12 Mega Updates at Thrive Themes – Late April 2020

Author 
Bradley Stevens   234

This update is huge

I'm talking pour-a-coffee, shut-the-door, turn-your-phone-to-silent kind of huge. Your jaw is going to drop so hard there'll be a dent in your desk.

12 huge features have just been added to our suite of plugins. This affects Thrive Architect, Thrive Theme Builder, Thrive Leads and Thrive Apprentice.

Ready?

Read on to see all 12 updates available to you as soon as you hit that update button.

More...


1. Radio Buttons for Opt-In Forms

What's a Radio Button? You've seen them in the wild before. They look like this:

These are called Radio buttons 

Radio buttons are used on forms and allow a visitor to select a single option. Clicking a new radio deselects the last option.

To access this new form field type, simply add it from the Lead Generation element.

Under 'Field Type', select Radio.

In true Thrive Themes styles, we've made our Radios ridiculously easy to edit and to style.

You can drag to re-order them, click the [+] icon to add a new option, or duplicate and trash them from the canvas.

Our Radio buttons are extremely easy to build right on the canvas.

When you select one of the radios on the canvas, you'll have some color and style settings available in the Architect sidebar.

Main Options for Radio Buttons

Rather than boring old dots, our design team have taken it to the next level with 8 radio styles that you can choose from.

Just look at them!

So many Radios button designs!

What happens when a Radio is selected?

At the moment, you have 2 options for processing the Radio button selection.

  1. 1
    Pass the selection to a custom field in your email marketing tool

In this situation, you can create a custom field in your email marketing tool (such as MailChimp) to store the information. Then when you setup your API connection on the Lead Generation form, you can map the Radio button choice to that custom field.

That means you can collect an email address as well as the subscriber's Radio button choice and save it on their contact record.

  1. 2
    Send the selection in an email from your website

You can include a visitor's Radio button selection in an automated email sent from your website to any email address you nominate, as well as to the visitor themselves. We have more information about this in update #3 below.

(By the way... A third option for Radio buttons will become available soon).

Editing the Value that will be sent

Let's say your visitor selects Radio button #3, that says 'Endurance' as their fitness goal. By default, the text on the button is what will be sent on form submit.

But if you'd like to send a different text value than what is written on the button itself, you can uncheck 'Use label as value' and define a new phrase.

Disabling this toggle lets you edit the value sent on form submit.

That means the user can select 'Endurance' but you can update their custom field with alternative text such as 'Cardio'.

2. Dropdown for Opt-In Forms

Radios are nice... but we can do more.

In this update we've added Dropdowns, also known as a Select.

A Dropdown/ Select lets you open multiple options from one form field.

Just as with Radio Buttons above, Dropdown is a new Field Type you'll find available on your Lead Generation Forms.

Once you enter Edit Mode, you can click twice on your Dropdown field to open it up. Editing the options is easy as clicking [+], typing into the text field and dragging to reorder.

Styled dropdowns are editable right on the canvas.

The Main Options panel for your Dropdown will let you set how many rows are open by default, if you would like a placeholder, and the icon and opening animation.

If you have more options than rows opened, your visitors can scroll up and down to see the other choices.

Dropdowns have a few more options in the Architect sidebar:

Look at all the Dropdown styling options!

Just like Radio buttons, your Dropdown is smart color enabled and includes pre-built styles. Check them out!

Choose the Dropdown style of your dreams.

Combine Radio Buttons with Dropdowns and what do you get?

Powerful Lead Generation forms that allow you to collect more data from your visitors!

Built from scratch with both Radios and Dropdowns.

And Dropdowns pass values in the exact same way as Radio Buttons, either through Custom Fields or directly in an email sent from your site.

Speaking of website emails...

3. Email Notification Editor

In 2018, we released a Contact Form element.

It was incredibly popular, but we heard from you that you also wanted to add people to your mailing list from your Contact Forms... and that you would like more text fields, radios, dropdowns, etc.

Instead of adding these features to Contact Forms, we went the other way:

We added Contact Form features to the Lead Generation element. 

To make our Lead Generation element more useful as a Contact Form, we've built a new Email Notification editor. You'll find it when you add 'Email' as a connection inside of the Lead Generation element.

The new Email Notification Editor is right here.

When you click 'Compose', you'll be presented with a new Email editor that looks like this.

The new Email Editor lets you customize emails sent from your website.

With a few clicks, you can fire off an email whenever someone submits your form. This can be done at the same time as the visitor subscribes, or you can use it for email only.

The primary email is your own notification, usually sent to yourself or someone on your team.

Toggle on a Confirmation email, and you can also send a thank you email to the submitter.

Confirmation emails are sent to the user that submitted the form.

To help you write a customized confirmation email, you can add shortcodes to your email.

Shortcodes will be auto-filled with any values from your form. In the example below, it takes just a few clicks to add a First Name shortcode and personalize the email.

The Add Shortcodes feature lets you include form fields in your emails.

"My emails are going to the spam folder!"

If you test out this feature and find emails are hitting your spam folder, it's worth looking at a Transactional Email tool.


Transactional Emails are different to those sent by mailing list. Transactional Emails are sent on a specific, highly important trigger such as password reset, sending a receipt, or a form submit email. WordPress can send these emails from your website but inboxes might reject them.


