WordPress has evolved from being just a simple blogging application to a tool that is now 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 probably already building it using WordPress!
This article will help you learn how to create stunning content and design beautiful web page layouts with drag & drop ease in WordPress websites.
Drag & Drop Content Editors For WordPress
Is The Default WordPress Editor Meeting All Of Your Content Creation And Editing Needs?
With so many developments that WordPress has undergone in recent years, many WordPress developers believe that the WordPress content editor is more suitable for performing ”linear” content editing than building or changing content elements with more complex layouts.
(The WordPress WYSIWYG editor is great for adding, formatting and editing “linear” text and images, but adding complex content elements can be quite challenging!)
For example, if you look at the illustration below …
To create the above boxes with text and buttons, users would need to insert shortcodes into the content for each element they would like to display to visitors …
Normally, this is not really an issue … unless you decide to reconfigure the layout (for example, move some of the content from box 3 into box 2, or change the button in a box from green to purple. Then, you’re stuck having to mess around with page code or html.
The WordPress 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 working with complex page elements, often what you see on your screen is not really 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 situations, users could be better off working directly inside the WordPress html editor tab instead of the WYSIWYG editor when trying to build complex page elements …
Even though WordPress is the most user-friendly CMS platform available, this makes it hard for users with no knowledge of HTML or CSS to have full control of their own content.
The fundamental issue of using HTML and shortcodes to create content with WordPress can be summarized as follows:
1) Speed – How long does it take to create a page using this 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 image, what you see when working in the back end looks nothing like what you see in the front end. This means that users have to abstract what the content will look like when working with sophisticated layouts. Other solutions require several steps before you can begin configuring your page layout, or endlessly switching browser tabs and performing tweaks and updates to see how your content is progressing, which then affects how quickly you can create your content, as you wait for pages to refresh.
Many WordPress web developers have tried to come up with different solutions to make the visual editor easier. Some of these alternative solutions range from plugins you can install on 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 include so many complex page design features, that users need to learn how to work with complicated-looking front end editors …
Many of these solutions work fine, but they still fail to address the fundamental challenge of using HTML and shortcodes as described earlier. Creating, adding and editing sophisticated content elements 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 content quickly, this can start to become quite frustrating.
Ask yourself this …
If there were no technical constraints, how would you like your page editor to function?
Now that you’ve asked this question, imagine this …
- You look at your content and if you spot something that needs fixing, just click on the content and start typing. Your content is then 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 translate shortcodes or HTML.
- You have an idea for some content that you would like to create, so you just start typing, and you build your page as you go, without delays, with no tab switching, and without having to wait for pages to republish and reload.
Would this not be the ideal way to create content for your web site? A true visual content builder where all you have to do is click-to-edit and drag and drop elements around the page?
(Imagine being able to create complex web page layouts quickly for your web content without 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 And Landing Pages
Plugin Description
Thrive Content Builder is a ground-breaking plugin for WordPress that gives you complete control over every aspect of your content layout with true click-to-edit and drag and drop simplicity.
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 with a sidebar menu that lets you click, then drag and drop design elements to your page …
(Thrive Content Builder adds a new visual content editor to your WordPress site)
The 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 a look at each of the above and how these powerful features work seamlessly together to help you transform and improve your website and create awesome marketing pages and engaging content.
Thrive Content Builder – WordPress Plugin
You can easily add complex design layouts to your web pages using drag and drop elements …
Every aspect of your page can be built with “drag and drop” and “click-to-edit” ease …
Once you have positioned your elements on the page, you can continue to further edit or customize these without going through additional steps or opening extra configuration screens …
You can also build highly attractive landing pages that can also be easily edited …
Thrive Content and Page Builder is simple, easy to use, and ideal for all WordPress users at all levels. In fact, designing web pages with the Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder plugin installed is so effortlessly easy, that the developers warn that once you start using it, you’ll never look back!
Learn more about this plugin here: Thrive Content Builder
The integrated Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder plugin was created by the same team that developed Thrive Leads, another amazing plugin for WordPress we’ve recommended on this site.
For more information about using this plugin, see this post:
Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Thrive Content Builder to speed up content creation:
Fast And Simple To Install And Set Up. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Thrive Content Builder is very easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP administrator section and activate.
Real-Time Content Content Editing
Thrive Content Builder is is not only simple to use, it also lets you edit content in real-time.
What You See Is Truly What You Get
With Thrive Content Builder installed, what you see as you work within the editor – fonts, elements, layouts, etc. is exactly what you get on the front end of your site.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Beautiful 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 a visually exciting click-to-edit content builder, but the plugin also includes a collection of customizable web design elements that you can insert into your content layouts without using short codes, like flat design elements, content reveal feature, call to action buttons, responsive video embeds, etc.
