When it comes to creating a conversion focused website for your online business, you need to do more than make it look nice.
That's because, if your website can't convert new visitors into fans, subscribers, customers or clients... who cares how good it looks?
So to make sure your website keeps conversion focus prioritized from the beginning, we created a Website from Scratch tutorial video to help you rapidly build a WordPress site that turns heads AND converts — using nothing but Thrive Theme Builder and Thrive Architect.
That's right, Thrive Theme Builder is included as part of our insanely valuable Thrive Suite.
Watch the video above to see how you can create a professional looking, conversion focused WordPress website, in less than 55 minutes.
More...
Let’s get started by first discussing the 4 benchmarks of conversion focus you'll need to know if you want to build successful business websites.
The 4 Conversion Focus Checkpoints (01:16)
Your website needs to hit 4 important conversion focus checkpoints if you want it to grow a mailing list and make sales for your online business. They include:
- Clarity, Readability and Structure
- Site Speed Optimization
- Explicit Calls to Action
- Conversion Pages
By the end of this tutorial, you’ll be able to achieve all four of these conversion focus benchmarks when creating your own WordPress website with Thrive Theme Builder and Thrive Architect.
Basic Settings & Plugins You'll Need for Your WordPress Website (02:34)
If you’re brand new to WordPress, this section of the tutorial will help you get started by explaining which basic WordPress settings you'll need to specify as well as which plugins we recommend you install.
On the other hand, if you already have a WordPress website up and running with content published, skip ahead to (08:22) in the video.
Key Settings To Specify in Your WordPress Dashboard (02:34)
Watch this section of the tutorial video to make sure you establish all key initial settings on your site after installing WordPress.
Recommended Plugins (03:21)
We recommend downloading and installing the following plugins on your new WordPress site:
- Thrive Product Manager >> use this plugin to download & activate Thrive Theme Builder (a WordPress theme) and Thrive Architect (a WordPress plugin)… as well as any other Thrive Themes products.
- Askismet Anti-Spam >> if you want to enable comments on your blog
- Either Yoast SEO or SEOPress >> to help you with Search Engine Optimization
- FakerPress >> use to generate dummy content on a brand new site with no content yet (to help in your theme design and setup)
- WP Legal Pages >> use this plugin to help generate the privacy policy, disclaimer and terms & conditions pages you need on your website.
Note: Don’t forget to activate each plugin after you install them!
Create Your Basic Structural Pages (06:09)
Next, you will create a structural framework for your website by creating place holders for important pages you'll later populate with content. This includes your:
- About Page
- Lead Generation Page
- Sales Page
- Any other mission critical page (Start Here Page, Recommended Resources Page, Contact Page, etc.)
- Legal Pages (Privacy Policy Page, Disclaimer Page, Terms of Service Page, etc.)
Getting Started with Thrive Theme Builder and Thrive Architect (08:22)
Make sure to download and activate the Thrive Product Manager plugin if you haven’t done so already.
You’ll need it to access any Thrive Themes product from your Thrive Customer Dashboard. Once you Install and Activate the Thrive Product Manager plugin, you can then use it to install and activate Shapeshift which will install Thrive Theme Builder (a WordPress theme) and Thrive Architect (a WordPress plugin).
Complete the Thrive Theme Builder Setup Wizard (09:15)
Follow each of the steps in the Setup Wizard to get the nuts and bolts of your new theme designed fast:
- Logo (10:02)
- Main Brand Color (10:23)
- Header (10:46)
- Footer (11:44)
- Homepage (12:15)
- Single Blog Post (14:32)
- Blog Post List (14:58)
- Page (16:10)
- Menu (16:30)
Basic Branding Setup (17:02)
Here’s where you’ll make some overall branding design choices for your site.
The most important of which are your brand colors. In fact, our Smart Color Technology makes that usually frustrating step one-click simple.
Other important details you’ll get sorted in this tutorial section include setting up your dark instance logo design as well as your favicon design (the little icon that appears in browser tabs).
Logo & Favicon Customization (17:18)
In Thrive Theme Builder, you get to specify logos that look good on both light and dark backgrounds. How cool is that?!
The awesomeness doesn't stop there though because you can also upload a square favicon image to serve as the little icon that appears in your website's browser tab.
Basic Typography Setup (18:31)
In this step, you’ll establish your site-wide typography settings.