Fortunately, you can integrate with a 3rd party Transactional Email service such as PostMark via API. They are easy to setup and send your WordPress emails from a reliable server that inboxes won't be afraid of.


We integrate with 9 Transactional Email services: PostMark, Amazon SES, Campaign Monitor, MailGun, MailRelay, Mandrill, Sendgrid, SendInBlue, and Sparkpost.

4. New Login Form Element

Say Goodbye to ugly WordPress login forms... and hello to a new element in Thrive Architect: The Login Form.

You know what this means...?

Drag it, drop it, edit it. The new Login Form element can be placed in any Thrive Architect content or Thrive Theme Builder template on your website and lets users login to their account.

Beautiful, editable login forms.

Not only is this visually editable, but once again our designers have pre-built beautiful templates to get you started.

Pre-built templates ready to go!

In the Login Form options, you can choose the template, edit the form, add or remove labels, enable a 'remember me' checkbox and a password reset link...

Login Form options panel.

...and you can customize what happens to a visitor after successful login.

(Thrive Apprentice users take note: you can redirect your online course customers straight to the Apprentice course index.)

Your action after successful login options.

The catch with a Login form is that there can be multiple actions managed on a single form. Users should be able to reset their password without interrupting those that remembered theirs.

Now when you're in edit mode, you'll find a dropdown on the Edit notice bar.

Look for the dropdown embedded in this bar.

With this dropdown, you can choose between the Login Form (above) and the Password Reset state, Reset Confirmation and the Already Logged In states.

State 2: Password Reset

State 3: Reset Confirmation

State 4: Already Logged In

Thrive Apprentice users, if you don't use Thrive Architect, you can still build a login page for your online course.

Simple go to Apprentice > Settings > Customize Login Page.

5. Site Speed Optimization

Thrive Suite users, get ready. The rest of the features in this release are for the already-revolutionary Thrive Theme Builder.

Starting with... a built-in Site Speed Optimization Panel.

Inside your Thrive Theme Builder dashboard, look for this new icon.

There's no doubt about it: Website speed affects conversions because first-time visitors have no patience.

However, speed is a delicate topic. And there is no one-trick-fixes-all solution. 

Many factors affect website speed and it can get complex very quickly.

Speed optimization freaks can sink hours running tests and tweaking settings, with no promise of improvements or minuscule changes that don't move the dial.

We know you don't want to go down that rabbit hole.

So we did it for you.

The Site Speed panel in Thrive Theme Builder can pre-load the exact plugins and speed settings we recommend for a website running our theme builder.

If you're unsure how to optimize your site, simply follow our recommendations, click once to configure the correct settings with 3rd party services, and be done with it.

Here are the 3 options you'll find in the Site Speed panel.

Minification and Caching

Configure your Caching for Thrive in one click

Caching plugins can make a big difference to your website speed. But you'll be dealing with over 100+ options and the wrong settings can cause all kinds of problems. 

We have tested many plugins with Theme Builder and recommend either WP Fastest Cache or W3 Total Cache. From the Site Speed panel you can click to install either of these plugins, then one click on 'Configure for Optimal Caching with Thrive' and we'll instantly change hundreds of settings to the optimal setup for your website.

Image Optimization

The Image Optimization area lets you choose a fully automated option or a no cost option.

Poorly compressed images served at the wrong size will slow down a website. We have integrated with two 3rd party plugins, Optimole and Smush, to give you options.

Although we recommend Optimole, it's free for up to 5,000 hits per month. If you have a high traffic site but you're still budget conscious, then choose the No Cost option and use Smush.

Once again, set it and forget it, knowing that your images are served at their ideal compression and size.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (Beta)

The AMP dashboard once it's enabled.

AMP technology helps websites load blazingly fast on mobile devices. 

However, it's tricky to setup.

Please note that our Accelerated Mobiles Pages feature is currently in Beta, meaning we don't recommend it for live business websites.

For those of you familiar with AMP, we encourage you to try it out, play around with it and report back with your experiences. Hearing from you will help us improve this feature until we're ready to fully release it into the wild.

6. Customizable Breadcrumbs

Also for Thrive Theme Builder, we have some kick-ass improvements to the Breadcrumbs element.

If you're not sure what we mean by breadcrumbs, we're talking about this list of navigation links that shows the user where they are:

Breadcrumbs help your visitors know where they are and navigate back to parent pages.

When you place Breadcrumbs inside your Theme Templates, you'll see some new options in the sidebar.

Breadcrumb styling options in the sidebar.

The Display Categories toggle adds or removes the blog post category from the breadcrumb listing.

Expanding the Customize Labels tab will let you overwrite the WordPress default names for your Breadcrumbs too.

Rename any breadcrumb you want.

Don't forget, Breadcrumbs are dynamic meaning the text will update to suit the posts displayed with that template.

7. Shapeshift's New Blank Page Template

Shapeshift is our first 100% malleable theme built with Thrive Theme Builder and it's driven by a library of designer-made templates.

A few weeks ago, we created a Blank Page template for it.

"What's so special about a blank page?", you say.

Well, this blank page is linked to the library of 130+ Page Blocks. Here's how it works:

Look for the Blank Page in the Shapeshift Theme set.

