New Updates to Thrive Themes – December 2020

In the Thrive Apprentice dashboard, you'll find a the new 'Dynamic Labels' option inside of the Courses tab, with 3 options:

Let's go through them one by one.

1. Access Restriction Labels

An Access Restriction Label is the small flag displayed on courses in your courses list or on lessons in your lesson list.

The label only shows on courses that are restricted and quickly communicates to your visitors what they'll need to do in order to access the course.

Clicking the + Add Label button lets you add any new restriction labels, change their color, and change their text.

Once you have created a label, you can assign it to a specific course under the Access Restrictions tab in Thrive Apprentice.

Then, when your potential customers stop by your courses list, they'll see the label on each course like in the image below.

This feature existed before, but we moved it to make it easier to control. This next feature, however, is brand new.

2. Switch Labels Depending on User Status

Once a student has access to a course, the restriction label no longer offers helpful information.

Wouldn't it be better to show them which courses they're already working through?

In the Dynamic Labels tab, you'll find a new toggle that enables the ability to switch labels based on user status.

When you enable this toggle, 3 new label options become available that indicate which courses a student has purchased but not started, is in progress, or has completed.

Once again, you can change the label text, color and even choose to hide the label entirely... or show the original restriction label, if you prefer.

As that student stops by your course list, the new labels will overwrite the restriction labels, like you see in this image below:

3. Call To Action Buttons

Each Thrive Apprentice course has a Call to Action Button that encourages a student to get involved. These buttons are dynamic, meaning they change depending on a student's access rights.

In the Dynamic Labels tab of Thrive Apprentice, you can easily click to change the text labels on these Call to Action buttons.

The text you assign here will be updated on the course list as you can see below.

Give it a click and you'll open our new Help Corner, a lightbox that will be your portal to getting all the help you need with Thrive Themes tools.

You'll see 3 options:

The first option is a link to search our new knowledge base. 

Did you know we made a massive update to our Knowledge base a few months ago, making it easier to search and find any information you need? 

We now have over 700+ articles that have been viewed over 50,000+ times in the last few months alone, with step-by-step instructions on how to use absolutely any setting, option or feature you could possibly find in our tools.

From the Help Corner lightbox, you can simply type your topic or question into the search bar, hit enter and a new tab will open showing the results for your question in our knowledge base.

From your WooCommerce checkout page, click 'Edit Design' to get started.

Once in the Edit Mode, you can select titles, labels and checkout fields and make edits to the typography, paddings and margins, background styles, borders and corners.

With this new feature, you can turn the bland WooCommerce checkout into something that fits more accurately with your brand and preferred style.

In the example below, I've taken inspiration from Shane's new website and project, Ikario, which uses strong black borders and sharp corners as a design aesthetic.

Try it out and let us know what you think!

4. New WooCommerce Product Categories Element

Edit Design on Checkout isn't the only update for WooCommerce users... we also have a whole new element!

The new Product Categories element can be embedded anywhere on your site and is perfect for giving your visitors a high-level overview of the key shop categories in your eCommerce store.

You've probably seen shop categories displayed like this before on eCommerce homepages.

With our Product Categories element, you've got loads of options to choose from, all supplied from the backend of WooCommerce category settings.

By default, each Product Category displayed will show the category title and the featured image for that category.

Product Category featured images are set in the backend of WooCommerce under the categories tab.

Dropping this element on your page will display all of your categories. But equally, you can fine tune exactly which categories display under the 'Filter categories' option in the sidebar.

Finally, entering design mode will let you control typography, alignment, margins, borders, corners, backgrounds and more.

That means with a few clicks, I can turn the image above into what you see below, with a lower red banner and right-hand alignment, in less than 2 minutes.

This set now includes 12 complete landing pages...

Plus 105 dedicated Page Blocks divided into 17 categories!

And it's a smart landing page set, meaning all colors, typography and styles are intelligently shared and updated on your page.

Inside this landing page set, you'll find the following templates:

When you start with any of the landing pages in this set (including the blank page designed to be compatible with smart technology), you'll be able to mix-and-match any of the 105 Page Blocks.

Just click the [+] icon floating between background sections to load the Online Course Page Block library.

From the Style Editor on the right-hand side of Thrive Architect, you can change any smart colors that will update across your landing page at once.

It's just a few clicks to update a whole page.

This technology is insaaaaane! It's more than just global colors: it's a whole color-generating algorithm that defines shades and tones based on your preferred colors.

