WordPress has evolved from being just a simple blogging application to a tool that can be used to design all types of web pages – marketing pages, portfolio pages, local business pages, etc.
Whatever you can imagine, somewhere around the world someone is probably already building it using WordPress!
This article will help you discover how to create beautiful web page layouts with drag & drop ease in WordPress.
Drag And Drop Content Editors For WordPress
Does The Default WordPress WYSIWYG Editor Still Meet All Of Your Page Design Needs?
With all the many developments that the WordPress platform has gone through in recent years, many WordPress users and developers believe that the WordPress content editor is lagging behind all other improvements made to the software.
(The WordPress WYSIWYG content editor is great for adding, formatting and editing “linear” text and images, but adding complex content elements can be quite challenging!)
For example, let’s say you want to create something like the layout shown below …
To create the above layout, you would have to add short codes to your content for each of the elements you want to create …
Normally, this is not really an issue … until you choose to change some part of the layout (for example, move some of the content from box 1 into box 2, or change the button in a box from red to light green. Then, you’re stuck having to mess around with code inside the editor.
The WordPress editor is supposed to give users an easy-to-use WYSIWYG content 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 what you are going to get when your web page goes live …
(“What You See” isn’t always “What You Get” … unless you can visualize code!)
In some cases, you would probably be better off working directly with the source html itself instead of the WYSIWYG editor when trying to add something other than simple layouts …
Even though WordPress is very user-friendly, this makes it hard for users with no knowledge of HTML or CSS to fully manage their own content.
The fundamental challenge with using HTML and shortcodes to create content in the default WordPress editor can be summarized by asking 2 questions:
1) Speed – How long will it take to build a 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 image, what you see in the editor doesn’t look even remotely similar to what you see in the front end. This means that users have to translate mentally what the content will look like when working with complex layouts. Other solutions require taking multiple steps before you can begin configuring your page layout, or endlessly going back and forth between tabs and performing tweaks and updates to see how your content is coming along, which then affects how fast you can create your content, as you wait for the updates to refresh.
A number of WordPress developers have come up with various solutions aiming to make content editing easier. These solutions range from standalone plugins you can install on your site that add new functionality to the editor, to WP themes that provide built-in features like drag and drop editing …
(WordPress “drag and drop” editors aim to make content creation easier!)
Some solutions require so many page design features, that users need to learn how to work with complicated-looking front end editors …
Many of these alternative editors work fine, but they don’t really seem to address the fundamental issue of using shortcodes and HTML as described earlier. Creating, adding and editing 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 page layouts quickly, this can become really frustrating after a while.
Ask yourself this …
If there were no technical constraints, how would you like your web content editor to work?
Now, imagine the following …
- You look at your content and if you see something that needs to be fixed, just click on the content and start editing it. Your content is instantly changed.
- 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 code.
- You have an idea for a specific piece of content you would like to add, so you simply begin typing, and you build your web page as you go, without delays, without tab switching, and no waiting for new content to republish and reload.
Would that not be the ideal way to build content for your WordPress site? Just click-to-edit and drag and drop elements around the page?
(Imagine being able to create complex pages 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 – Click-To-Edit Drag And Drop Content Editor For WordPress
Plugin Description
Thrive Content Builder is a truly intuitive WordPress click-to-edit drag-and-drop content creator and editor.
The Thrive Content Builder plugin is a new and exciting way to speed up the process of adding amazing content to your WordPress website.
Once installed, Thrive Content Builder adds a visual content editor with an item menu that lets you click, then drag and drop design elements on your page …
(Thrive Content Builder adds a new visual content editor to WordPress)
Thrive Content Builder And Landing Pages 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.
Let’s examine all of the above and how these features work together to help you transform and improve your web site and create amazing marketing pages and content.
Thrive Content Builder – Click-To-Edit Drag & Drop Content Creator And Editor For WordPress
With this plugin installed easily add content to your web pages and build complex page layouts using drag and drop elements …
Every aspect of your page can be created using “drag and drop” and “click-to-edit” …
Once elements have been added to a page, you can then further customize or edit these without having to go through additional steps or switching screens …
The built-in functionality of the plugin also lets you work inside beautiful landing pages that can also be easily customized …
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 Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder installed is so amazingly easy, that the developers guarantee that once you start using it, you’ll never look back!
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 excellent plugin for WordPress we’ve recommended on this site.
To read more about this plugin, go here:
Benefits Of Using Thrive Content Builder And Landing Pages Plugin
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Thrive Content Builder to speed up your page design and content creation process:
Fast And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Go To Work In No Time.
Thrive Content Builder installs like every other plugin. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Real-Time Content Content Creation
Thrive Content Builder is is not only simple and intuitive to use, it also lets you 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 content editor – fonts, elements, layouts, etc. is exactly what you get on the front end of your site.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Beautiful Layouts With Drag & Drop Ease: Create any layout you can imagine with intuitive drag and drop functionality.
- Add Customizable Elements With No Shortcodes Involved: With Thrive Content Builder you not only get a click-to-edit content builder, but the plugin also includes a jaw-dropping collection of customizable web design elements that you can insert into your web pages without using short codes, like tabbed content, borderless content, testimonials, custom HTML and CSS, etc.
- Ideal For Non-Technical Users: Not having to constantly switch tabs as you edit your content and then wait for the updated content to load frees up your attention and allows you to build the content your business needs, quickly and without having to edit code or click through multiple steps to get what you need done.