Start by loading a WordPress page, importing a template and choose the Blank Page in the Shapeshift Theme set.

When you open this page, your default Header and Footer will load and you'll have the empty space in between ready for Page Blocks.

Blank Page loads a header and footer with empty space inbetween.

Hit that [+] icon and you can quickly add any pre-made page block right between the header and footer that will immediately inherit your brand colors.

Over 130+ Page Blocks are ready to use.

It's the fastest way to build from scratch.

8. Shapeshift SILO Pages

If a Blank Page template doesn't excite you, then... this next one will.

This week, we've also expanded the Shapeshift page template library with pre-made SILO templates... 7 of them!

Look for Silo Pages 01 - 07 in the Template Library.

Students of SEO Sprint will know what a SILO page is.

To summarize it quickly, it's an SEO strategy to help your website category pages rank in Google.

To a search engine, a SILO category page looks like a self-contained website tightly optimized around a specific search term. It includes sub-category post lists and some search-friendly headings and paragraphs.

Now you can load pre-made SILO pages in Thrive Theme Builder with a few clicks. They're not just functional... they look great! Look at this example:

Click to open the full-size image

9. Redirect to Custom Category Page

For the new SILO pages to be effective, you need to replace the WordPress default blog category pages.

This usually takes a bit of WordPress sorcery, but in Thrive Theme Builder we've made a change inside of your website that makes it super easy.

Navigate to Posts > Categories inside of your WordPress dashboard.

Click on Categories here.

In the next window, look at your categories on the right and click 'Edit' for a specific category.

Click Edit here to customize your category settings.

In the category customization screen, you'll see we've added a Redirect option at the bottom of the page.

From here, you can select any WordPress page you've created. 

Choose your new Category page from your WordPress page list.

Now whenever your website visitors navigate to a Category page from anywhere on your site, instead of seeing the WordPress default, they'll see the page you have prepared for them.

If you're using SILO pages, this is exactly where to setup the redirect.

10. Filter On Default Blog List

We heard from some of you that you want to exclude categories from your default blog page. 

By default, the blog page shows all blog content that is published, but on occasion you might want to hide a specific category. An example of this would be a subscriber-only category or perhaps a Podcast category that you want to manage separately.

Now you can.

In Thrive Theme Builder, when you edit your default blog page, you'll have a filter like the Post List element that lets you hide categories.

11. Dynamic Table of Contents

For some websites, you may want to add a Table of Contents to your theme templates. Perhaps you want to put it in the sidebar of a particular Blog post template like this:

This Table of Contents is not in the blog post itself, it's in the template sidebar.

However, as this sidebar is used across multiple posts, it's a theme element and needs to dynamically update to match each specific blog post.

In the latest release, we've added dynamic support for the Table of Contents.

When you're building in Thrive Theme Builder and you add a Table of Contents to a template, you'll see a new notice in the sidebar.

Links will dynamically update to match posts.

You are still able to preview your posts inside of Thrive Theme Builder to see how the Table of Contents will populate for each post.

12. Clone Feature

Back by popular demand, it's our Clone feature.

This button was in our legacy themes and now we've added it to your websites built with Thrive Theme Builder.

You won't believe how valuable that button is!

Whenever you are previewing pages or posts inside of your WordPress dashboard, you can click that button and instantly duplicate your post or page. The duplicate won't be published and will contain all of the content from the original post.

Share Your Feedback Below!

What a huge release, especially for our users of Thrive Theme Builder.

Thrive Theme Builder is an evolving product and we are absolutely committed to making it the best website building experience for WordPress.

For those of you that are not yet Thrive Suite customers, we'll have some big news for you very soon.

As always, we'd love to hear your feedback and suggestions in the comments below.

by Bradley Stevens  May 1, 2020

234

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  • Thanks for the updates. Where can i get the Thrive Theme builder Blank template? I dont have access to blocks. Blocks will help me faster builing of my website.

    • If you have Thrive Theme Builder installed, load a template on a new WordPress Page (not post) by clicking the Cloud icon on the right hand side of Thrive Architect. Under the Shapeshift set you’ll find ‘Blank Page’.

    • WooCommerce compatibility is already in development. But a fully-fledged visual editor for WooCommerce is an even bigger project and will take us quite some time. We’re aware that people are asking for it though, so it’s on our radar.

      • I know you guys are working on WooCommerce compatibility and I’m looking forward to it. Very excited about the idea of a WooCommerce builder! The power of Thrive Themes applied to the visual design of my store, popups, and more leaves me with endless ideas.

        Thanks, Thrive Themes team!

      • I’m actually working on this project right now with the team and we’re getting pretty close to having an initial version for you to play with.

        I don’t want to give a precise date because it’ll only get released once I’m truly happy with the quality of it, but we’re talking in the ballpark of a few releases from now (we release every 3 weeks)

      • Hi Paul,

        Thank you to give us this feedback over Woocommerce. It is really important and the Achilles’ heel for Thrive Themes today.
        I would like to encourage you to release this feature in small steps, different from the Theme Builder release strategy.

