Do you know what is WordPress’ Visual Editor called as?

WYSIWYG

A really what gaudy name to say the least…

What WYSIWYG stand for is…

I’ve been using WordPress for well over 4 years and I’ve always asked myself… how much truth does the name hold?

As a matter of fact; what I write in WordPress Visual Editor; I possibly can’t expect to get the same in preview section.

Since I’m not very fluent with HTML and CSS; it’s tough for me to get into the HTML text editor and add different tags and CSS codes; to get what I want, and keep switching between Preview mode and Writing Mode… just to see what I’ve done is right or not.

Due to this my editing time for an article measured; is equal to its writing time.

I realized; it’s problem with WordPress and had to do something about it!

I looked around a lot for Free Text Editors that could replace the WordPress default like

And so on…

But ultimately couldn’t get anything that…

• Won’t be hectic to use
• Saves times
• Makes Articles more amusing to readers.

Searching a little more on various forums; I stumbled upon this amazing tool called as Thrive Content Builder.

We’ll talk about what Thrive Content Builder is… but it gives me immense pleasure to tell you; that this article is written using Thrive Content Builder too.

This is my review of Thrive Visual Editor…

…and probably a How-to guide about using this premium WordPress Plugin.

Before we start let me give a basic idea of how WordPress’ Visual Editor Interface looks like and how does Thrive Content Builder User Interface looks like.

Default WordPress Visual Editor

Thrive Visual Editor with various drag and drop options

As you can see; with Thrive Content Builder (also referred as TCB)… you edit directly in preview mode.

This is the reason why I call it ‘the real’ WYSIWYG WordPress Editor.

How to get started with Thrive Content Builder?

If you like content design on this site and want something similar, here’s what you need to do.

Download Thrive Content Builder Plugin from here. It costs only $67/user lifetime.

“I’m surprised to see how this feature packed plugin costs only under $70.”

Once you’ve installed TCB in your WordPress blog…

…and you want to publish a post.

1. Create a new Post.
2. Add your article title
3. Save the post as draft.

Once your article gets a URL; click on the big ‘Edit with Thrive Content Builder’ button and you’re good to go.

Click on “Edit with Thrive Content Builder” Button

This will take you to new tab; where TCB will load your entire site in Editing mode.

In this mode; it previews your whole site (the way it looks) and using various TCB’s drag-and-drop elements, you can edit and stylize your article in real-time.

At right hand side; you can see Thrive Content Builder overlay with various drag-and-drop elements.

So whatever elements you need on your article; you can drag that module and it appears on your site.

Drag Elements

As you can see in image above… I’ve dragged the ‘image’ element and TCB with green dotted line shows me where can I place any image.

Hence, I drag the image module; choose appropriate position and drop ‘image’ module there.

If I placed the module in wrong position; I can drag it and place it in right position.

It’s as simple as that!

Before I explain important features of Thrive Content Builder…

…let me show you how I am able to solve various problems I faced with WordPress Default Editor.

#1: Rendering Visual Elements:

To be honest; I was fed up switching between writing and preview mode to see how various elements rendered.

TCB solves this problem as it works directly in preview mode.

Now suppose I want to add a big button:

Here’s how I would do it in WordPress Visual Editor

“<a href=”#” style=”background-color:#44c767; border-radius:28px; border:1px solid #18ab29; color:#ffffff; font-family:Georgia; font-size:16px; padding:16px 31px;”>This is a Button</a>”

Output:

Output of above code

To make things simpler, I would use WordPress plugin called as ‘Forget About Shortcodes Buttons’ to make things simpler.

Forget about shortcodes button WordPress Plugin

However with TCB, all I have to do is this!

1. From right hand side; Thrive Content Builder overlay, drag the button module and drop at the right place.

Drag and Drop TCB button module

2. Edit various settings for that button like Button Color, Button Style (rounded, rectangle, With icon, with shadow), Button Size and Width, Button Text and Link, Margins and Padding, Button Text Font, Show Credit Card Icons (if creating Payment button), alignment and so on. And in realtime I can be 100% sure that the button will exactly same even in Preview mode.