The Typograph settings area of the Thrive Theme Builder dashboard. To edit your Typography settings, you'll click the pencil icon to open the Basic Typography editor.
These font settings include choosing font types, font colors, font sizes, font spacing, etc. to populate the following types of text:
- H1
- H2
- H3
- H4
- H5
- H6
- Paragraph text
- List text
- Hyperlink text
- Plain text
- Blockquote text
- Preformatted text
The Basic Typography editor preview window inside Thrive Theme Builder.
Remember that once you get these settings saved in Thrive Theme Builder, they will apply automatically across your theme templates and designs.
Thrive Theme Builder's Site Speed Optimization Tool (20:10)
Thrive Theme Builder also comes packed with a Site Speed Optimization tool that makes establishing your site's performance settings one-click simple!
First, the Site Speed Optimization feature helps you configure your caching settings with either WP Fastest Cache or W3 Total Cache in just a few clicks.
Second, the feature manages your site's image optimization settings by either integrating with Optimole or Smush to then configuring those tools in a couple clicks.
Finally, Thrive Theme Builder currently offers a Beta version of our Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) feature now in development. Try it out on a test site and give us your feedback to we can move it out of Beta as soon as possible.
Set up your WordPress Menus (23:39)
Now that the basic pages of your site have been crafted, it's time to create some additional menus you can use within your theme designs.
This tutorial section will teach you how to set up your default menus so they can be used dynamically inside your Header and Footer templates.
Integrating Your Email Marketing Service Tool (25:47)
Typically this is done with an email marketing tool like MailChimp or ActiveCampaign.
This section will show you how to connect your email marketing tool of choice to the Thrive Themes Dashboard so it can then be used within the different Thrive Themes products.
How to add Tracking Scripts & Analytics Scripts (26:59)
Yup, this is where you can add important scripts to your site to use tracking tools like:
- Google Analytics (for Google traffic data and conversion goals tracking)
- Facebook Ads Manager (tracking pixels for Facebook Ad visitors)
- Hotjar (visitor behavior analytics)
- etc...
Specify Your Smart Site Global Fields (28:22)
Using this Thrive Dashboard feature allows you to set up global information fields about your business.
Once established, these global fields can be used to dynamically populate content on your site, including:
- Important links related to your business
- Social Media links
- Physical Addresses
- Contact Information (email addresses, phone numbers, etc.)
- and more...
Setup Your Core Post & Page Templates (29:27)
Now you’ll learn how to manage the design of all your different Core Page Templates.
Core Page Templates are those page designs that get saved as a single template, but then apply across the multiple dynamically populated pages of your site.
The initial Core Page Templates you’ll design in Thrive Theme Builder are your:
- 404 Error Page
- Standard Blog Post
- Default Page
- Blog List Page
- Blog Archive Page
The Core Page Template area of the Thrive Theme Builder dashboard.
You can also create and manage as many extra page templates as you need from the templates area of Thrive Theme Builder.
How To Use WordPress Categories and Tags
Check out this video post about why it’s best to use WordPress tags internally on your website instead of showing them on the frontend to visitors.
When it comes to conversion focus for your blog posts, make sure your template design follows the Readability, Clarity and Structure principles.
Always make sure these principles are followed as you start designing your new theme.
Also, if you make a big design mistake as you work, you can always go back into the Thrive Theme Builder Setup Wizard, reselect a template for the step you are working on and simply restart customizing that design.
Customize Your List Templates (39:35)
Watch this part of the video to learn how you can customize your Post List element's display rules to help with strategic efforts like Search Engine Optimization.
Bottom Section Customization
Bottom sections provide opportunities for you to add clever Call to Actions like “Sign Up for My Newsletter”.
This section of the tutorial will explain how you can either hide your bottom sections or select from a variety of conversion focused templates to get this designed fast.
How To Create & Customize Specific Conversion Pages (42:58)
This section of our Website from Scratch tutorial video is going to walk you through how to create and customize your most important single-instance pages. These include your:
- Homepage
- Sales Page
- Lead Generation Page
Let's get started by completing the design of your Homepage.
Finalize Your Homepage Template (43:06)
When you were working through the Thrive Theme Builder Setup Wizard, you got started creating your Homepage template...
...but here is where you'll make your final tweaks to that initial design to get it done and published on the front page of your website.
Rapidly Customize Your Landing Page Designs with Page Block Templates (45:55)
Page Block templates are one of the most powerful features inside Thrive Architect that you can use to quickly customize and expand your landing page templates.