        I have to admit that the product is a real computer marvel, but it took too much time to launch…

        Please start from the basics and keep the wonder to the future.
        Initially, we just need that Theme Builder can provide a template for a single product page, and for the product page (list), this would be an MVP for Woocommerce integration.
        I know that Woocommerce is a world by itself, but I’m afraid we have to wait a full year to have access to basics.

        Congratulations on this amazing product!
        I’m really grateful to be a Thrive Theme member and you all should be very proud of this beautiful product you have created.

        Thank you so much and keep on doing this great job!

      • Hello Alexandre, I agree with your feedback on the strategy for Theme Builder and how it should be different for WooCommerce.

        Here’s how we’ve approached the WC project:- We’ve found users who are running successful Woo-Commerce shops and spent a lot of time asking what’s important to them for making a shop that sells well. From that, we’ve deduced that having a fully-fledged drag everything anywhere and customize every last pixel builder for WC is not only a never-ending black hole of scope but also not even needed or practical for building a success WC site. It’s more important that WC plays well with all the extensions available, is built for conversions and handles the use cases that lead to making more sales online. This has led to a reduced scope but a vastly increased focus on building what matters.

        I’m pretty pleased with the WC integration at the moment and it won’t take more than a few more release cycles to ship.

        Thanks for the continued support and for the very insightful comment!

      • Hi Paul,

        I’m not sure if this is on your radar but the ability to easily add upsell/cross sells after checkout is something lacking in the woocommerce space but is easily available on other platforms such as Shopify. If you need additional feedback from someone with a successful woocommerce business feel free to shoot me an email.

      • Thanks for the input and offer to help Westin – I’ve taken a note of this! What does your current WooCommerce stack look like? Are you using a dedicated WC theme?

      • Woocommerce (+ extensions/product bundles/reviews/etc.) + Cartflows Pro (for upsells and integration with thrive architect for built out landing pages and funnels) + Generate press theme.

      • It’s okay for now but not as conversion-focused as thrive themes. I am just waiting for your theme builder to have woocommerce support!

      • Agree with all other comments here – the ability to free ourselves from the restrictive Woo product layouts with Thrive built product Landing pages, layouts and functionality will be a game-changer for us…

      • It would be nice to implement in the future theme builder compatibility with wocommerce a feature that would leave many competitors behind and that is not only being able to visually build product sheet templates but also being able to edit a specific product with a visual builder.

      • I think you’ll be pleased with the solution that we come up with for WC. You’ll be able to create awesome shops under the TTB roof. It’ll be a very powerful combination.

      • Will it also work for events? Like couple of hours or couple of days tourist trips/tours with ticket selling?
        It would be really great…

      • Hi Paul, I already built a site with TTB and I really need to build an online store soon. I know any TT product is worth to wait but I can’t say that to my client.
        I was thinking of using a multiple theme plugin as an option to start the store.

        Would it work if I create the e-commerce content under another theme and once TTB integration is released I’ll switch it back?

      • Hello Angelica, as much as we really appreciate the sentiment of wanting to use Theme Builder for your project, I think you should push ahead and get an initial version of the store built.

        When you feel that the TTB and WooCommerce integration is right for your needs, it will be quite easy for you to switch over. All the product data will remain, and you’ll just need to design the shop, product and cart templates to suit your needs.

    • Just tagging on to Kuanhung’s comment regarding the need for woocommerce compatibility with thrive theme builder! Add me to the list of those waiting somewhat patiently 🙂

      • Hey Paul, just curious, alot of the features spoken about are included in the SendOwl Integration correct? If I do not currently use WC, and wanted to start e-commerce, I am thinking the SendOwl integration is the way to go.
        Thank you

      • Hello Joshua,

        That depends on what you mean by e-commerce. If you’re looking to sell a few digital products, then sure SendOwl might be worth looking into.

        However, if you mean that you want to set up an e-commerce shop with many products and conversion features to go with it, then SendOwl isn’t the right option for you. For that you’d need something more substantial like WooCommmerce.

  • Hey Team Thrive. Truly amazing! Exciting updates and really love the blog / Brads writing style and clear descriptions of how each element works. Thank you so much!

  • Would love to see short video showing best practices / recommended configuration for the updated opt-in forms.
    The best way to combine:
    1. Inquiry form,
    2. opt-in, with lead-magnet delivery.
    3. Calendly scheduling free consult.
    Normally that means the visitor entering in their name and email in 3 different locations. Is there a better way?

    • Sure, there’s lots of new ways to combine forms now. We have a few more features to add first and then we’ll work on a video tutorial that shows you everything you’ll be able to do start-to-end.

  • All great stuff, as expected but your ‘blank page’ isn’t truly a blank page. I want a blank page with no header or footer. Currently I have to do that and Thrive Architect and I don’t have access to all the builder benefits when I do that, do I?

    • Hi Frank, when you load the blank page, you can very easily turn the header and footer off 🙂

      Just make sure to click on the “page” breadcrumb and you’ll see the smart landing page main options.

      Then click on the eye icon this will toggle the visibility of header and footer.
      https://share.getcloudapp.com/bLuekN5v

  • Hi, is it possible to redirect to a different thank you page depending of the radio button selected on the lead form? (when using radio button with thrive leads)

    • Hi Kahra, no it’s not. At that point, I would suggest looking into Thrive Quiz Builder for your lead generation!