TCB button settings

#2: Distraction Free Writing Mode

While writing in Default WordPress Editor; all around I see elements that aren’t part of the actual preview process.

This causes distraction to me.

Whereas in Thrive Content Builder; I can write article straight into Preview mode and not get distracted at all.

Even the TCB overlay can be collapsed so as to squeeze more display area.

TCB collapse editor

One thing I wished the TCB could do is; actually lay over the sidebar area and it causes slight distraction.

And when the overlay is in non-collapsed mode; it squeezes sidebar towards left and also the actual article width.

#3: Shortcodes

I am not a fan of shortcodes and let me show you why.

Before using TCB, I wanted to create three column table where I wanted to compare three different products.

Since I wasn’t introduced to TCB back then, the only way I knew of doing it was using Shortcodes.

Here’s a comparision how shortcodes look in editing mode and how they look in preview mode.

Writing Mode:

Shortcode in edit mode

Preview Mode:

Shortcode in Preview mode

In preview mode, you can see how simple those three columns look, isn’t it?

However in ‘Writing Mode’; you’ll understand, how much horrific it is to create something as simple as Three Column table.

Ok! Now wanna know how it can be done in TCB?

Click on ‘Column Layout’ Module in TCB overlay, drag and drop the 3 column module inside your article.

Three Column Layout in Thrive content builder

Once done; you can customise the table according to your needs as you can see this image below,

3 column module in TCB

You wouldn’t believe me, but I created this table and customized it all within 15 seconds.

Can you imagine that? Just 15 seconds… If I were to do this using CSS and HTML, from my experience it would take not less than 10 minutes to get everything right.

This is how much powerful Thrive Content Builder is!

#4: Flexibility while Designing

Here’s the code that I need to deploy in order to get highlight important paragraph or line.

At first viewing it looks simple and you’d say…

“That’s not a major problem to deal with Ankit!”

However; just to show you an example of that code, I had to switch between ‘writing’ and ‘preview’ mode 3 times just to get that background color right.

Now…

Coming to Thrive Content Builder; I can design and highlight important paragraphs the way I want!

Here’s how I do it very quickly, just within 10 seconds.

Designing Paragraph in Thrive Content Builder

I’m definitely in love with Thrive Content Builder and here’s what another user Fabrizio from Magnet4Blogging.net has to say about it.

Well! What more does Thrive Content Builder has to offer… ??

To be true…

…I really don’t want to get delusional and go on explaining every feature there is in this $67 plugin.

You can check every feature of Thrive Content Builder in action by clicking here.

Even take a look at this video below, which takes example of an already live business page…

…and explains a step-by-step procedure on how to create a similar and excellent business page using TCB.

However, I’d like to explain 16 best features of TCB that have helped me save practically 100’s of dollars into buying other plugins and extra features for my site.

I’ll post my favorite and extraordinary features of TCB and other alternative free/paid plugins I would have required if I didn’t used TCB at all.

16 Extremely Amazing Features of Thrive Content Builder

#1: Add Shortcodes Right into TCB Editor

Thrive Developers have made TCB very flexible in every way possible.

Even though I don’t like shortcodes very much; but I can use them straight into TCB.

I occasionally use Onepress Social Locker, to lock certain Bonus content.

Since TCB supports direct use of Shortcodes, all I have to do is place the locker shortcode above and below the content to lock in a new paragraph and my job is done.

This can be very useful if you use a plugin that offers excellent features but in terms of shortcodes… then you won’t face any problem combining it with Thrive Content Builder.

Hence if I download a table generator plugin to develop tables of various shapes and sizes… then that can be done with TCB without fidgeting with anything.