(Create, edit and customize web page elements like testimonial boxes, flat design elements, feature grids, section dividers, responsive maps, etc.)
Plugin Features
Thrive Content Builder provides WordPress users many features. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Regular WordPress Content Functionality Is Still Available: You have access to all of the built-in text editing options that you are used to (e.g. bold formatting, left-aligned text, headings, etc.),
- Drag And Drop Multi-Style Elements: The plugin adds a “drag and drop” list of elements to your post or page screen for editing content.
- Conversion-Boosting Elements: The plugin comes with various attention-grabbing and customizable elements that will help you increase your conversions, including buttons and call-to-action elements, testimonials, and guarantee forms. In addition to being customizable, multiple design options are also available for various elements.
- Mobile-Friendly Design: Add mobile-friendly columns, guarantee boxes, dividers, e.g. which will display correctly on all different kinds of devices.
- Add Animation Events To Web Pages: The Event Manager feature lets you create animations, trigger lightboxes and more!
(Add Animated Elements To Your Web Pages)
Thrive Landing Pages – Landing Page Templates
Landing page sets are templates that work together logically and use the same conversion-optimized design language to take your visitors all the way from signup to purchase, product download and more.
(Thrive Landing Pages lets you easily add conversion-optimized web pages to your website)
Thrive Landing Pages Plugin – Benefits
- Hosted on your own WordPress site
- Save time and money building great-looking landing pages for your WordPress website
- 100% conversion-optimized web pages
- No technical skills needed
- Works with any theme
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, conversion optimized web page templates and fully customizable …
(Landing page sets that work together logically and use the same conversion-optimized design language)
There are over thirty templates available, with more templates planned for release. In addition to the templates shown above, the developers plan to release new web page templates for email lead generation, sales pages, lesson pages, personal branding pages, webinar pages and more.
Fully Customizable And Flexible Landing Page Template Sets
Typically, to be able to fully customize landing page templates, you would need to either pay a web site 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 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 creating conversion-optimized web pages.”
Thrive Landing Pages gives you great-looking pre-built web page templates that are fully optimized and ready to go, and complete design freedom that lets you change or customize any element of the page templates …
The landing page templates included with this plugin let you do the following:
- Modify text in any button, headline, bullet point, etc.
- Delete text, images or any other component of your landing page
- Replace any background images or colors
- Edit the color of buttons, links, text, etc.
- Choose your own fonts
- Select your own images and graphics
- Change content area size
- Change the order of elements on the pages
- Translate pages into a different language
- Add custom content anywhere inside the pages
- Use pre-designed, customized pages, or create your own pages from scratch and save them as new web page templates.
(Change and edit any aspect of the page templates)
Transform Your Web Site Into A Marketing Machine With Thrive Lightbox Plugin
The Thrive package includes the Thrive Lightbox plugin, which lets you add fully customizable two-step opt-in forms and events to your WordPress site …
(Add opt-in forms and animated objects to your WordPress web site with Thrive Lightbox)
Thrive Lighbox Two-Step Opt-in Forms
A two-step opt-in process can improve your conversion rates. Visitors click on an image or button, and then they are presented with your opt-in form …
(2-step opt-in forms help improve your conversion rates.)
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 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 attention-getting elements on your page, using a range of effects (e.g. fade out, slide in from left to right, roll in, etc.
(Set up and manage events on your web pages with the Thrive Lightbox plugin)
Lightboxes and events are created automatically for your landing pages, but you also have complete control over the events, triggers and design.
Feedback From Users
Here are some of the testimonials that plugin users have written about 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”
***
“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 Thrive Landing Pages. You cannot use Thrive Content Builder to edit content that was not created using the plugin.
You can add WordPress shortcodes inside Thrive Content Builder or Thrive Landing Pages and they will be displayed correctly on on your site.
Thrive Lightbox works with any content built with Thrive Content Builder.
Support
Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages comes with free updates, new landing pages and upcoming features. The Thrive team is constantly working on adding new features and improving existing ones.
Thrive software is well-supported, and users get unlimited updates, plus 1 year unlimited support with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 100% money-back guarantee.
This is an exciting product for WordPress users that will just keep getting better.
Software Price
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 license option allows you to install the plugin on a single domain. Includes full feature set, unlimited updates and one year of unlimited support. Price = $59.00.
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This edition lets you run the plugin on all of your personal sites. It includes full feature set, unlimited updates and 1 year of unlimited support. Cost = $87.00.
- Agency License Edition – This option enables you to configure the plugin on all of your own web sites and your client sites. Includes access to Thrive Content Builder, plus all Thrive Themes & Thrive Plugins. Price = $247.00 per year.
Please Note: Pricing for the Thrive Content Builder product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here:
Additional Info
The Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages 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 the time-saving benefits of ready-made web page elements and template sets that help make designing your content faster, and on the other hand, you have complete control over the design process and the freedom to change anything and everything on your web page, using the plugin’s visual content editor, that allows you to get things done without having to go through multiple steps.
For ”how-to” videos showing how the plugin works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Thrive Content Builder website.
The Bottom Line …
If you want to edit something, simply click on the element and start editing. If you want to change something, do it, and you will see the change happen immediately. If you want to move something, just drag it and drop it into its new location. There are no complicated steps involved.
If you want to transform and improve your web presence and create amazing sales pages, streamlined landing pages and engaging content, this plugin delivers an incredible conversion-boosting package with a single, inexpensive plugin.
For more details, check out the plugin here:
***