  • Awesome updates, thanks a lot! Quick questions: I have server-side caching thanks to my host (Raidboxes.io) so I don’t use any additional caching plugins. How can I still benefit from minification-settings etc. to speed up the ThemeBuilder theme?

    • Caching is such a nuanced and tricky subject to navigate and I don’t have any experience with Raidboxes.oi so I can’t say for sure. Server side caching may or may not already include minification. Typically many layers of caching can cause strange behaviour on the site, so if your host is already doing a good job of caching then that’s probably sufficient for you.

      Activating an image optimization service would probably be your highest point of leverage. If you haven’t done so already, serving compressed, adaptive images from a CDN through something like Optimole can really speed a web site up.

      • Thanks a lot for your fast reply Paul! That makes a lot of sense and I will switch to Optimole soon then 🙂

    • As there are so many different third party plugins out there we don’t have the capacity to check which ones play well together. You may just have to test things on your staging site and make sure everything is working before pushing it live.

  • Hi Bradley! Thank you for a great update. As a heavy Apprentice user, the new log in form is very appreciated. I love the care the team seem to have put into it… That’s been the one part of Apprentice that isn’t working so well — the student “management” side of things. People often struggle to log in or work out what courses they’ve already bought! So I’m excited to add this. PS I hope you can soon create a student / members page in Apprentice where students can what courses they have access to.

    • Glad you like it Daniel.

      Have you raised the login issues that you’re facing in the forum for us to look at? I’d like to get to the bottom of the issues you’re having.

  • Membership sites are known to be very sensitive to caching problems. For example, you don’t want the information of one customer shows up to another customer, etc. What are the specific settings, say for example in W3TC, that you recommend for a typical membership site?

    • The best protection for that kind of thing is to make sure that you disable caching for logged in users. In W3TC it’s located under Performance -> Page Cache.

      You can also disable caching per user role in the same section.

  • Hi Team, great job with the new updates. Theme builder looks like it is shaping up to be everything I had hoped for. I’m so glad I hung around and trusted in the teams vision rather than jumping ship as many did.

    One question regarding the blog filter option…
    On my site I have 3 main categories, let’s say A, B & C…
    I don’t want a blog but want the other categories at top level next to homepage…
    The problem is I deactivated the blog a few times in wordpress settings but it keeps toggling back on in my breadcrumbs, I think after I use Themebuilder…
    After being frustrated with this I just decided to leave the blog in but redirect it to my homepage…
    My breadcrumbs look like this Home>Blog>A with the blog redirected to homepage.
    I have tried to contact support but I don’t think they understand what I am trying to achieve. Do you understand?

    Basically I don’t want a blog to sit high in the breadcrumbs and contain all posts. However, I also don’t want it there containing the filtered options either. I thought that separating all 3 categories and not ultimately having them under a blog hierarchy would be best for silo page SEO…

    Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

    Keep up the great work.

    Regards, A

    • Thanks for the feedback – I understand the issue you’re facing. We’ll add a small improvement to the way breadcrumbs work to handle this case for you.

      • Thanks for your reply Paul. What will this fix look like, when would it happen and how can I keep up to date with the change? In the meantime what do you think about redirecting the blog to the homepage. Bad move? It’s just I have put a lot of effort into creating silo pages and want the changes and flow to reflect in google. Cheers

      • It sounds to me that you’d be better off using pages than posts. WordPress is a blogging platform so you can’t really turn off the blog.

        Instead you could create pages and parent pages, instead of categories

        So your parent pages would be:-

        – Page A
        – Page B
        – Page C

        And all your content pages should be added as children of these parent pages. Here’s a guide showing how you can create child pages:- https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-create-a-child-page-in-wordpress/

        Your breadcrumb would then be:- Home > Page A > Content page with no link to the blog.

        If I understand correctly, that’s the goal you’re trying to achieve.

        Hope this helps!

      • Hi Paul, thanks for your reply.

        If I use this child page method how will I use breadcrumbs? The option to add breadcrumbs doesn’t seem to show on-page editor.

        At the moment I have A as a top “category page” which redirects from a blog category. If I add sub-A as another “category page” below here I will still need to add blog posts. These will still ultimately be linked to the blog right? I have too many blog posts to convert all of them to pages.

        Am I thinking about this the wrong way?

        Basically I didn’t want the blog as I was worried about duplicate and mixed content. I also didn’t want the blog in the navigation menu.

        Perhaps, if this is not a concern I should just leave the blog in the flow of navigation… Also one more thing. I noticed after the update of breadcrumbs the parent category page does not show. It’s like this Home> Blog> SubA.

        Can I get it to read Home>Blog>ParentA>SubA. I am sure that would help with seo and human navigation.

        Is there any way we can continue this discussion in the support forum so I can share my site and info?

        Thanks again.

      • Hi there,
        Have a look at websites that rank on page one in Google, they use a blog and have it in their breadcrumbs (if they show the breadcrumbs) so don’t worry about it.

        If you use posts, they will be under a blog breadcrumb. If you use pages they won’t.

        If you want to have category pages, that means you create posts and assign categories.

        That’s just the way WordPress works.
        And many, many highranking sites use the normal WP functionality.

  • A SILO page !!!