#2: Tons and Tons of Beautiful Icons

There are many scenarios when you might require Icons to enhance your content.

Thrive Content Builder provides great set of icons that be easily used with your content.

Tons of icon in Thrive Content Builder

These however don’t come default with the plugin.

You need to download the entire icon set from icomoon.io website and later be imported into the plugin.

Alternatives: WP SVG Icons (FREE), Vector Icons for WordPress ($16)

#3: Add Customized HTML and CSS to your articles

I won’t talk more about this feature; as it is very self explanatory.

With this feature, advanced users can add custom HTML and CSS for situations when you want to display something that TCB can’t design.

It’s a helpful feature for Web Developers who like to have complete control over the content they create.

#4: Revealing Content Magically

This is a timed content; where you can set to display a part of your article or the entire article to display after a certain amount of time.

It can be effectively used by marketers who can ask user to stay for more time on their blog and display a Bonus Content.

Here, the best part is… as soon as the content is revealed; the entire page is automatically scrolled to the revealed content.

This can help them send high-retention user signal to Google.

Take a look at this demo of Content Reveal from Thrive’s official site.

Alternative: WP Revealer Plugin (FREE)

#5: Star Ratings

I’m always fascinated by the invention of ‘Star Ratings’ as they visually represent quality of any product or service.

TCB also provides a set of Star Ratings functionality.

The Rating feature is extremely flexible as you can choose between using 1-20 stars.

Moreover you can make star rating extremely precise.

For example:

If I want to create star rating of 3 out of 5 stars… then it can be done.

However, if I want to create rating of 4.36 stars out of 5, then this too can be created very easily.

TCB star rating

Isn’t it awesome?

Alternatives: YASR – Yet Another Star Rating (FREE), WordPress Rate Everything Star Rating Plugin ($18)

#6: Magnificent Content Boxes

I love this part of Thrive Content Builder very much.

This allows me to highlight a certain part of content, without it being too loud.

Content boxes in TCB

Content Boxes comes in two versions:

1. With Headline
2. Without Headline

Both these versions come in 3 different styles each.

#7: Highlighting Important Content with Symbol Boxes

I use this feature the least; but it’s totally an excellent feature.

See it here in action…

Symbol Box in TCB

These can be extremely useful when you want to highlight important points in your article or best features in your product or service.

There are tons of possibilities where you can use this module.

#8: Click to Tweet Button

There’s a huge wave going around of using Click-to-Tweet Button; as it acts as a CTA button for users to instantly share a quote or sentence from an article.

This helps as user himself doesn’t has to write a tweet to go along with the article he’s sharing.

Banking on this, Thrive Content Builder has introduced a ‘Click to Tweet’ button. See live example below:

Compared to other versions of Click to Tweet plugins available in WordPress Plugin Directory; the one provided by TCB is extremely elegant to say the least.

Alternatives: Better Click to Tweet (FREE)

#9: Beautiful looking Review Snippet

This is not an inbuilt feature, rather an amalgamation of various modules from TCB.

As you can see in the image below…

Authority Hacker Review Snippet

…Gael from Authority Hacker has created this amazing looking review snippet which I have absolutely fallen in love with.

I’ll show you a step-by-step breakdown of what TCB modules they’ve used in their sweet little review snippet

1. Create a Content Container; which will hold all your TCB module
2. At the top they’ve created two columns; each for ‘Review of:‘ and ‘Use:‘
3. Later, 4 columns which contain Icon, Star Rating, and a paragraph each
4. The third part contains two columns which contain Bullet List
5. Below that; we have a ‘Paragraph’ Element
6. At bottom, we have a big full-width button and again a paragraph that holds ‘From $59’ text

#10: User Testimonials With and Without Picture

Trust me,

Most themes that come with testimonial shortcodes or plugins offering this functionality…

…their design doesn’t comes anywhere close to one provided by Thrive Content Builder.

