Every 3 weeks on a Wednesday, we publish an update to our plugins and software.
This week, we published 13 feature improvements to Thrive Architect at once.
But where can you go to find out what's changed? Right here!
Read on for the quick round-up of what has been improved in Thrive Architect this week.
More...
Here's a short video Shane made to highlight some of the new features:
In total, there have been more updates and we've detailed all of them for you, below.
Some improvements will be so small you might not even notice them, whereas others are significant and you'll definitely feel the difference when using our tools.
Let's start with the biggest changes and work our way down to the little ones.
Intelligent Image Resizing
Resizing and cropping an image in Thrive Architect has just become a thousand times easier. We've now added intelligent on-canvas handles that let you set your image perfectly without even using the sidebar.
Corner handles will resize the image without affecting the aspect ratio, whereas vertical handles will intelligently crop the image on the x or y axis depending on your desired image size.
Once your size is set, simply click and drag the image to change where it will be cropped.
New Hyperlink Design Library with 14 Animations
Your hyperlinks are an invitation for a website visitor to click, so it's worth making them look inviting. With the new Hyperlink settings control, you can easily save, load and apply a look right on the page.
Text Hyperlinks can now be selected just like an element, opening their own styling control in the sidebar.
You can set the hyperlink to inherit the default page style, apply a specific style, or load from any saved looks.
This update also includes a library of 14 different hyperlink animations, from a wiggling underline to a gradient fill.
Click 'effect' to choose from 14 hyperlink hover animations
Now you can really make your hyperlinks pop!
Set Smooth Jumplinks from a Custom Menu
You know that amazing Custom Menu element we've already added to Thrive Architect? It just got better.
You can now add smooth-scrolling jumplinks to a Custom Menu item. This means clicking a menu item will automatically move your visitor's viewport to anywhere on (or off) the page.
Jumplinks are now available for Custom Menu items.
When you're setting the hyperlink for a menu item, simply click the anchor, toggle 'smooth-scrolling' and set the target.
Combine this with a sticky scroll behavior for your custom menu and you can get an effect that looks like this:
No matter where your visitor navigates on the page, clicking the menu item will still smoothly move their viewport to the correct target.
Post List - Link Entire Article
A few months ago, we released the most versatile Post List element for WordPress. Since its release, we've improved it with multiple updates to make it even better. This week, it gets 3 improvements.
The first is a new toggle that lets you set the entire article as a link.
Toggle this on and your whole article becomes a button
When you enable this toggle, clicking anywhere inside the article element will load the post. Previously, the visitor had to click the article title, but now they can click anywhere.
Confused? Have a look at the cursor hovering over a Post List with this toggle enabled:
The cursor now sees the entire article as a button.
Post List - Always Show Article
When you define the logic for your post list element, you can select from categories, authors, publish date and more.
But what if you want to force one particular article to always show to the visitor? Now you can.
'Always Show' will make sure the selected article is included in your Post List.
Do you have a high converting blog post that you want your visitors to find?
Start by setting some general rules to populate the Post List element. When you are ready, add a new rule, select your valuable article and choose 'Always Show'.
Post List - Sort By Date Modified
When we released the Post List element, we had some interesting feature requests for ways we could improve it. Here was one:
So we've now added 'Date Modified' as an option for arranging your results in the Post List element.
Selecting 'Date Modified' pushes your updated posts to the top.
If you're wondering why you would use this option, think about what should happen when you update a post.
Perhaps you released an article called 'Best Tools of 2019' and you would like to update the post for 2020. WordPress will still see the original publish date and it could get lost behind more recently published articles.
Sorting by 'Date Modified' lets your refreshed content come to the front of your Post List.
Distraction Free Writing Mode
Do you like to type your blog posts right inside of Thrive Architect?
To give you that seamless 'Google Docs' feel to writing, we've added a new Distraction Free Mode.
Enabling this feature hides the green selector box around your text elements, letting your words flow onto the page just the way a visitor will see it.
Goodbye Green Box. Hello distraction free writing!
To enable Distraction Free Edit Mode, click the 3 dots at the end of your typography bar and choose it from the dropdown.
Easy Tags For Lead Generation
Have you set up a new opt-in form on your website lately? We've made some improvements to the user interface so it's easier and smoother to set your opt-in form behavior.
That includes a super-simple way to add tags to a contact in your mailing list right from the opt-in form settings.
Smooth, isn't it?
Exit Architect Without Saving
We saw lots of requests for an easy way to exit Thrive Architect ​without saving​ ​​and abandon your changes. Now when you click the green arrow next to the 'Save Work' button, you'll be presented with a new option:
Exit without saving returns you to the WordPress page edit view.