    As a SEO sprint student I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of weeks and… here it is!

    Now I can’t wait for Thrive Theme Builder to be available outside the membership. When would that be?

    • Glad you’re excited as I am about the prospect of transforming boring category archives into dedicated silo pages for your pillar content.

      Sadly I have to do the right thing and say “no comment” for the Theme Builder question, otherwise the marketing team will hunt me down 🙂

      You’ll hear something about that soon – that’s all I can say

      • Paul, do you know when the SEO Sprint course will be available for those that missed it. I would pay extra for it. 🙂

  • Dude. YAS. Can’t wait to check it out.
    Pssstt: you guys are doing amazing work. I’ve moved all my clients to Thrive, including big companies. ♥️???? Can’t wait to see what’s coming next!

  • Awesome. I was waiting for the clone feature to be back, and I’m also excited to test out the radio buttons.

    Great updates, and lots of them. You guys sure know how to keep us members happy.

    Will there ever be an update that allows us to track clicks with Thrive Leads though (not opt-ins, just clicks)?

    • That’s in our backlog but not fully planned in the roadmap at the moment – I agree that a conversion suite like ours could benefit greatly from link tracking

  • Its really great to see improvements, especially on Thrive theme builder. I really hope this builder can be fully compatible with rankmath (the growing seo tool) on table content and double meta description bug. Keep up the great work.

      • Thanks Paul. Rank math can’t recognise the table of content in thrive architect. Your end may need to work with them so that rankmath can resolve it. Secondly, Thrive builder can’t recognise the meta desc set by rankmath, and end up using thrive own meta.

      • I’m building a new site and just wondering if it’s worth installing RankMath if there are currently issues with the plugin and Thrive?

        Have the issues with RankMath and Thrive been fixed and, if not, any indication of when that might be?

        Thank you.

    • We don’t have custom field support enabled for Drip yet, unfortunately. We currently have:- Mailchimp​, Active Campaign​, Get Response, Aweber, Infusionsoft, ConvertKit and MailerLite. CampaignMonitor and SendinBlue custom field support will be added in our next release (3 weeks time).

      I’ve added a vote to include custom field support for Drip as per your request.

      • Please do this! Drip invented the concept of custom fields for these services so it’s only fair they get to play too 🙂

      • Noted, cheers Nick.

        By the way, if you don’t want to wait and need a solution immediately, you can connect our lead generation element to Zapier and pass the data onto custom fields through there.

      • Hello Paul,

        These updats are impressive.

        Regarding custom field support, I will want to write that you consider MAUTIC as well…

        Am aware thrive theme doesn’t list the integration on list of integrations anymore

        But I use mautic integration with thrive themes and I have no issues.

        Please consider my request ????, I believe lot of other ThriveThemes customers still finds it helpful.

        Cheers

      • Hello Michael, you’re right – we used to integrate with Mautic. However, their API updates weren’t backwards compatible, so there were a number of instances where we had to scramble to fix a broken integration. In the end this happened too often – we were spending too long trying to keep the integration up-to-date and regrettably had to stop supporting the platform.

        I’d be open to re-integrating once their API platform is stable. In the meantime a workaround solution is to connect through Zapier.

  • I was in-process to build a Silo Page for a client and just got this update on the very perfect time this will solve many problems. And also thanks for other updates as well. You guys are rocking.

    • Yeah the combination of the silo pages and the category redirect can turn otherwise boring archive pages into real SEO engines for your content. Glad you like them Alok!

  • I’ve been a Thrive Themes member for a few years now and you guys never disappoint.

    Love Thrive Themes!

    I see you’re integrating with Optimole and Smush, but not Kraken.io? This was the service Shane always recommend and the one I use.

    Do you still recommend Kraken? Or is Optimole something you can use in addition to Kraken?

    Appreciate your time and thank you.

    • Thanks for your continued support Johnny – glad to hear you’re a happy member.

      Kraken is great for image compression but we decided to integrate with Optimole because I think it fits your needs in a better way.

      We looked for a solution that would make your images compressed, adaptive (this means that the image always loads at exactly the right dimensions) and quickly delivered (through a Content delivery network) without any extra steps to your normal editing workflow. Optimole was the best solution we found.

      You don’t need to use Kraken in addition to Optimole – when activated, Optimole automatically (behind the scenes) compresses all your images and serves it from a really fast CDN. You basically don’t have to do anything to set it up and you don’t have to add any steps to your workflow.

      Now, in a few clicks in our dashboard, you can just handle the messy and sometimes annoying problem of making sure your images are fully optimized, the right size and delivered quickly.

      • So this means that if we have plugins for this feature (like WP Optimize), we can get rid of them?

        (I’m always on the hunt for ways to reduce the number of plugins!)

      • If you’ve got other third party caching solutions running then it’s better to either go with the one you’ve chosen or our stack, rather than a combination of both. It’s not a case of more caching plugins the better, it’s more likely a case of more caching plugins = strange behavior and a broken site.

        Short answer:- yeah, I’d either go with WP Optimize, or the ones that we’ve integrated with, rather than trying to run both side by side.

  • Wow…ok. I woke up ready to start my day and saw this. You guys just sidetracked my agenda 🙂
    Thanks a lot! This is amazing news though, but I am not sure how to implement all of it.
    The lockdown situation gave me the opportunity to add an online activity to my business, as everything else is stopped.
    So happy, I chose thrive themes to do that.