In total, Thrive Content Builder Provides 5 testimonial styles with option to add user image and 4 styles for without image.

Style 1

Style 2

These can be added anywhere; be it in your articles or in your pages to make them look and feel excellent throughout.

Another way you can use this is…

Suppose you write an excellent article and get tons of comments, and you mention about this post on your newer article… then you can put 3-4 user comments on your new article showing your readers how awesome the previous article was.

Alternatives: Handsome Testimonial (FREE), Testimonials WordPress Plugin ($18), Testimonial Showcase ($16)

#11: Call to Action and Guarantee Box

As Shane Melaugh of Thrives Themes says that all their themes are Conversion Focused and similar is the scenario with Thrive Content Builder; it made from ground-up with Conversion Optimization in Mind.

And these two modules inside TCB i.e. Call to Action and Guarantee Boxes hit the sweet spot.

These two features are gold mine for any Internet Marketer who either sells his own products and services or indulges in majority of affiliate programs.

With Call to Action; you can direct a potential client into buying your product.

See the live demo below:

Whereas the Guarantee Box holds a claim that your entire money will be refunded if you don’t like the product or after-sales service will be provided 24/7.

TCB Guarantee Box

Anything that you absolutely guarantee about and can deliver!

TCB holds 4 Different styles for Guarantee Boxes and 4 for Call to Action.

Alternatives: WordPress Call to Action (FREE), Contact Form & Call to Action by vCita (FREE)

#12: Pricing Table

As of now; it’s very evident you might have seen a Pricing Table atleast once in your life on websites related to Hosting, Premium Plugins, Services and Different Products.

Excellently designed Pricing Table started to drive a big boom in the industry as they put forth only what the seller intents the user to know.

It also allowed user to compare in just one table, the differences between certain services or different features within a same product/service at various prices.

Thrive Content Builder offers Pricing Table feature from 1-5 Columns Table.

Each Pricing Table contains one leading column, that can represent your best product or service. Like this:

TCB Pricing Table

You can even customize this pricing table by changing it’s color scheme from Flat, Classy and Minimal.

Note: Changing color scheme of pricing table; also changes color scheme of all other elements on that page.

Alternatives: Easy Pricing Tables Lite (FREE), Revenue – Versatile Pricing Table Plugin ($18)

#13: Countdown Timer

Well there’s no need to explain what Countdown Timers are, and what are they used for.

The best part is for $67; you get a countdown functionality with Thrive Content Builder. Awesome, isn’t it?

See the live examples below:

There are 2 types of counter with 3 different design styles.

The 1st is where you set at what point of the day you want the timer to end. This is useful when you’ve held a giveaway and kept an end date to enter the giveaway.

Also can be helpful when you are launching a site and have displayed a Launching Soon page along with exact time when you’ll launch it.

2nd type of counter is more of a ‘fool’s counter’ where it shows an offer or service will end after certain time but in reality doesn’t ends.

Hence even if you set the timer to countdown from 5 Minutes; then for every user who visits your website, the timer will countdown from that point onwards.

Alternatives: WordPress Countdown plugin (FREE), The Countdown Pro ($8)

#14: Responsive Video

This is one of my favorite features from TCB as I frequently embed videos in my articles on other sites.

Earlier I used to copy ‘640 x 360’ video embed code from YouTube.

The one problem I had was; it would leave white space towards the right side of video.

This changed after I started using Responsive Video module from Thrive Content Builder as it adapts to the width of article.

TCB Responsive Video Settings

Hence, if in my one blog I have main article width of 800px; then it would adapt to that width and adjust height automatically and similar if I use it on a site which has 732px width.

#15: Lead Generation Form

Thrive Content Builder also offers functionality to put in-post Lead Generation Form that can be customized according to your needs.

The form allows you collect user’s ‘name’ and ‘email id’ with a ‘Sign Up’ button.

