WordPress has evolved from being just a simple blogging tool to a tool that is now used to create all kinds of websites.
Whatever you can imagine, someone is most likely already building it with WordPress!
This article will help you discover the simplest way to create beautiful layouts in WordPress web sites.
Drag & Drop Content Editors For WordPress
Does The Default WordPress Visual Content Editor Still Meet All Of Your Content Creation And Editing Needs?
With all the many improvements that the WordPress platform has gone through in recent years, many WordPress developers and users believe that using the WordPress visual content editor to build or edit more complex website pages can be challenging.
(The built-in WordPress visual content editor is great for adding, formatting and editing conventional text and media, but adding complex layouts can be quite challenging!)
For example, if you look at the illustration below …
To create the above layout, users would normally need to add shortcodes to the content for each element they would like to add to their page …
Generally, this is not an issue … until you decide to edit an element of the layout (for example, move some of the content from box 1 into box 2, or replace the background color inside box 3 from bright red to blue. Then, you’re stuck having to mess around with code inside the editor.
The WordPress visual content editor is supposed to be an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor, but as you can see, if you are trying to add more complex page elements, often what you see on your editor screen may not be what you are getting when the page goes live …
(“What You See” isn’t always “What You Get” … unless you can visualize code!)
In some cases, users could even be better off working with the source html itself instead of the WordPress WYSIWYG editor when trying to add fancy page elements …
Even though WordPress is the most user-friendly CMS platform available, this makes it difficult for non-technical users to fully manage their own content.
The fundamental challenge with having to use shortcodes and HTML 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 resemble 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 back end doesn’t look at all like what you see in the front end. This means that users need to mentally translate what the content will look like when working with complex layouts. Other solutions require taking a number of steps before you can start configuring your page layout, or endlessly going back and forth between tabs and performing updates to see how your content is progressing, which can interrupt the creative process, as you wait for the updates to reload.
A number of WordPress web developers have come up with various solutions with the goal of addressing this issue. These solutions range from WordPress plugins you can add to your site that add new functionality to the editor, to WordPress themes that provide 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 page-building 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 issue of using HTML and shortcodes as described earlier. Creating and adding 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 your content to look ”perfect” quickly, this can start to become very frustrating after a while.
Ask yourself this …
If there were no technical constraints, how would you like your page editor to work?
Now that you’ve asked this question, visualize this …
- You look at your content and if you spot something that needs changing, just click on the content and start writing. Your content has been instantly edited.
- You can just drag and drop elements on the page, and the page looks exactly as it will display on the front end without having to mentally translate any HTML or shortcodes.
- You have an idea for a specific item of content you would like to add, so you just start typing, and you build your page as you go, with no delays, without tab switching, and without having to wait for new web content to reload.
Would this not be the perfect way to build content for your WordPress site? A true visual editor where all you have to do is click-to-edit and drag and drop elements around your posts and pages?
(Imagine being able to create complex web pages ”on the fly” 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 Landing Pages And Content Builder – Click-To-Edit Drag & Drop Content Editing Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Thrive Content Builder is a unique WordPress plugin that gives you total control over every aspect of your web page using a click-to-edit and drag and drop content editor.
The Thrive Content Builder plugin provides WordPress users with a new and exciting way to set up conversion-focused pages on any WordPress website.
Once installed, the plugin adds a visual content editor with an item menu that lets you drag and drop design elements on your page …
(Thrive Content Builder adds a new visual content editor to WordPress)
The Thrive Content Builder 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’ll cover all of the above and how all of this powerful functionality works seamlessly together to help you transform and improve your business online and create amazing marketing pages, streamlined landing pages and engaging content.
Thrive Content Builder – Click-To-Edit Drag & Drop Content Builder Plugin For WordPress
With the Thrive Content Builder plugin, you can easily add content to your web pages using drag and drop elements …
Every element on your page can be designed, edited and moved around by dragging and dropping things around the page and then clicking to edit them …
Once you have positioned elements on a page, you can then easily edit them without having to go through multiple steps or opening new option screens …
The built-in Landing Pages editor also lets you create highly attractive landing pages and easily customize these …
Thrive Content and Landing Page Builder is simple, easy to use, and ideal for all WordPress users at all levels. In fact, working on content with Thrive Content and Page Builder installed is so amazingly simple, that the developers warn that once you start using it, you’ll never look back!
Go here to learn more about the plugin: 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 that we have previously recommended on this site.
To learn more about using the plugin, go here:
Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Thrive Content Builder to speed up the process of designing pages and creating content for your WordPress web site:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time.
Thrive Content Builder is very easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Real-Time Content Building And Editing
Thrive Content Builder is is not only simple and intuitive to use, it also lets you edit and build content in real-time.
What You See Is Truly What You Get
With Thrive Content Builder installed, what you see on the “back end” as you work within the content editor – typefaces, elements, page layouts, etc. is exactly what you get in the front end of your site.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Add Attractive Layouts With Drag-And-Drop Ease: Create any kind of layout you can imagine with intuitive drag-and-drop functionality.
- Customizable Elements Included: With the Thrive Content Builder plugin you not only get an exciting and an easy-to-use drag and drop WordPress content editor, but the plugin also includes a very decent collection of web design elements that you can add to your web pages without using shortcodes, like pricing tables, styled lists, page section dividers, countdown timers, etc.
- Ideal For Non-Technical Users: Not having to wait for for your updated content to reload 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 layers of menus to get what you want done.