Watch Shane show you how to use them in this section of the tutorial video.
How To Build a Conversion Focused Sales Page (48:15)
It's true, you can't have an operational online business until you start selling something.
Follow this step of the tutorial to learn how easy it is to craft your first conversion focused sales page with the Thrive Architect page builder.
Create Your Lead Generation Page to Start Growing Your List (51:08)
Conversion focused landing pages must compel your visitors to take one — and only one — action.
In the case of your Lead Generation Page, that's signing up to your mailing list and this section shows you how to get that done right.
Don’t Be Intimidated… It's Easier than Ever to Just Get Started (53:19)
Now that you’ve seen how easy it is to go from zero to an operational website using Thrive Architect and Thrive Theme Builder, what are you waiting for?
If you’re new to using WordPress and Thrive Themes tools, don’t let the learning curve intimidate you. You have everything you need to get started and build a site you'll iteratively improve upon over time.
As you get more comfortable with the tools, you'll start refining every detail to achieve both conversion focused effectiveness as well as jaw-dropping design.
And even as a beginner, the Thrive Theme Builder Setup Wizard and all of the tips you learned in this video tutorial are all you need to create a great looking website — all by yourself.
But most of all, make sure to have fun and we can’t wait to see what you build!
Finally, if you have any questions about building a conversion focused website from scratch using Thrive Theme Builder and Thrive Architect, make sure to leave us a comment below.
This is absolutely exciting! We’re ready to move away from our rusty old template to thrive! We’ve been already using thrive plugins and this is just going to make everything perfect!
A couple of questions:
#1: Will this work with websites that have BBPress?
#2: We already have pages built with thrive architect, will installing this reset those pages?
#3: Can we activate our theme license on a test site to develop our theme first, and then import it to our main site? (deactivate the old license on demo site, and activate it on the main site)?
#4: Our old theme (Avada) has a landing page builder and we got a significant number of internal pages built using that. Will this theme transfer the content when we switch or we will need to make adjustments? I’m asking because I want to get ready in case if we need to go through every page again to adjust them (we don’t mind it, just need to be ready for it)
Thank you!
Hi Sean,
1. There are no known conflicts with BBpress.
2. No, Thrive Architect pages will stay exactly as they are.
3. Yes
4. The moment you switch from Avada to another theme, you would also lose their builder that’s included with the theme so that means that those landing pages would have to be rebuild (with Thrive Architect).
Hope that helps 🙂
P.S.: Switching themes is always a big undertaking so make sure to have a proper staging site set up for testing purpose!
hi I installed the clock to the reverse, but why is there no place to install the redirect link
As a former AVADA user I recommend to get rid of this….theme. It takes a bit of effort but you save more than this amount of effort in the future and you get an excellent support.
Most of the migration effort will be the deletion of the avada syntax.
Due to the ability to use templates and symbols in Thrive Architect you can migrate very efficient.
All this looks absolutely amazing. Very intuitive. Love the templates for quick implementation. Now I want to know how to transfer my existing blog that was built on Squared theme.
Thx
Hanne has this course in Thrive University: https://thrivethemes.com/courses/switch-to-ttb/
Fantastic product. We have already rebuilt one of our websites with TTB. This is also a great post but should it not have a clear CTA for Membership ?
Hi Edward, non-members received an email with a clear CTA 🙂 But you’re right, I added an extra button.
Thanks Hanne, This helps if sharing this post as an affiliate.
THANK YOU!
Since I already have THRIVE and have it on my site already.
I have not really taken the time out to do all the basics things in the video. HOW would I do all the basic suggestions to my current site?
Assuming I don’t need to start over from scratch so thanks for any help.
Hi Brad, we made a course on how to switch from your current theme to a Thrive Theme Builder theme. You can find it here: https://thrivethemes.com/courses/switch-to-ttb/
THANK YOU!
Thank you Shane and the Team for continuing to create new ways and at the same time making it more intuitive. Focusing on the big picture first is for sure the best approach on how to move forwards.
Is there an option where I can have a background image preferably without the typical headers and then place links anywhere over this image that trigger a popup with a frame offering more visual info and few words to verify the image / underlying page content.
E.G. A picture of a car. You go to the wheels and hovering over the wheel, the popup schows Alloys, Tires and Disc brakes, so when you click on that it will lead to the All about Wheels section. I wouldn’t mind breadcrumbs to be able to jump back up to a different option and take a different direction. I hope you are getting where I am coming from.