Don't worry if you click it by mistake. We've included an extra confirmation step to make sure your work isn't accidentally lost.
Reset Hover States
This one is a small change, just to make workflow a little easier for you. If you've been editing the Hover State on an element and you aren't happy with your changes, it's now super simple to rewrite it with settings from another state.
From your 'Hover' settings, click the reset button to the right.
Most of the time, you'll only have one other state to reset to - your default.
But occasionally, depending on what element you are editing, you may have more than two states. If that's the case, you'll be presented with an option to choose which one to reset to.
You can select which state to reset your hover settings to.
Minor Changes
Now with most of the big changes out of the way, here's a couple of minor changes, just to keep you in the loop.
Leave a Comment!
As you can see, every update to Thrive Architect comes with some noticeable changes and some smaller improvements behind the scenes.
Our updates are always a result of listening to your feedback, reading feature requests and comments, and careful consideration from our developers.
Will you use these new features? Leave us a comment below to let us know.
If you have other feature requests, stop by our support forum and let our team know what you'd like to see in a future update.
Absolutely superb. Some people had been commenting saying “where have Thrive gone, they’ve been real quiet?”. Well I guess now we know! Thanks guys, great work!
Yes, we’re around. Our blog will start to feel a bit different though as we try some new things. Glad you like the updates, Nick!
Love it!
Especially like that image crop/resize feature.
Gonna have to share this with our employees this morning! Thanks guys!
It’s a dream to use, I’m sure your employees will think the same 🙂
Hi Bradley and Thrive team – awesome update and can’t wait for Dec TTB. Was wondering about the technique of the crop / resize – does it create an exact size image once it’s placed or is the file size the same to cover all edits in the window.
Glad you like it, Craig! Just to be clear and set expectations correctly: that’s a planned Beta Release for thorough testing of TTB in Dec. As with all things in software releases, it’s not written in stone until we sign off on it.
As for the image, it’s the same file you first placed on the canvas. So if you are planning to display a small image but you have a large file, it’s best to resize it before uploading or select from WordPress’ thumbnail image sizes before loading it into Architect.
Hi guys! amazing updates… I’m wondering when you will release finally the ThriveArchitet Theme so I can build an entire website with this?
Hi Paolo, we’re calling it ‘Thrive Theme Builder’. For a proper answer, have a look at Paul’s reply to a few comments above
The best just keeps getting better. Thrive Architect is definitely one of my best ever investments.
Glad you like it, Abdul!
Agree
Agreed, my #1 software choice
Some fantastic updates here. Thank you!
You’re welcome
Some great QOL changes, Brad. Thanks for sharing.
I would love to see an improved field for target URL for hyperlinks.
Right now, we have to select the link, click the chain symbol in the inline editing bar, and type/paste the target URL, which is cut off after 30 characters.
This isn’t a problem for occasional links, but become a time-sink on articles with many links, especially when target URLs are long.
It would be good to bring all the standard hyperlink options out of the inline editing bar, into the left-hand element options with a multi-line field for target URL.
Thanks for the feedback and feature suggestions, David. I’ll take this idea to the team and we’ll think it through.
Love these improvements, nice to see some of the Thrive community and forum suggestions being implemented, I am sure I speak for all of us when I say we really appreciate this!
And we appreciate the suggestions from our Thrive community too! Thanks Juergen.
Wow, those are a lot of new changes. Great work guys! Seems like you’re working hard at making Architect better and better.
We are, and there’s even more where that came from!
As always just keeps improving well done Shane and Team!!!
Thanks Warren!
Great features. Thank you. Let me report here a probable bug. When you want to edit an image of an existing document, obviously you click on that image and expect to see the image menu at the left, right? Sometimes you click on the image and it shows up in full screen. To be able to edit that image you have to create a copy, then delete the original. Am I missing something here?
I haven’t seen this behavior before and can’t seem to replicate what you’ve described. Please can you raise a ticket in the forum and we’ll check it out.
Great updates!! Thanks guys (and gals 🙂 for all your hard work. Thrive just keeps getting better.
And thank you for appreciating the hard work 🙂
Once again Thrive Themes going to another level.
Thanks Pastor Dre
Wow! This is a substantial step forward and I can’t wait to start implementing some of these options into our design.
Glad to hear you’ll use these features, Todd
It’s still a thrilled never ending story to be a ThiveThemes customer. Keep up the good work.
Thank you, Bjarne!
Wow, another great update to an already awesome plugin! Image Resizing and Link Design features are superb! Is the landing page a template within Thrive Architect? Can you tell me which one?
Yes, the template used is the homepage template in the Fitbrand Smart landing page sets.