    I already think about improving my lead generation blocks, with radio buttons and dropdown feature, to get more data for my subscribers.

    Does that mean I can create different lists of subscribers on Aweber and get the subscribers sent to those depending on theirs goals and needs?
    I am asking because I currently have a free course on Apprentice and, I am planning to launch my first product : online hair coaching.
    I will be launching, down the road, online courses and diy workshops.

    I still have an issue with making my login page to apprentice replace the standard one and having a registration page for those who don’t have an account yet.
    Currently waiting for the support to help me with that. Will the updates solve that?

    Overall, I have never been more happy of my decision to come back as a member. Seems like you are cooking some pretty neat features for us.
    Can’t wait 🙂

    Hope you are staying safe.
    Armelle
    p.s: hopefully, you get what I said…french native here 🙂

    • Hi Armelle sorry to Hijack your day 🙂

      Regarding segmenting your subscribers on Aweber – yes that’s one of the strong use cases for it. It allows you to understand your subscribers better so you can create more target campaigns in your autoresponder.

      Yes, Apprentice also received an update that allows you to create your own login page with this new login element.

      Thanks for returning!

      • Hey.. no problem. You can hijack any day if that can help me convert more 🙂
        Thanks for the reply. Probably something I am doing wrong, but my custom fields are set on unavailable for aweber.
        I am waiting for the support to get back to me.
        Also, ask for support for the Apprentice login page which doesn’t work for me. Until then…I’ll try to move on with other tasks.
        Thanks again
        Armelle

      • Hi Armelle, I’m writing on behalf of the support team.
        We’ve managed to identify an issue regarding the Aweber Custom fields, and I would like to inform you that a fix will be available in our next release, scheduled in two weeks time, and in the meantime, we will recommend you tick the checkboxes under List Options> Custom Fields> Subscriber Update: https://share.getcloudapp.com/NQuDl4zE in Aweber and save the changes.
        Then, upon refreshing the Aweber mailing List in the editor: https://share.getcloudapp.com/p9u7OLlA, the Custom Fields will be synchronized.

  • Exciting stuff! 🙂

    I have a question regarding page speed:
    As recommended, I have used the Shapeshift config w/ W3 Total Cache.

    I also have (pre)installed Autoptimize. Can I leave that as is or is there a possible conflict?

    TIA,
    Nadja

    • It’s hard to give a definite yes/no answer on this because it depends on the settings of the plugins involved. Generally speaking though, I’d go with one or the other, just to make sure you don’t get any kind of behavioural issues with the site. Having a cached site can speed things up, but multiple plugins caching at the same time can lead to all kinds of strange things and broken sites.

      • Before turning on the Thrive builder speed optimization, my speed is around 2sec. After turning on Thrive builder speed optimization with W3, the speed becomes 3.8 sec. May I know if there’s any proven stats that this new feature really works?

      • So you’re saying you went from a site without caching and image optimization to a site with caching and optimization and your site got slower? You have something strange going on there.

        What’s the URL to your site?

        And, yes, caching works.

        But, as I always say, speed optimization is a nuanced subject. Just because you have caching and image optimization doesn’t mean you’ll have a fast site necessarily – other factors come into play. What kind of content are you serving? What web host are you using? Do you have custom coding? What other plugins do you have installed? Are you lazy loading some of your content? For most users, the 80/20 of speed optimization is to ensure you have a host running a new version of PHP, make sure you leverage caching and make sure you’re serving optimized images.

      • The URL: https://www.connectbit.com

        My site already has W3 Total Cache and Autoptimize.
        Content is pure informational. Host is WPX hosting. No custom coding. All essential plugins only like Yoasts, enable media replace, etc… Not using lazy loading. Using of the newer version of PHP, 7.3.

        What’s your thoughts?

      • If you prefer your existing caching setup, then use it. As long as you have caching and image optimization on your site, then that’s the 80/20 in my opinion.

  • Just WoW! You Guys over deliver every time, I am always impressed. How do you do it? What’s the secret? A very well co-ordinated development team for sure 🙂 Well done o you all!

    • A well co-ordinated overall team 🙂 From product owners who figure out what our customers want and need to business anaylists who create specifications, to developers, testers, marketers, support agents,… Everyone participates and creates a well oiled machine to bring you the best possible product!

  • For the login form, is this a form that you can use for multiple web visitors. In other words, you are able to set up a separate password for each visitor who wants to access that thrive page? Or would everyone have the same password to that page kind of like WordPress password protected pages?

    • Hi Lisa,
      The login form is to login as a WordPress user. So the user would have their login and password from when the WordPress profile was created.
      This is different from a password protected page on your site.

      It’s typically used when you have a membership website and people get access to certain parts of your website when they are logged in (as a WordPress user) to the website.

      If this is a bit hazy, don’t worry for the moment. We’ll bring out tutorial videos to show you how to use this element to the fullest.

  • Hi Brand, thanks for sharing.
    When are you planning to release the SILO Pages for non-user of Thrive Builder?
    Thanks,
    vrv

    • Hi Victor,
      We might add silo pages in the landing page library in Thrive Architect but it’s not a priority at the moment.