Thanks again for these great tools and great explainer videos.
Hi Gerhard,
Happy you like it.
While you can do that, I probably wouldn’t recommend it…
It’s really easy to have a background section with an image, and you can put links over it (I would probably use content boxes or columns with links in your case). But to place those links on a specific spot on the picture would be tricky especially when you keep in mind different screensizes.
This looks terrific! I hope you’ll do a similar video for people who have a site and are using another theme (I use RISE). I’d love a check list of things to check when I’m migrating to Theme Builder.
Hi John,
I did a full video course 🙂 Check it out here: https://thrivethemes.com/courses/switch-to-ttb/
This is *exactly* what I need. Thanks, Hanne!
Awesome, as usual, Shane and team. 🙂
Stunning. Just simply stunning. What a superb job on the builder (and Shane is a master presenter too). I’m glad I’ve kept my membership going for so many years. I can hardly wait to try out the new builder. Thank you!
So happy the TTB is finally here! Thanks for this amazing product Shane and the whole team.
Are you guys aware of the plugin Rankmath? It is a plugin alternative for yoast seo, but totally free and with almost all premium features yoast offers. Not that yoast is bad or that I have any connection with them, but I think your members should know that product as you refer to other seo plugins.
Are there any experiences with Rankmath and TTB?
Some SEO Sprint customers reported ‘less than intuitive’ experiences with RankMath… (This was last month, before TTB was released, obviously.)
After extensive contact with RM support these customers concluded it was made for developers…and not for the casual SEO Sprint customer or solopreneur…
If you’re in the developer camp, then it might be suitable… (I have personally switched from Yoast to SEOPress…)
I think this is not the case anymore, but I can see your point.
FYI, this was just within the last 2 weeks
Rankmath and TTB is not fully compatible yet. Several bugs like not able to recognise table of contents, extra meta description, and meta description gone.. etc.. I don’t recommend for now until both parties sort out the differences.
RankMath fully integrates with Architect now. More details at the bottom of the post here:- https://thrivethemes.com/may-2020/
RankMath fully integrates with Architect and TTB now, more details at the bottom of the post here:- https://thrivethemes.com/may-2020/
It really IS as easy as Shane demonstrate in the above video! I discovered it was already included in a massive Thrive update last Friday and jumped in…
It took me less than an hour to go through the Wizard the first time (a DEMO site I use for training)…
Saturday, I couldn’t resist and did the same on a 2nd site that has quite a bit of content but (long story 🙁 …domain change) is no longer getting any traffic [ie, nobody knows it’s there! :-o]… This 2nd time around with the Wizard took me around 20 minutes, as I was familiar with the pre-designed theme elements (headers, footers, etc.) So less “decision-time!” 😉
[Note: no custom coding, and both were already using Thrive products]
No issues, no errors…everything just WORKED! 😀
You’ve all done a remarkable job & it was well worth the wait to get this amazing product!
I plan to do the “real thing” on my business ‘under-construction’ website (Pressive theme) NOW…as I know it will work just fine! 🙂
Thank you! <3
Thanks Shane.
Will the website built with ta and ttb will seo friendly so it have the capabilities to rank high on search engine?
No problems to rank a site with TTB and TAR. We still recommend installing an SEO plugin such as Yoast or SEOpress.
Hi Shane and Team,
this is absolutely amazing. Congratulations on launching this product. I suspect that this has been a rough and long way for the team, with all the the complexity a freely editable WordPress Theme must present.
Really looking forward to using it instantly!
I have one question:
Once I set up all the Theme settings and site templates – do you recommend creating all blog posts in Thrive Architect or just use the normal WordPress editor and include conversion elements with short codes?
I have a blank website and can still choose. I would like to hear your suggestions. Are there pros to using the normal editor for normal posts? Right now I would just go ahead and create everything in Thrive Architect.
Thanks and I wish you a lot of success with Thrive Theme Builder!
Hello Franziska,
Personally, I recommend using Thrive Architect to create blog posts, because it gives you so many options to make your blog posts more interesting by adding content blocks, calls to action, buttons and much more.
But in principle, it doesn’t matter what you use to create blog content. If you use Gutenberg or the old WordPress editor, whatever you create in the editor will be rendered in the “content area” part of your blog posts.
We’ve been waiting for TTB for a while and you delivered.