I love Architect, but when is the ever-elusive theme going to finally come out?
Long answer:-
It’s super close now.
You’ve probably noticed that recently a lot of the architect improvements go hand in hand with a theme builder (post list, custom menu, hyperlink styles….). Shared typography is coming in the next release on the 13th November with some pretty awesome updates for smart landing pages, too (can’t wait to see what you think of those). So you can see the pieces of the puzzle coming together.
The truth is that we could have already released TTB by now. But we decided not to. Here’s why:
Historically, we’ve focused heavily on speed of implementation and releasing minimum viable products. This meant we released products quicker, but sometimes with quality issues.
Over the last 12 months we’ve had a very strong focus on quality.
As a company, it’s no longer acceptable to release a less than polished feature, improvement or product. Theme builder needs to be amazing, stable and polished or it doesn’t get shipped. Without exception.
Short answer:- We pushed the date back from the start of October to a final beta release in early December to include extra features and polish the product.
I know you’ve been really patient in anticipation – I apologise for the delays. I’m sure when it’s released, you’ll see why it’s been worth the wait.
I’ll hang an extra stocking above the fire….
Wohoo, thank you for the update, Paul!
That’s great news and I can’t wait to use the Theme Builder! 🙂
Seems like this year I can celebrate Christmas twice. 😉
Just to set your expectations correctly, Thomas, so you’re not disappointed: TTB will be in a final beta for thorough testing in December, but it won’t be released then. Testing can take a while until we sign off on it.
Can’t wait! The theme builder will take ThriveThemes to a whole another level.
Yeah I think you’ll be pretty amazed at how quickly you can build templates with TTB.
Would be good to see another sneek peek video of TTB.
I am staring a Personally Branded Blog and focus is on the content will add in monitization. I looked at other options just none were that easy to use or maintain.
Thanks for this great Update . But facing problem with contact form there is limitation to generate many fields as we want . specially the optin form not allow more than 3fileds
An update coming on the 10th December will allow you to more plain input and hidden fields. After that, checkboxes, radio buttons and dropdown fields are on their way.
Yes, nice move forward ! Thanks to the team !
Thanks Philippe
Thank you so much, Brad. The updates are well received and appreciated, as with everything else done by the TT Team.
Could you please provide a bit more content and explanation on this matter?
Play Externally Hosted Videos: You always could, but now we’ve made it easier to load a video hosted on an external server like Amazon S3.
Thanks in advance.
Luis.
Hey Luis, we noticed users weren’t aware that they already could play externally hosted videos. So we’ve made a small UI update to the Video Element. Now when you drop the Video Element onto a page in Architect, under the sidebar settings you’ll see ‘Externally Hosted Video’ as an option in the dropdown, alongside YouTube/ Wistia, etc. It’s easier to find. With that option selected, you can place the direct URL to a video hosted on another server and it will play just as though it’s in your WordPress media library, but without the bandwidth drain on your website host. If you’re using Amazon S3, just make sure you set video permissions to ‘public’.
Hope that helps!
Love it! After finishing a website redesign, I started testing it for speed and OMG… my scores were horrible in the red and yellow. I had to start over again but with Thrive Themes. This time the scores are in the green and I feel much better now. I also love the many options for shape dividers. Is there a way to add your own custom shape dividers?
Image resize is great.
Still excited about the new gallery function, can‘t wait 🙂
and sooo much waiting for the new themebuilder…
Thanks Jonas, not long now…
Great!! It is perfect work.
Still wondering when ‘theme builder’ is going to be completed. The biggest issue is still dealing with a blog that I can’t customize via architect. The new features are great and yet the latter is a priority for me.
Hi Grace, have a look at Paul’s reply to a few comments above.
Cock-a-doodle-doo! Hubba Hubba! Coo Coo! ????
That’s my way to say THANK YOU!
Careful there, Juja…people might think you’re starting to go a bit “quackers” ????
Great improvements! Thank you, Brad! Question: Videos being the thing, and that’s not going away, what plans are in place to integrate videos in Thrive Apprentice?
I already have a membership to Thrive Themes, so I have Thrive Apprentice, and I have SendOwl. I would love to host my courses through Thrive Apprentice, rather than Teachable, but I have to be able to include video teaching. Any suggestions?
Thrive Apprentice fully supports video lessons. You can embed videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia or self-hosted videos from any source.
Shane, thank you for the lightning-fast reply! I have obviously not yet dived into Thrive Apprentice, (am going to try to this week to set up a new course) and I, unfortunately, phrased my earlier question poorly. I was basing my question and comments on this very helpful article (https://thrivethemes.com/4-things-online-course/) and the comments which were also extremely helpful.
