your content has been instantly changed.
- You just drag and drop items around the page, and see them exactly as they will appear on the front end without having to mentally translate any HTML or shortcodes.
- You have an idea for some content you’d like to add, so you simply begin typing, and your web page gets built on the fly, with no delays, no switching tabs, and without waiting for new web pages to reload.
Would that not be the ideal way to create content for your WordPress site? A true visual content builder where all you have to do is click-to-edit and drag and drop elements around the pages and posts?
(Imagine being able to create complex web pages quickly for your web content without 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 And Landing Page Builder – Click-To-Edit Drag And Drop Content Editing Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Thrive Content Builder is a revolutionary WordPress plugin that lets you easily create and edit content on your posts and pages using true click-to-edit and drag and drop simplicity.
The Thrive Content Builder plugin 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 and a menu that lets you select, then drag and drop design elements on your page …
(Thrive Content Builder adds a new visual content builder to your WordPress site)
Thrive Landing Pages And Content Builder is actually a combination of the Thrive Content Builder and Thrive Landing Pages plugins combined into one, plus an additional plugin feature called Thrive Lightbox.
Let’s review each of the above and how all of this exciting functionality works together to help you easily transform and improve your site and create awesome marketing pages, streamlined landing pages and engaging content.
Thrive Content Builder Plugin
This plugin lets you easily add complex design layouts to your web pages using drag and drop elements …
Every aspect of your web page can be designed with ”click-to-edit” and “drag and drop” ease …
Once elements have been added to your page, you can then customize or edit these without going through additional steps or switching tabs …
You can also work inside stunning 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, designing pages and working on content with Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages installed is so amazingly simple, that the developers warn that you’ll never look at creating content the same way once you start using it
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Thrive Content Builder
Thrive Content Builder and Thrive Landing Pages were created by the same team that developed Thrive Leads, another great plugin for WordPress we’ve previously reviewed on this site.
See this page to read about this plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Below are 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 Simple To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Thrive Content Builder installs just like any WordPress plugin. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Edit And Create Content In Real Time
Thrive Content Builder is is not only simple to use, it also lets you add content to your web pages in real-time.
What You See Is Exactly What You Get
With Thrive Content Builder installed, what you see as you work within the content editor – typefaces, elements, layouts, etc. is exactly what you get on the front end of your site.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Beautiful Web Page Layouts With Drag And Drop Ease: Create any layout you can imagine with drag and drop ease.
- Add Design Elements With No Shortcodes Required: With the Thrive Content Builder plugin you not only get a visually exciting drag and drop content editor, but the plugin also includes a very decent collection of professional web design elements that you can add to your content layouts without using shortcodes, such as columns, styled lists, section dividers, countdown timers, etc.
- More Enjoyable Content Creation: Not having to deal with technical stuff for the content to load frees up your attention and allows you to build the web pages your business needs, quickly and without having to deal with code or click through multiple layers of menus to get what you want done.
(Insert, edit and customize page elements like testimonial boxes, pricing tables, borderless content, page section dividers, code insert boxes, etc.)
Features
Thrive Content Builder offers website owners many great features. Below we have listed just a few:
- Built-In Content Editor Functionality Is Preserved: You have all of the regular text editing options that you are used to (e.g. bold formatting, 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 for creating or editing content.
- Conversion-Boosting Elements: The plugin comes with a range of attention-grabbing and customizable elements that will help increase the effectiveness of your sales pages, including buttons and call-to-action elements, testimonial boxes, and guarantee forms. In addition to being customizable, multiple design options are also available for various elements.
- Responsive Design: Add mobile-friendly elements like columns, guarantee boxes, dividers, e.g. which will adjust to display great on different device screens.
- Add Animation To Web Pages: Thrive Content Builder’s Event Manager feature lets you insert animations, trigger lightboxes and more!
(Add Animated Elements To Your 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 designing gorgeous landing pages for your web site
- 100% conversion-optimized web pages
- No coding skills needed
- Works with all themes
Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder not only lets you create beautiful content in your WordPress posts and pages, but you can also choose from dozens of professionally designed, landing 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 30+ 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, course pages, personal branding pages, webinar pages and more.
Completely Customizable And Flexible Landing Page Template
Normally, in order to fully customize landing page templates, you would need to either hire a web site developer to do the work, or learn how to code web pages 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 overly complicated 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 great-looking pre-built web pages that are fully optimized and ready to go, and complete design freedom that lets you change or customize anything on the page …
With the landing page template sets included with this plugin, you can:
- Modify text in all headlines, buttons, bullet points, etc.
- Remove text, images or any other element of your landing page
- Change the background image and edit color
- Edit the color of text, buttons, links, etc.
- Use your own fonts
- Use your own images and graphics
- Change content area size
- Rearrange the order of web page elements
- Translate pages into a different language
- Add custom content inside any of the pages
- Use pre-designed, customized pages, or create your own web pages from scratch and save them as new web page templates.
(Change or customize anything on the page templates)
Thrive Lightbox – Transform Your Website Into A Marketing Machine
The Thrive package also includes the Thrive Lightbox plugin, which lets you add fully editable 2-step opt-in forms and animated elements to your content pages …
(Add lead capture forms and animated objects to your pages with the Thrive Lightbox plugin)
2-Step Opt-in Forms
A 2-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 …
(When visitors click on the button, they 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 your visitor clicks or hovers 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 attention-getting elements on your web pages, using a range of effects (e.g. zoom in, slide in from bottom to top, roll in, etc.
(Set up and manage events on your sales pages with Thrive Lightbox)
Lightboxes and events are created automatically for your landing pages, but you also have complete control over events, triggers and design.
User Feedback
Here are a few of the testimonials and feedback plugin customers have written about 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”
***
”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”
Plugin 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 that was not created with the plugin.
You can add WordPress shortcodes inside Thrive Content Builder or Thrive Landing Pages and they will be displayed correctly when published.
Thrive Lightbox works with any content built using Thrive Content Builder.
Support
Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder provides 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 lifetime upgrades, plus one year unlimited support with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 100% refund guarantee.
This is an exciting product for WordPress users that just keeps 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 Licensing – This option enables you to configure the plugin on one domain only. Price includes full feature set, unlimited updates and one year of unlimited support. Price = $59.00.
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This license option enables you to set up the plugin on unlimited web sites that you personally own. Includes full feature set, unlimited updates and 1 year of unlimited support. Price = $87.00.
- Agency License Edition – Use on your domains and on all your client domains. Includes access to Thrive Content Builder, plus all Thrive Themes & Thrive Plugins. Cost = $247.00 per year.
Please Note: Pricing details of the Thrive Content Builder product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author 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 current pricing here:
Additional Plugin Info
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 time-saving features like ready-made web page elements and conversion-optimized template sets that help make designing your pages faster, and on the other hand, you have complete control over the design process and the freedom to change and customize everything on your page, using the plugin’s click-to-edit and drag and drop features, which lets you work unhindered by overly complicated options.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the plugin website.
We Highly Recommend This …
If you want to edit something, you just click on the element and start editing. If you want to change something, you will see the change happen instantly. If you want to move something, simply drag it and drop it into its new location. There are no extra steps involved.
If you want to transform and improve your web site and create awesome marketing pages and engaging content, this plugin delivers an incredible conversion-boosting package with a single, inexpensive plugin.
To learn more, check out the plugin here:
***