In the meantime, we’ve built our entire site on Thrive Architect. While we don’t intend to switch the base site to TTB (at least not at the moment), we do want to use the TTB features for a new blog section.
How would you recommend we set that up? Mainly I’m thinking how to set it up so the URL structure is xyz.com/blog/blogtitle for all blog posts
Hi Larry,
TTB is a theme so you can’t set it up on only part of your site.
If you need help switching, please check out the course: https://thrivethemes.com/courses/switch-to-ttb/
I love it, but see one major flaw that I was hoping would have been addressed with TTB. Basically the inability to use the templates for landing pages with a regular TTB page while keeping its header and footer.
It appears you have different options for templates for TTB and for Smart Landing Pages. I love one of the templates for Smart Landing Pages and would love to use that for my Home page, but can’t because it doesn’t allow me to use the TTB header and footer with it.
I love using the Page Blocks with Smart Landing Pages too, but can’t use those with TTB either.
Once we have the ability to be able to create pages using the Landing Page Templates and Page Blocks while still keeping a the TTB Global header and footer, we can use all of what is available.
As it is right now, I can’t use the templates in Smart Landing Pages or the Page Blocks on my site, unless it’s for a page where I don’t want the header or footer.
Michael, you can load any header / footer that you have in TTB in your smart landing page in a few clicks.
Firstly, make sure that you’re using the latest version of architect. Then, when editing a smart landing page, click the first item in the breadcrumb and then the “eye” next to header in the “Main Options” panel.
You can then choose the header/footer that matches the one that you’re using in TTB.
I thought this would apply to my own case, but I guess I’m misunderstanding something… I used the “Sandwich Home Page” as my HOME, but it’s missing the theme footer…
Not sure how to trigger the theme footer…
I tried the “eye” graphic but that didn’t work… I’m sure it’s something simple I just missed! 😉 LoL!
Thanks!
Hi Karen,
This means you used Thrive Architect and a landing page as your homepage.
This overwrites the theme template. What you can do is open your homepage in edit mode with Thrive Architect, go into settings (the gear icon) >> Global >> Headers and Footers. https://share.getcloudapp.com/wbumKKbA
From there, when you click on Footer, you will be able to choose “Shapeshift default footer” (or another name if you renamed your theme template) that is the one used everywhere in your theme.
LMK if that is what you were trying to do 🙂
Yessss, Hanne! That’s *exactly* what I was trying to do! 😀 😀 😀
I was trying to change it in TTB not in Architect (which never occurred to me! Duh!) 😉 LoL! [learning curve!]
Thank you so much! <3
My pleasure 😀
But… 😮
I have Apprentice installed on the site and the ‘Apprentice Menu’ seems to be “taking up” 1 of the “2 menus for the theme” but I want a Footer menu…
I can’t seem to disable the Apprentice menu… I’ve looked through the KB for menus & Apprentice, but am still stuck… The result is that I can’t set up a Footer menu… Did I miss something again?
Thank you! <3
Hi Karen,
When you go into your footer, click on the menu directly, you can set the source from there: https://share.getcloudapp.com/OAurgBLX
Hope that’s what you’re looking for 🙂
Hi Hanne,
Thank you…AGAIN! Menus’ area, and that is where I was bumping up against the Apprentice Menu option…
Do I have this correct now? (And is this only because I have Apprentice installed?)
[BTW…there are several places to configure things, and it’s hard to sort out which takes priority over which: ie. theme, WP Appearance, custom menus…etc. if this makes sense!]
I really appreciate your patience! 😀
Oops, Hanne… Somehow I was editing a typo in the comment before this one and it deleted some parts…
My confusion was not understanding that I needed to create a *custom footer* for said HOME landing page template… Your screenshot looks like a custom footer is what I need to be doing…
Instead I was using the default WP Appearance > Menus option…
Just to be clear. I can choose a Smart Landing page as my Home page and then use the Main Options panel to choose the header and footer from my TTB wizard?
I appears the integration is still not there unless I’m missing something. I have gone through the TTB wizard and needed to choose a home page template I don’t want. I then replace this template with a Smart Landing Page template. It would be ideal if I could choose a Smart Template in the Wizard. Now I’m stuck trying to change the colors on this Smart Landing Page to the global colors on the Theme chosen from the Wizard to match the other pages. I have no idea how to do that. I’m guessing there is a work around but I was hoping it would be integrated and seamless.