But because we know that you aren't a designer and want to get on with your business, our designers have pre-selected 12 color palettes that they've approved will work beautifully with these templates.

Pick from any of these palettes or customize your own colors however you choose.

If the new landing page set isn't available in your landing page template window, make sure you click the 'Refresh from cloud' button in the top right corner.

Page Blocks are incredible, don't you agree? Let us know in the comments!

6. Thrive Ultimatum gets new Lead Generation Triggers for Evergreen Campaigns

If you haven't tried out the Evergreen Campaign option in Thrive Ultimatum, you're missing out.

Evergreen marketing campaigns used to be overcomplicated, overwhelming and only useful for big marketing departments that had the resources to make it work.

With Thrive Ultimatum, it's easy. All you need is an email address and you can anchor a countdown timer to show only for that one user, preventing anyone else from accessing a special deal on your website.

In this release, we've expanded the Lead Generation sources that can trigger an evergreen campaign.

When configuring an Evergreen Campaign in Thrive Ultimatum, set the campaign to start when a lead generation form is submitted.

Previously, it could only trigger from any Thrive Leads lead group or shortcode form... but now, you can set other lead generation triggers including:

When you click into the form selection field, you'll see a dropdown of every option, including any page on your website that has a lead generation form on it.

If those pages have more than one lead generation form, then submitting any of them will trigger the campaign.

A great example is Thrive Quiz builder. You can now trigger a scarcity campaign as soon as someone completes a Quiz, without using a page-visit trigger. This means you have verified that it only shows when someone completes a quiz and provides their email at the opt-in gate.

And don't forget, a few months ago we added 30 new fully-editable countdown timer designs to Thrive Ultimatum!

This means your visitors can finish a Thrive Quiz and immediately see a time-limited scarcity offer with a beautiful countdown timer that is only visible to them!

Pretty cool, huh?

7. Thrive Plugins Available in Gutenberg

When we first started making plugins for WordPress over 7 years ago, the Gutenberg editor didn't exist.

All you had was a text editor for your post and page content that felt more like classic word processing software. In those times, the best way to embed content from one plugin into a WordPress page was with a shortcode: two square brackets with a code in between.

That was - and still is - how you can embed content from Thrive plugins onto your pages, such as with this example Lead Shortcode from Thrive Leads below.

Of course, if you're using Thrive Architect to write your post and page content, then we've always had our other plugins available for you to drag, drop and embed right on your pages.

But to support the new Gutenberg editor in WordPress, we've now allowed these same Thrive plugins as Gutenberg blocks you can easily drop into content that you are writing in Gutenberg.

When you're writing a page in the Gutenberg editor and have any of our Thrive Themes plugins installed on your website, click the [+] icon in the top left and you'll see the Thrive Library listed under blocks.

Adding a Thrive plugin block, such as Thrive Leads Shortcode, will display a new visual block in the editor.

Pick the appropriate template or design that you've saved in the respective plugin, and it will appear right inside the Gutenberg editor with some easy options on the right hand side to open the Thrive editor to make changes.

This is much the same as adding your content to a page with a shortcode, except that you will see the template displayed inside Gutenberg, whereas shortcodes only display on the front end to your visitors.

8. Saved Headers & Footers Available in the Thrive Theme Builder Wizard

Thrive Theme Builder comes with a setup wizard that helps you build your whole website theme in under 15 minutes... and then further customize it to your heart's content.

In that wizard, you can easily assign any of our designer-made headers and footers that will apply globally to all of your theme templates.

But what if you built a header before using Thrive Theme Builder? How do you make your existing header show website wide?

In the latest update, we've allowed the Thrive Theme Builder wizard to load your custom headers.

In steps 3 and 4 of the site wizard, you can click the dropdown at the top to see a list of provided headers or footers.

Scroll to the bottom of that lightbox and you'll see the category "My Saved Headers". As the name implies, these are your own customized headers saved on your website already.

Headers or Footers applied in the wizard will apply to all of your website's theme templates, including text posts, video posts, audio posts, WordPress page templates and more, saving you from manually assigning them one-by-one.

This change doesn't affect landing pages, and WooCommerce headers can be set up in steps 12 and 13 differently to the rest of your site.

Leave a comment below!

Although this is our last software update for the year, our marketing team have a little bit more for you coming soon.

Our next software release will be in mid-January 2021.

Until then, from our product team to you, we wish you happy holidays and a happy new year.

As always, we love hearing your thoughts, comments and feedback on the latest release... so please, drop us a comment below!