I'm going to talk about the latest drag and drop editor for WordPress which allows you to take 100% control of your layouts and turn your boring website into a conversion focused website which will help you get more leads and sales! Introducing Thrive Theme Builder!
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WordPress Theme builders are now becoming all the rage among business owners and developers who want to have the ultimate control over their digital branding presence.
It used to be that you would simply either pay huge fees to developers to have a custom website built from scratch, or pop along to one of the many marketplaces which allow you to buy a WordPress theme, install it and then turn from business owner into a web developer and begin trawling through the documentation to figure out how to configure the theme - which was never that easy for novices if I am being honest.
WordPress themes are never that customisable out of the box, you may like the homepage of the theme but the blog sections pale in comparison and you quickly wish you could just have everything exactly how you want it and notforced to use the styling of the theme you have purchase.
Theme Builders are a thing didn't you know..
Yes that's right, you can now basically use a drag and drop editor for WordPress to create your very own theme to make everything as you imagine and to best fit your company or brand! Pretty cool isn't it?
Thrive Themes is a well-respected company which builds conversion focused WordPress plugins for entrepreneurs wanting to place an emphasis on leads and sales rather than trying to build a brochure style website.
One of Thrive Themes' best plugins is Thrive Architect which is a page builder and allows the creation of website pages, sales pages and blog posts (like this one..) via a beautiful and simple, conversion focused drag and drop editor; for this you need a separate theme such as GeneratePress, - so while your front end pages can look nice, you are still using the styling of the other pages like blog archives, blog singles, 404 pages, custom post types (like custom portfolio pages) and so on.
Thrive Themes have been working for well over a year on their Theme Builder for WordPress, while other page builders which have been around a lot longer, such as the Elementor page builder, already have a theme builder - it simply just piggy-backs off of whatever theme is being used; like GeneratePress for example.
Why use a theme builder?
As mentioned previously, a theme builder will allow absolute and total customisation of your static and dynamic content and go beyond merely building website pages.
There are tonnes of businesses in every niche now, and each business trying to harness the power of branding as best as they can as it's paramount for them to stand out in a crowded marketplace and differentiate themselves from the competition.
Theme builders allow you to style your website in pretty much anyway you see fit and it's really the most cost effective way outside of custom development (and 5-figure development costs) to build a website/online business like you have imagined in your head.
Thrive Theme builder has always managed produced WordPress plugins which are relatively easy to use and implement into their business for those who are not tech-minded. The Theme Builder is no different really! Very impressive stuff.
How the Thrive Theme Builder works
Thrive Themes uses a drag and drop interface to create every static and dynamic component of your website which your visitors will see and interact with. This means that with the theme builder you can create:
As it is relatively new on the block, it doesn't yet have the capability to design eCommerce pages like Elementor, but that is coming very soon and will be huge considering the amount of flexibility you get with the current version.
Getting stated with Thrive Theme Builder
They have a wonderful 'onboarding' sequence which means that when you first install their theme builder you can quickly set up the most important things on the site such as the menu, header, footer, blog post templates...etc really quickly before you begin editing and choose from a large variety of fully-editable templates (just to get you warmed up..).
I honestly love this feature and feel it so helpful for those who have never used a theme builder before to get to grips with how things work.
You can also access all of your theme templates really easily which clearly tell you what each one does for your website (single blog post, 404 page, video post...etc), and you can duplicate, reset and preview any on demand.
It's easy to add new core templates on demand as well; for example if you had custom post types such as portfolios or case studies, you could have separate archives and single post designs for them in just a few clicks.
Building your first header and footer with Thrive Theme Builder
When going through the onboarding process via the wizard, you'll get the option to basically set the header you want out of over 20 pre-made and fully customisable header templates, which you can then customise to your heart's content via the live editor across desktop, tablet and mobile.
You can create multiple headers and swap them out on a page-by-page basis. While I wouldn't recommend having different header layours; as that can be confusing.
You can have headers with a different background colour, or headers which sit on top of a hero image to add a slight contrasting effect across the site without harming the user interface.
The exact same process applies for building a custom footer
You'll have chosen a footer from the plethora of footer templates that come packaged with the Thrive Theme Builder, but you may wish to make your own amendments. We can easily achieve this by customising via the live editor as mentioned above when I was talking about the header section.
The footer you have created will be live across all pages of your website, but as before, you can have specifically designed footers for specific pages on your site to fit in with your branding.
For example, if you had a contact form in your footer, would you really want to have it on a contact us page which already has a contact form on it? That could add confusion! So you could have a separate footer design in this instance perhaps.
You can simply duplicate the existing footer, make the necessary amendments, rename the new duplicated template and then replace on the page you want. It's couldn't simpler! Thrive Themes have really done a splendid job!
Creating and styling your blog posts
Content is king! You've heard that before i'm sure. So you should do your very best to create a premium viewing experience for your readers. The blog is a fundamental part of an online business as it's where most of your best content is on show.
Blog come with 2 components:
Building the blog archive
Thrive Themes have pre-designed several blog archive templates which you can choose from during the site set up wizard which are 100% editable using the drag and drop editor. You'll be able to control the layout by adjusting the position of elements, image sizes, colour overlays, shadows, metadata and a lot more!
You can get extremely detailed on your blog archive listings if you wish!
