While you are editing a template with the Thrive Theme Builder editor, you have the possibility to see how that template would look like applied to one of your pages/posts/list pages.
This is possible by using the “Content Drop-down” of the editor. If you use this feature, you can load the content of pages/posts directly, while you are customizing a template, to see if the template would be suitable for the respective page/post.
Here is how you can do that:
Access the Content Drop-down
Firstly, you will need to access the “Content Drop-down”. When you are editing the template, look for the “Content” section in the upper right corner of the editor.
Once you have found it, click on the “Choose Content” part, to open the “Content Drop-down”:
Note: If you have previously used this drop-down, then, depending on how you have used it, instead of “Choose Content”, you might see the “Demo Content” or the title of an actual page/post in this part.
After you click on the “Choose Content” part, the “Content Drop-down” will open:
This is where you can load the content of pages or posts on your template, to see if the template is suitable for it.
Select the content
The next step is to select the content type you want to load on your template. You can choose between the “Demo Content” or “Your Website Content”. Both of these options are in the upper part of the “Content Drop-down”:
Demo Content
If you just want to see how the template looks like with “Demo Content”, so not actual content from one of your pages/posts, but default content, then all you have to do is to click on the “Demo Content” section from here:
After you do this, the “Content Drop-down” will close, and “Demo Content” will be loaded on your template.
However, if you want to load a specific content from one of your pages/posts, then you will have to use the rest of the sections and options from the “Content Drop-down”.
Depending on what kind of template you are editing at the moment, some aspects of the “Content Drop-down” can be a little bit different, so we will detail how to use it on each of the three main types of templates.
Page Templates
When you are editing a “Page Template”, the “Content Drop-down” will contain a list of the pages from your website. Here is an example of this:
If you already see the page that has the content you want to load on this template, then simply click on the title of the page, to select it from the list, and it will automatically be loaded on the template.
However, if you do not see the page you want, then you can use the “Search” box, or the “Load more” option to find it.
Search box
If you want to search for the page, then type its title in the “Search Box” from the “Content Drop-down”:
The results of your search will appear below the “Search Box” and you can click on the page you want to use from there to load its content on the template.
Load more
The other way of finding the page you want is to click on the “Load more” option:
This will load more of your pages into the list and you can scroll down in the “Content Drop-down” until you see the page you are looking for. Once you find it, simply click on it and its content will be loaded on the template.
Post Templates
When you are editing a “Post Template”, the “Content Drop-down” will contain a list with the posts from your website:
You can use the “Content Drop-down” the same way as in the case of “Page Templates”, the only difference being that in this case, you will have to load the content from a post, not a page since you are editing a “Post Template”.
If the post you are looking for is not in the initial list of the “Content Drop-down”, you can use the “Search box” or the “Load More” option, the same way as described above for the “Page Templates”, to find the suitable post.
Note: There are four format types that posts, so, therefore ”Post Templates” as well, can have: “Standard”, “Audio”, “Video” and “Image”.
This is why, in the case of using the “Content Drop-down” of ”Post Templates”, it is important to remember that the format of the “Post Template” has to be the same as the format of the post you are looking for.
For example, if the “Post Template” you are editing is an “Image – Post Template”, then in the editor, in its “Content Drop-down”, you will only find the posts that also have the “Image” format. This means you cannot load the content of a “Standard”, a “Video” or an “Audio” post on that specific “Post Template”.
After you have found the post you want to use in the “Content Drop-down”, simply click on it and its content will be loaded on your “Post Template”.
List Templates
When you edit a “List Template” and you open the “Content Drop-down”, you will see that it contains a list with different general sections from your website.
In order to find the specific list of contents (for example one of your categories) you want to load on your “List Template”, you will first have to click on one of the general sections from the “Content Drop-down” to choose it:
After you have selected one of the general sections, the more specific lists pertaining to that section will open in the “Content Drop-down”. In this example, we have selected the “Categories” section.
You will see the name of the general section you have selected on the upper part of the “Content Drop-down”, and you will see the specific lists pertaining to that section (in our case, the various categories) below the “Search Box”:
All you have left to do is to click on one of the specific lists to load its content on the “List Template”. This way you can see how the content would look like with the “List Template” applied to it.
In case the specific list you want to use is not in the initial list, you can use the “Search Box” or the “Load More” option of the “Content Drop-down” to look for it, just as described above in the case of “Page Templates”.
Apply the template
Regardless of which type of template you are editing, if you are satisfied with how the content loaded on it looks like in the editor, you can easily apply the template on the respective page/post.
To do that, go to your WordPress admin dashboard and click on the “Post” or “Pages” item from the left-side menu:
Select the page/post
The “Posts” or “Pages” section will open, look for the page/post you want to apply the template to. When you found it, hover over it and click on the “Edit” option from the options that appear:
Select the template
Then, on the page that opens you will see the “Thrive Theme Builder Templates” section in the right sidebar. Click on the “Template” field from it:
This will open a drop-down with the available templates. Choose the one you want to apply to the page/post:
Update the page/post
After that, all you have left to do is to click on the “Update” option, from the upper right part of the page, and the template will be applied to the page/post:
This is how easily you can use the “Content Drop-down” of the Thrive Theme Builder editor. If you want to find out more about the Thrive Theme Builder features, elements, don’t forget to check out our knowledge base.
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