Hi Michael,
You can choose to use an existing page as your homepage… So you could create your homepage with a smart landing page and then pick that one in the wizard. As for the theme colors, yes at the moment you would need to click twice more to set the theme colors as the smart colors.
We already have some ideas on how to improve this.
Hi Michael, here’s a video on how to do just that 😀 https://www.loom.com/share/841c22ad634a43a983f73046ab32c22c
Thanks Hanne. I think I have it. Videos that are short and quick with no audio are hard to follow. But with your video and Paul’s reply above, I think I have it.
First: CONGRATULATIONS! This is absolutely wonderful. It was well-conceived and executed. I’m very proud of the work you have done.
Second: here are my opinions about the way to make it even better!
Some of this was already addressed below, but the integration of Smart Landing Pages with TTB would be ideal. Yes, you can load a Smart Landing page and add a header/footer from TTB, but the other global elements are not included (unless I’m mistaken). Isn’t this the whole point of the theme builder?
I think that a Smart Landing Page should be one of the templates. It should be blank by nature (with all of the colors, text, etc. from the theme) with the ability to add headers and footers if wanted. Then, you can load any other landing page template from your gallery, which will automatically use your theme for fonts/colors.
AND! Most importantly, then you can add in Page Blocks. Which, in my opinion, shouldn’t be limited to the type (No Photoshop, for example) of Smart Landing Page as it is set up now. The Page Blocks should be universal for all smart pages so you can use them for any type of content.
These changes would turn this terrific theme builder into the ultimately terrific theme builder.
Again…..thanks for all the hard work. We are all going to reap a lot of benefits from your endeavors.
Hi Andy,
Thanks for your comment 🙂
Page Blocks are on the roadmap 😀
Hi Hanne, thanks for the update. Was having the same queries as Andy when setting up a test project with the new TTB. Any section that I want from smart landing page, I will save the section as a template then load it on the standard web page.
I can’t tell you how excited I’ve been for this!
So happy to finally dive in and use it. I absolutely love how seamless and wonderful it all looks and can’t wait to switch to the Theme Builder.
One question: Do I still need to create a child theme when using the Theme Builder? What’s the best practice in this case?
Thank you for all you do, TT Team!
Hi Ralitska,
No Thrive Theme Builder doesn’t work with Child Themes.
Will support for Woocommerce come this year? I assume Woocommerce 4.0 will be supported out of the gate?
Also, I’m curious, is the Theme Builder built on Gutenberg or compatible in any way or does it completely ignore the Gutenberg stuff and does its own thing?
We’re now fully WooCommerce compatible: https://thrivethemes.com/themebuilder/woocommerce/
And indeed no need for Gutenberg 😀
We’ve been waiting for TTB for a while and you delivered.
In the meantime, we’ve built our entire site on Thrive Architect. While we don’t intend to switch the base site to TTB (at least not at the moment), we do want to use the TTB features for a new blog section.
How would you recommend we set that up? Mainly I’m thinking how to set it up so the URL structure is xyz.com/blog/blogtitle for all blog posts
Hi Larry,
If you build your website with Thrive Architect landing pages, then switching the theme to Thrive Theme Builder will keep all those page intact. If however you don’t want to switch themes, you could install Thrive Theme Builder on a subdomain eg. blog.yoursite.com and have a fresh WP install with the Thrive Theme Builder theme there. That would mean having 2 sites though, which is not what I would recommend.
Have a look at the course on how to switch your site over to Thrive Theme Builder: https://thrivethemes.com/courses/switch-to-ttb/
Depending on how you created it, it might be much less work than you think 🙂
So excited to finally have access to Thrive Theme Builder.
On our website we have multiple types of content that would ideally require separate post listings and detail pages, e.g.
– A regular blog section, showing various types of blog articles and sign up elements to join a blog mailing list
– Daily video episodes with a distinct look and feel optimised for showing a video with a short synopsis and a few buttons to sign up for daily notifications via email
Does Theme Builder give me the option to enable this type of setup without having to do some programming myself?
Hi Mark,
Yes you can create templates for these different types of content (no need to code anything). If you have a look at the demo website, you can see different blog posts (standard and video) with different layouts. This will give you a good feel of what you can do.
Thanks Hanne. I know that you can have different post types within the post section, but what I am more interested in is whether I can have different sections on my website that group different types of content. From the user’s point of view this would look like going to two completely different “post listings” pages … the one optimised for regular articles (which may show a new one once a month) whereas the other one is optimised for showcasing daily video content for an actual content product. Both sections would have completely independent designs, different CTAs, etc.