- Ideal For Non-Technical Users: Not having to deal with technical stuff, or wait for your updates to refresh 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 steps to get what you want done.
(Thrive Content Builder lets you easily insert, edit and customize web page elements like testimonials, tabbed content, borderless content, page section dividers, HTML code insert boxes, etc.)
Plugin Features
Thrive Content Builder provides a number of great features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- All WordPress Editor Functionality Is Preserved: You have all of the built-in WordPress text editing options that you are used to (e.g. underlines, left-aligned paragraphs, heading styles, etc.),
- Drag And Drop Multi-Style 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 includes various attention-grabbing and customizable elements that will help you increase your sales conversions, including buttons and call-to-action elements, testimonials, and guarantees. In addition to being customizable, various elements also offer multiple design options.
- Responsive Web Element Design: Add mobile-friendly elements like column layouts, guarantee boxes, content dividers, e.g. which will display correctly on all different kinds of devices.
- Add Animation To Pages: The Event Manager feature lets you create animated content elements, trigger lightboxes and more!
(Add Animated Elements To Your Web Pages)
Thrive Landing Pages – 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 lets you easily add conversion-optimized pages to your site)
Thrive Landing Pages – Benefits
- Hosted on your own WordPress site
- Save time and money building landing pages for your WordPress site
- 100% conversion-optimized web pages
- No web coding skills required
- Works with any theme
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 beautifully 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 currently over 30 templates available, with more templates being worked on. In addition to the existing templates, the developers plan to release new web page templates for email lead generation, sales pages, course pages, personal branding pages, webinar pages and more.
Fully Customizable And Flexible Landing Page Template
Typically, in order to fully customize landing page templates, you would need to either hire a web designer to do the work, or learn how to code web pages and figure out how to edit the page code 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 stunning pre-built pages that are fully optimized and ready to go, and complete design freedom that allows you to change or customize anything on the page template …
With the landing page templates included with this plugin, you can do the following:
- Change text in any button, headline, bullet point, etc.
- Delete text, images or any other element of the landing page
- Replace any background images or background colors
- Change the color of text, links, buttons, etc.
- Choose your own fonts
- Use your own images and graphics
- Change the size of the content area
- Rearrange the order of elements on your page
- Translate everything on the page into different languages
- Add any kind of custom content inside your 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 template)
Transform Your Site Into A Powerful Marketing Machine With Thrive Lightbox Plugin
The Thrive package also includes the Thrive Lightbox plugin, which lets you add fully editable two-step opt-in forms and animated elements to your content pages …
(Add opt-in forms and animation to your sales pages with Thrive Lightbox)
Thrive Lighbox 2-Step Opt-in Forms
A two-step opt-in process helps to improve your conversion rates. Visitors click on an image or button, and then 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 an opt-in form 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 page, using various animation effects (e.g. zoom out, slide in from left to right, roll in, etc.
(Set up and manage events on your web pages with Thrive Lightbox)
A lightbox and event is created automatically for your landing pages, but you also have complete control over all events, triggers and design.
Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials plugin users have written about the Thrive Content Builder plugin:
”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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“I’m blown away by the plugin. Keep up the incredible, WordPress changing work, guys! Dean Phillips”
Thrive Content Builder Plugin – 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 using the plugin.
You can add short codes 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 Landing Pages and Content Builder Plugin 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, and 1 year unlimited support with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 100% refund guarantee.
This is an exciting product for WordPress users that will just keep getting better.
Plugin 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 allows you to use the plugin on a single domain. Includes full feature set, unlimited updates and 1 year of unlimited support. Price = $59.00.
- Unlimited Sites License – This license option lets you activate the plugin on all domains that you own. Pricing includes full feature set, unlimited updates and 1 year of unlimited support. Price = $87.00.
- Agency License Edition – Use on all your web sites and on client web sites. Includes access to Thrive Content Builder, plus all Thrive Themes & Thrive Plugins. Cost = $247.00 per year.
Please Note: Pricing details of Thrive Content Builder depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is being retailed for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product author when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here:
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 beautiful, conversion-optimized template sets that help make designing your pages faster, and on the other hand, you also have complete control over the design process and the ability to edit and customize anything and everything on your web page, using the plugin’s visual content editor, which allows you to get things done without having to go through multiple steps.
For ”how to” videos showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Thrive Content Builder website.
Install This Plugin …
If you want to edit something, you click on the element and start editing. If you want to change something, you can see the change happen instantly. If you want to move something, you drag it and drop it into its new position. There are no complicated steps involved.
If you want to transform and improve your business online and create awesome sales pages, streamlined landing pages and engaging content, Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages delivers an incredible conversion-boosting package with a single, inexpensive plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin website here:
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