Form can also be arranged either in Horizontal or Vertical format and you can customize it as per your wish. See the live demo below. I made this in just 2 minutes.

You can even connect your Email Collecting services like Mailchimp, Aweber, GetResponse and so on… so as to direct store your leads there, rather than storing it in TCB database.

It’s only upto you to decide how much you get just for $67.

#16: Extensive Collection of Dazzling Landing Pages

If you thought; everything about Thrive Content Builder is finished explaining, then I’m glad to say that you’re wrong.

As I’ve kept the best and valuable feature of TCB for the last.

It’s the one feature that will definitely make you fall in love with Thrive Content Builder.

Before I proceed, just try to answer these few simple questions, will you?

• Do you want to capture tons of Emails Subscribers?
• Do you want to create nice looking and conversion optimized Landing Pages and Squeeze Pages?
• Do you want an easy and fast solution for that?

If the answer is Yes for all 3 questions; then it’s an entirely valid reason for you to go out there and just buy Thrive Content Builder right now.

Why?

Because Thrive Content Builder comes with a set of 107 Beautifully Pre-Designed Landing Page Templates!

These 107 includes everything you can imagine of.

From Landing pages, to squeeze pages… it also includes templates of

• Opt-in pages
• Download pages
• Thank You pages
• Confirmation Pages
• Webinar page
• Registration Page
• Subscription Page
• Resources Pages
• Sales Page
• Video Pages and so on.

Do you wanna see all these pages in action before you download them?

I know you want to…

You can visit this link to see all 107 Landing Pages Templates in Action.

Well!

Hope I was able to put forth an extensive and with real-life example of Thrive Content Builder in action.

I have absolutely fallen in love with this plugin (and guess what… I don’t say this about very few plugins) considering it’s priced so low at $67. This makes it the most underpriced product of all WordPress plugins.

Now… as every plugin has its best part; there’s nothing that’s 100% perfect and does have some issues.

And now I’ll talk about the few problems I face with Thrive Content Builder.

#1: Entire HTML isn’t as clean coded as promised

Before I publish any article using TCB; I always look up the entire HTML of that article.

Why?

Because, most of the times… the HTML part leaves blank paragraphs that I create and deleted in editing mode.

Hence at the end I have few ‘<p class=””> </p>’ left which I have to personally delete.

However this isn’t a major issue with me as I can easily do ‘Ctrl+F’ on my browser, search for ‘<p class=””> </p>’ and delete them.

#2: Blank Spaces in Preview Mode

This does gets a little annoying as I see certain blank paragraph spaces in my articles after publishing them.

This is however rare and can easily be handled by again going into editing mode and deleting blank paragraph.

#3: Can’t change Color Scheme for only a Single Element

Suppose if I want to change color scheme of Pricing Table as Flat, Minimal Color Scheme for Button and Classy for Content Boxes, then this can’t be done.

If I change Color Scheme, then all entire elements Color Scheme on that article changes.

There’s currently no workaround for it. Hope the company offers this feature in later updates.

#Conclusion

Well more I could say?

With just the length of this review, you can see how much I have fallen in love with this plugin.

I’d repeat again, “I’m not so exciting and positive to talk about other plugins, but when you get features worth over $300+ just for one-time price of $67 and being the very best Content Builder in the business, there’s just no comparison.”

I’ve been blogging for a long time now and would really like to give a big Thumbs Up to Shane Melaugh for designing this one hell of a plugin.

It’s like a Swiss knife of all plugins as it’s offers so many features in its entirety.

So do I recommend it?

Do I need to answer this?

Hell Yeah! You’re a missing a lot and losing a lot of money if you’re not using Thrive Content Builder, as producing delightful looking content is the future of Content Creation.

Ok! Now do let me know your thoughts about this review in the comments section and has this review inspired you to buy one.

If you want to know in-depth features of Thrive Content Builder, just click this link to visit their site and get a feel of how you can too start creating amazing looking content.

Thank You!