You sure can 🙂
If the different content is in categories, you could create different category list pages for each one eg. the Daily video category and then the normal blog content category. This way, all of your . Or you could create pages from scratch with the post list element and really select which pieces of content you want to show.
Thank you! I am looking forward to be able to have more control over how the “rest of my website” looks and feels.
Hey Shane, thanks a lot for the video!
Just curious: in the SEO Sprint course you told us that the URL Structure should be: website.com/category/postname
Now you recommend: website.com/postname
Is this already obsolete or why has that changed?
Best,
Andreas
Hi Andreas,
No that hasn’t changed. It’s the right choice, but only if you know what you’re doing, SEO wise.
As described in detail in the SEO course, there are pros and cons to /postname as well as to category/postname
If you’ve gone through the SEO course you have all the info to make the right decision for your sites. For this tutorial, Shane wanted to avoid going on a 10-minute SEO detour, so he provided a simple answer instead 🙂
Hanne,
Thanks for clarifying! I was wondering the same thing! 😉
Hey guys,
Any plans to add customization for product pages/productst in woocommerce with your theme builder? Or is this something that it is already capable of out of the box?
Hi Westin,
No at the moment Thrive Theme Builder is not WooCommerce compatible. And yes it’s something that’s on our roadmap 😀
It’s me…I’m back & confused AGAIN! Sorry! :-/
My About & Contact pages — pre-TTB — were done in Architect using Thrive Landing page templates…
I’ve read the comments above about Thrive Architect pages — from Landing pages — overriding TTB theme settings, but for some reason my “default” PAGE setting (from going through the Wizard) has also been applied to these Architect pages… [Probably ‘operator error’ on my part 😉 LoL!]
I did go into the editor, initially thinking to edit the PAGE itself with Architect, but when I tried to remove the TOP section (applied from the default page template) the editor only gave me the option to edit the template in TTB… (sigh)…
I was able to “turn off” the top & sidebar sections with the “eye” icon, but alas…it saved that to the existing page template… 😮
What I think I need to do is to somehow change template or ‘remove’ that default template from those 2 Architect pages, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to do that!
Can you point me to some documentation on this…or tell me where to fix it?
Thank yo so much! <3
Hi Karen,
Indeed you probably edited the pages with Thrive Architect, but not as landing pages but as pages on your site (did you go through the course I made on how to switch from a theme to Thrive Theme Builder?) I show and explain a bit more about it there: https://thrivethemes.com/courses/switch-to-ttb/
Now the good news is, you can simply turn off the top section and sidebar on those pages (without having to change the default page templates in any way) let me quickly show you the magic 😉
When you’re on the about page in the Thrive Architect editor, select the very first breadcrumb, that’s the “page” breadcrumb, here you’ll find the visibility settings FOR THAT PAGE ONLY.
That’s where you can easily hide the elements 🙂 https://share.getcloudapp.com/KouWY58Q
Hanne,
Once again, you’re a life-saver [& sanity saver 😉 LoL]!
I did watch your “theme to Builder” course, but it didn’t seem to apply specifically because my site is not yet “live.” I didn’t watch the entire course, so I missed the pertinent part… Sorry! 😐
I had no idea about the PAGE visibility settings! Duh! That’s a great feature! Exactly what I need in this case!
Thank you again so much! <3
No problem 😀 But the third lesson might be really helpful to watch 😀
I am a beginner, using thrive architect, started from scratch, when I set the parameters according mobile view, and for pc view Differently, I didn’t get the proper placement on pc monitor view
This might help: https://thrivethemes.com/mobile-responsive-editing/
I love this. I am designing the “top section” and I am choosing a default paged featured image. What are the recommended images sizes for 1 thru 4?
Hi Melissa,
Sorry I’m not entirely sure what template you are using and you can resize all images so their is not real “recommended size”. Best way is probably to load the top section you have in mind and use the inspect tool (right click when you’re in preview and the choose “inspect”) that will show you the size that’s used.
Btw we’re also working at the moment on a solution to avoid this problem all together so you wouldn’t need to upload the correct size anymore.
That’s a great upgrade for the image sizes! Such a time saver! 😀
Is the solution you’re talking about regarding image sizes already available? I struggle with using correct image size in TTB.