You can allow switch from a one column layout to two, or three. It really depends on how you want things to look and to make the experience of navigating your website content easy and pleasurable for your visitors. You have total FLEXIBILITY with Thrive Theme Builder to do exactly this!
In the example below, with just one click I went from a boring 1-column blog archive page design, through to a 3 column layout blog archive with a real wow factor (oh, and simply by using one of their many blog archive templates.
Building the blog single post
Creating a single blog post is similar to the archive except you have a few more opportunities. Single post blogs come in the form of:
Using Thrive Theme Builder you can create custom templates for each of the above which is particularly useful for vloggers and those with podcasts. So each type of single post content can still have the same styles, same header etc, but have dynamically placed video or audio content above the post fold.
You can also edit the appearance on a post-by-post basis. For example, if have a post which is focused on make sales via affiliate marketing, you want as few distractions as possible to really make them click a link to the product you are reviewing (reviews: could be another custom post type on your website by the way which you can easily create with Thrive Theme Builder :)).
You could have these type of posts distraction free by omitting the side bar for example and any other call to actions which are not related to the content you are promoting.
You can do this by going straight into the post and editing with Thrive Architect. You can then set which elements you want visible and which you want to show for that blog post only! You can also set out a different layout here as well with a different template you have created. you can see this below.
Building silo pages
Without going into too much technical detail, a silo page is extremely beneficial for your SEO and it involves grouping together relevant content on specific subject matter on one page; making it logically organised, so that your visitors have a focal point when it comes to finding information around a specific topic
Thrive Theme Builder allows you to build silo pages for your WordPress theme and actually comes packaged with several templates (if you're not design savvy), otherwise, you can just one-click upload one of their templates and customise at your will.
Using custom post types with Thrive Theme Builder for your projects
Before I get into custom post types, let's talk about what one is in layman's terms. A blog post is actually a custom post type. It allows you to store and display certain information in a certain way. Blog posts come as standard with WordPress, so when you install it, your ability to create and publish blog posts is already there.
Some examples of custom post types include:
If you wanted to create a recipe website you could create a custom post type for "recipes" which would show off all of your recipes with an archive page and a single post recipe page
If you wanted to create a job website you could create a custom post type for "jobs" which would show off all of your jobs with an archive job listing page and a single post job page
If you wanted to create a business listing website you could create a custom post type for "business listings" which would show off all of your business listing with an archive page and a single post listings page
Understand? So with Thrive Theme Builder, you have the tool-set which gives you the ability to create all of the above and more without needing to hire an expensive development team. Of course, if you have a tech-phobia or simply do not wish to do anything in terms of development, then you can speak to me about your project and I would be happy to help you!
Do you still need a theme with Thrive Theme Builder?
Most theme builders on the market will require a theme in order for it to work, it's a basic requirement for a WordPress website. The Thrive Theme Builder is actually it's own theme. Thrive Themes gives you a product manager, which is one dashboard which allows you to install all and any of their products on.
When having the Thrive Themes Membership, which is an amazing value proposition for actually growing a business; not just designing one.., you can install any of their plugins or the theme builder itself in just one click.
It's a great experience instead of going backwards and forwards installing and activating plugins and themes.
The great thing about using Thrive's digital products, is that is keeps your WordPress eco-system under one roof! I cannot tell you how many times I have used incompatible themes and marketing plugins or had one update to a plugin which then made a mess of my website because it didn't play nicely with the theme I had installed!
Thrive really give you the tools you need to create a sustainable business, and now with the theme builder you have ABSOLUTE control over how it can look without being held to ransom by the typical WordPress theme styling.
Start building custom websites with Thrive Theme Builder
Obviously, building something custom is going to take a lot more effort and time than using the aforementioned pre-designed WordPress themes which have limited customisation options.
Taking total control of your brand is what you ought to be doing in 2020, and Thrives Membership (which includes the theme builder) gives you the tools to do exactly that in a beautiful drag and drop format - select the elements you want on a page, drag them on canvas and edit them as you desire.
Here are a few examples of what is achieved both design wise and functionality wise using Thrive Themes theme builder and plugins.
I'm only scratching the surface really! Thrive Themes offers an extremely powerful design and marketing tool-set to separate your from the competition! There is really nothing that comes close in terms of bang for your buck which is also easy to get to grips with.
Granted, some things will take more work that others (like setting up a membership site or a dynamic quiz), but the plugins make it easier!
The great thing is, you can get access to all of the WordPress tools by Thrive Themes for a monthly price of just $19.00. For a business owner wanting to actually get more clients and leads, this toolset is a real no-brainer to use!
If you're not 100% confident about setting things up, but like the sound of having Thrive Themes power your business forwards, why not speak to us? We're Thrive Themes specialists. Our latest niche website (FitProWeb.com) was created in Thrive Theme builder, while it is still waiting for the first blog post to be published, you can still see how it looks here
GET THRIVE THEME BUILDER ON IT'S OWN OR WITH THE MEMBERSHIP
Start building the website exactly how you want it and use the Thrive Themes marketing tools included in the membership to create a real conversion focused online business which will put you ahead of your competition. If you sign up for any of Thrive's products, we'll give you 18 of our best landing page templates absolutely free worth $47.00
We do earn a small affiliate commission when you purchase at no additional cost to yourself