  • This is great stuff! Any chance for an API for Kartra? That would make the custom fields in the dropdown and radio buttons more useful to Kartra users?

    • Hi Peter,
      I’ll add your vote for a Kartra integration. For now, you can already take advantage of our Zapier integration and connect to Kartra!

  • That’s fantastic. For SEO and user experience, I want users to be able to click on [←Previous post] [Next post→] at the bottom of single blog posts.

    Currently, I only see the pagination function in post lists but cannot see how to add that something like this for a single post. This was standard in the old Thrive Themes.

    Will this be added back in or expanded? I can’t find this in the Theme Builder.

    • Hi Brian,
      I’m happy to confirm that this is in development at the moment so will be available in one of the next releases 🙂

  • Great job, guys!

    I absolutely love all of the changes, especially Shapeshift’s New Blank Page Template with the ability to add the Page Blocks. Kudos also to the Silo pages!

    I can’t wait for the WooCommerce compatibility—looking forward to it!

  • Very happy with these new features!! Especially happy with the new login form element. That’s yet another plugin to delete from my sites 🙂

    The feature that would make me the happiest in the future is probably the ability to wrap elements in a shortcode (f.e. as defined in the HTML Attributes) and/or to be able to show/hide elements based on the CRM tags (when a user is logged in). Elementor has these features and I really miss them in Thrive Architect, which I find a much better page builder.

    • Hello Bert, you’ve asked for faster horses when we’re actually planning on delivering a car 🙂

      In short – we’re working on a very promising concept for dynamic content that will allow you to build rules for conditional display. But it won’t be with shortcodes, rather segments…

      More on that to come shortly 🙂

      • Think different. I like it! Looking forward to driving that car, then 🙂

      • Yeah been salivating at the mouth thinking of this in Thrive for over a year now!

        This could also give Thrive Quiz Builder power beyond belief when it comes to detailed quiz results based on how someone answers questions for the ultimate targeted/customized sales letter results page 😀 *drool*

  • Vous faites un travail incroyable…je suis accro a vos plugins et je suis tellement frustré de ne pas vous envoyer de clients en affiliation…est il possible d être affilié même si mon site ne traite pas de WordPress…par exemple j’aimerais intégrer un lien affilié sur la page zone membre apprendice en fin de page… merci

  • Great new features, especially the form features. – I got one question regarding forms: I have just switched from a mainstream email marketing service to Zoho Campaigns. Do you intend to come up wit a native integration for Zoho? Thanks.

    • Hi Lars,
      I’ll add your vote, for now you can already integrate Thrive tools with Zoho through Zapier.

      • Hi Hanne,,

        Zapier might work, but a real integration is better. In case you seriously think of connecting the Zoho world I suggest you go through Zoho flow, which is their kind of Zapier. They are quite open when it comes to integrations (quick!). By using Zoho flow you would allow to integrate with Zoho Campaigns, Zoho Marketing Hub, Zoho CRM.

        Here is the link:
        https://www.zoho.com/flow/features.html

        Lars

      • Hi Paul, may I support you in creating an integration with Zoho? If you can provide the needed specs I can share them with Zoho Flow so they can take it on their project list. Thank you. Lars

  • I would like to have these new options for the lead generation in the contact form. Why can’t you add a few more options. I just want to use this for inquiries where you can query different things without having to pass it on to a third party provider such as Mailchimp and Co.

    • Hi Dirk,

      Did you read the update about the lead generation form and the contact form being consolidated in the future?
      You can use the lead generation form and choose “email” as your “connection” this way it acts exactly as the contact form element would (you don’t have to add an email marketing services).

      Hope that helps

  • This company drives me crazy ???? You changed my life with your amazing products, your awesome support and your improvements. I recently started my first online business just with a Thrive Themes membership. The best investment of my life. Thanks from the bottom of my heart, guys

  • I would like to rejoin your membership because of what you’ve added: TT Builder, silo pages, quiz builder, Thrive Leads etc. As I will be rebuilding sites, is there (or could you make) a list of steps to make a site?

  • Awesome update guys! Thank you so much. I love Thrive Themes. You are going from strength to strength. One of my top wishes was a Login Form Element. So thanks for that! But what about a Sign Up Element? S.

  • Hi Brad,

    Thank you for the awesome update.

    I tested the fantastic login form. However, I used “Forget Password” to see how it resets the password. When I clicked on the link inside the password reset email, I redirected to the default WordPress password reset page, which wasn’t what I’d expected.

    It is the way password reset is going to work, or I did something wrong?

    Thank you.

    • Yes this is the behavior – the element is like an interface for the default WordPress logic.

      What were you expecting to happen when clicking on the reset link?

      • I expected to see a simple, dedicated “password reset” page because the main reason behind using such interfaces is to bypass default WordPress pages.

        Although the login form element bypasses default “login form” and “forget password” pages, it still sends people to the default “password reset” page, which gives access to other default pages as well.

  • Why can’t we just buy Thrive theme builder? I can’t afford 90 bucks every 3 months. I really don’t need any support for the product. You would sell more if we were given the option.

  • Can silo pages be created with thrive architect? Or only when using thrive themes and shapeshift theme?