(Easily add, edit and customize web page elements like testimonial boxes, columns, borderless content, page section dividers, credit card icons, etc.)
Plugin Features
Thrive Content Builder provides many powerful features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Regular WordPress Editor Functionality Is Still Available: You have all of the built-in content editing options that you are used to (e.g. underlines, left-aligned paragraphs, font sizes, etc.),
- Drag And Drop Multi-Style Elements Menu: The plugin makes a “drag and drop” list of elements available on your post or page screen for creating and editing content.
- Conversion-Boosting Elements: The plugin comes with a range of attention-grabbing and customizable elements that will help you increase your sales conversions, including buttons and call-to-action elements, testimonials, and guarantee forms. In addition to customization options, multiple design options are also available for various elements.
- Responsive Element Design: Add mobile-friendly elements like columns, text boxes, section dividers, e.g. which will display great on devices with differently sized screens.
- Add Animation Events To Web Pages: The plugin’s Event Manager feature lets you add 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 signup to purchase, product download and more.
(Thrive Landing Pages gives you access to conversion-optimized page templates)
Thrive Landing Pages Plugin – Benefits
- Hosted on your own WordPress site
- Save time and money designing landing pages
- 100% conversion-optimized landing pages
- No technical skills required
- Works with any WordPress theme
Thrive Content and Page Builder not only lets you create beautiful-looking content in your WordPress posts and pages, but you can also choose from dozens of professionally designed, conversion optimized page templates and fully customizable …
(Thrive Landing Pages provides sets of templates that work together logically and use the same conversion-optimized design language)
There are over 30 templates available, with more templates planned for future release. In addition to the available templates, expect to see new templates in the future for email lead generation, sales pages, course pages, personal branding pages, webinar pages and more.
Customizable Landing Page Template Sets
Typically, in order to have a completely customizable landing page template, you would need to either pay a web site designer 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 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 beautiful pre-built web pages that are fully optimized and ready to go, and complete design freedom that allows you to change or customize any aspect of your page template …
The landing page templates included with this plugin let you do the following:
- Modify text in all buttons, headlines, bullet points, etc.
- Remove text, images or any other component of the landing page
- Replace any background images and background color
- Edit the color of links, buttons, text, etc.
- Choose your own fonts
- Select your own images and graphics
- Edit the size of the content area
- Change the order of elements on the pages
- Translate pages into different languages
- Add any type of custom content anywhere inside any of the pages
- Start with a blank page and create your own page templates, or even build your own library of custom landing page templates.
(Change or customize any element of your page)
Transform Your WordPress Site Into A Powerful Marketing Machine With Thrive Lightbox Plugin
The Thrive package includes Thrive Lightbox, which lets you add fully configurable 2-step opt-in forms and animated elements to your site …
(Add opt-in forms and animated elements to your marketing pages with Thrive Lightbox)
Thrive Lighbox 2-Step Opt-in Forms
A two-step opt-in process can help improve your conversion rates. When visitors click on an image or button they are presented with your opt-in form …
(two-step opt-in forms help increase your conversion rates.)
Event Manager
An “event” consists of a trigger and an action. You can make opt-in forms appear when when visitors click or hover 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 images on your page, using a range of animation effects (e.g. zoom out, slide in from bottom to top, roll out, etc.
(Set up and manage events on your WordPress web site with Thrive Lightbox)
Lightboxes and events are created automatically for your landing pages, but you also have complete control over your events, triggers and design.
Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials and feedback plugin customers have published 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”
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“I’m blown away by the plugin. Keep up the incredible, WordPress changing work, guys! Dean Phillips”
Thrive Content Builder – Useful Tips
Thrive Content Builder works with any WordPress theme, not just with the Thrive Landing Pages plugin. 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 display correctly when published.
Thrive Lightbox works with any content built with Thrive Content Builder.
Support
Thrive Landing Pages and Content Builder Plugin comes with free updates, new landing templates and upcoming features. The Thrive team is constantly working on adding new features and improving existing ones.
Thrive plugins are very well-supported, and users get lifetime software updates, and one year unlimited support with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, 30 day, complete money-back guarantee.
This is an exciting product that will just keep getting better.
Product 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 Edition – This lets you set up the plugin on 1 site only. Includes full feature set, unlimited updates and one year of unlimited support. Cost = $59.00.
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This allows you to run the plugin on all sites that you personally own. Includes full feature set, unlimited updates and one year of unlimited support. Price = $87.00.
- Agency License Edition – This license allows you to configure the plugin on all of your own sites and all client domains. Includes access to Thrive Content Builder, plus all Thrive Themes & Thrive Plugins. Cost = $247.00 per year.
Please Note: The price of the Thrive Content Builder software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing shown above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing information here:
Additional Info
The developers of the Thrive Content Builder and Landing Pages plugin emphatically 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 time-saving features like ready-made page elements and beautiful, conversion-optimized templates that help speed up content creation, and on the other hand, you also have complete control over the design process and the ability to change and customize everything on your page, using the plugin’s click-to-edit and drag and drop features, which allows you to see exactly how the content you are working on will look on the “front end” when published.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Thrive plugins 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, do it, and you’ll see the change happen instantly. If you want to move something, you drag it and drop it into its new location. There are no additional steps involved.
If you want to transform and improve your web site and create amazing marketing pages and engaging content, Thrive Content and Page Builder delivers an incredible conversion-boosting package with a single, inexpensive plugin.
For more information, check out the plugin here:
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