Hi Christiaan,
Yes it is under the speed optimization tab 🙂
I just want to say WOW – the new Thrive Theme Builder is amazing!!! I am so impressed. It’s literally solving all the problems I had before. ????????????????????????????????????????
Hello, do you have a tutorial to customize header and footer color? I don’t see it anywhere.
Hi Laura,
Here’s the tutorial on the header: https://thrivethemes.com/tkb_item/how-to-use-the-header-section/
Short version: make sure to go into edit mode for the header (or footer) and select the header element (use the breadcrumbs to do so). Then go to background style and select the color you want. https://share.getcloudapp.com/DOu85o65
When I try to replace the Hero Image in the Generated Homepage, it loads it with a white background,although it is a transparent png image. How can I load the Hero Image whith no background?
Hi Adalberto,
If the image is transparent it should load as transparent… If you believe this is a bug. Please ask our support team to help you out. They’ll be able to see what’s going on on your site specifically.
Hi. About permalinks. Do you recommend I use category/post-name or just post-name? I’ve setting up my website with the Silos scheme I learned from the SEO Sprint.
I was wondering the same thing.
If you know what you’re doing (which you do because you followed SEO Sprint) we still recommend category/post-name.
Hi, could this be used to build a membership website? Thank you
Yeah you can build a membership site on top of Thrive Theme Builder certainly. You’d need to use some kind of membership delivery platform (MemberMouse, Wishlist Member, Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl) to handle the access logic, but in terms of actually building the site and the content, TTB will work very well.
Thank you Paul
Is there any stats to show the before and after, after you did the site optimization? I got worse results in terms of GTmetrix and pingdom test. BTW, I’m using WPX hosting, so it’s not a lousy slow provider.
I don’t think generic stats are meaningful because it’s specific to each site. Obviously it goes without saying that a site that’s not cached and has no image optimization will benefit from caching and image optimization. We don’t need stats to prove that, it’s clear.
The logic of not comparing does not make sense. At least, you compare based on your own site, so that your customers know what to expect when they do theirs. A reference point is good so that beginners can also know there is a goal to achieve under similar environment setup.
You’re asking for specific stats – that to me doesn’t make sense, because it’s subjective to each site.
You’re asking if caching and image optimisation works and the answer is yes.
Oh, does that mean thousands of bloggers that did a review of site/theme speed stats does not make sense too?
Well, it could be a great blog post idea for your next write up to show thrive theme builder does move the needle in the pagespeed.
Actually, in many cases I do think that most speed tests that users do are useless, with the exception of a few that actually do it right.
How can I easily convert existing site built in Thrive Themes Ignition Theme into a site based on Thrive Theme Builder? Should I uninstall the Ignition Theme first? Or should I just install the Thrive Theme Builder and start modifying it gradually? Does one actually need a theme when using Thrive Theme Builder?
It’s similar to any other theme – there are few things you need to take care of, but everything is covered in this course:- https://thrivethemes.com/courses/switch-to-ttb/
You can switch over to Theme Builder and just follow the course.
It might also be worth setting up a staging site. Who are you hosting with? Most WordPress hosts now allow you to create a staging site in a few clicks. With a staging site you can make the transition and then push it live only when you’re happy with it.
Hi Martin, what you may be missing is that Theme Builder comes with its own theme “Shapeshifter“ as WordPress requires a theme to function… When using the Builder, you’re customizing the Shapeshifter theme defaults, and making your own custom theme…
As far as turning off your existing theme, that automatically happens when you activate a new theme, as you cannot have more than 1 theme active…
Once you have your site completely working in Theme Builder you can delete the old theme, as everything takes up “overhead;” same for any unused plugins…
Hope this helps! 🙂
Became a Thrive Theme member about 6 months ago. But only started transitioning to WP in April 2020. I own an online marketing company and have several start-up and mid-market clients asking us to build sales funnel web-sites with 3 main criteria – they own the site (not hosted on ClickFunnels or Kartra), reasonably priced and feature rich. That lead me to Thrive Themes. I have to admit that for the past month I’ve been frustrated because I am a WP fledgling, having been a WIX design Pro for the past 5 years.
This video is kick-ass. I’ve been looking for a top-down-view video and this is EXCELLENT. Great job – please keep pumping out these kinds of training video – it will free up time for your techie’s, whom I reach out to almost daily with one question or another – things you covered in this video that are now much more clearer to me. Excellent presentation and clarity.