“Hosting of associated videos” was discussed in detail in the comments. Tim said, “I definitely want to transition to your solution (I already have Thrive Apprentice), but there’s one more thing you didn’t mention in your video, which still needs to be taken into account: where to host the associated videos.
While Thrive Apprentice + SendOwl seems reasonable, for all that you talked about, video hosting services like Wistia and Vimeo feel expensive when I’ve only just started to sell my course – and I can’t predict whether it will sell well enough to cover the cost of said solutions.”
I am definitely in the camp of “can’t afford” and “don’t know if it will sell yet.” I’m just starting out.
I am not techy enough to try to work with more difficult options, either. I purchased Teachable very recently, without realizing Thrive Apprentice was an option! Since I’m already paying for Thrive Themes and have Apprentice and SendOwl, I definitely want to make them work, rather than adding on another costly membership, if I can. I just wanted to make sure it was going to be a workable plan for someone with limited tech skills.
I had Vimeo Plus, but felt it was too expensive and canceled it (Vimeo Plus was your recommendation). Tim said, “However, according to the Vimeo website, they require commercial content to be on at least their Pro plan (which is quite a jump from Plus)” to this.
In conclusion, I have my videos uploaded to YouTube already, so I will use that in the course for now. I’ll be reading everything I can this week about setting up a course on Apprentice! Thank you, again, for the impressive speed of your reply!
Hi Wendy, you can keep using Youtube to host your course and just mark the video as unlisted on youtube. It’s perfectly fine and incredibly fast 🙂
Hi Brad, thanks for the article. For me (and probably others) a narrated video would make it much easier to appreciate and comprehend those new features than just the animated gifs. Would you consider making a video?
Hi Randal, I’m working on a couple of videos to give a tour through some of these new features. Coming soon. 🙂
Yes as Shane says, videos are to come. This post is like a round-up, the quick view of what’s changed so you know what to look for when you update Architect. Narrated videos take us a bit longer. You can always find more information on the Knowledge Base too
Great updates! I’d love to see some updates coming to the testimonials capture form. Star ratings, photo uploading, and more content customization would be awesome, so I can actually use the Ovation plugin with my site.
Thank you for the suggestions, Eric!
I love thrive themes. I literally have no complains and you guys still seem to make things better and easier
Thank you very much, Alina!
The Hyper Link Animation is really cool. It’s nice not to have to take time to figure out how to do things like this. You guys are like having my own personal development team!
Haha, thanks William.
Did you guys fix the problem with not been able to save “post lists” as a “template” in this update?
That’s currently in progress
Thrive is synonymous with style, quality, innovation, and exceptional service and I’m so glad that the powers-that-be pointed me in this direction. Thanks for all that you do. May the Geek-Lords shower you with gifts????
Haha, thank you, Joan!
Is it known in what release the ‘silo pages’ template will be? I’m doing the SEO Sprint course, that’s why I’m eager to use a template for those silos.
really appreciated, thank you Brad and the entire Thrive team for making these improvements : )
You’re welcome, Ramesh
AMAZING. You guys just keep rockin’ it!
Thanks for all the crazy updates!
Quick question/suggestion:
For the image editing, is there any kind of image optimization built in?
Once it’s resized, having the image web-optimized for that size would optimize the work flow.
Here are the current steps:
1. Resize/move the image to exactly how you want it. (what you just added – thanks!)
2. Get the new dimensions (easy with chrome inspector or similar) and figure out the cropping that gets the final view from the original (hard and maybe impossible because it’s obscured in the editor).
3. Leave the page to go do those edits on original photo in a second program.
4. Upload the cropped original to something like kraken and download the optimized version (or use a tool in WP to do it)
5. Go back to your page and now replace the photo with the optimized version.
Steps 2-5 can be eliminated if it’s done within TA *or* at least if the exact dimensions/cropping/etc could be provided, it would make step 2 easier.
Thanks for the feedback Richard – this is actually already in the roadmap. The image resize functionality is the first step in this direction.
Thrive exceeds again!
I really like the new features and the focus on workflow. Hopefully, TA never gets cluttered with too many features.
We have some more workflow centric updates related to building landing pages coming out on the 13th November that makes page building super fast. Looking forward to see what you think of that update.
Thaks for the post, guys! Will dynamic content (integration with ACF or others) be available as feature in the future? Thanks.
Yes, custom field integration is on being developed for both theme builder and Architect.
That sounds so incredible, you want to try it right away. I’m curious to see how my work on creating websites can be improved. Thanks to Brad and the Thrive team for making our marketer lives easier.
Thanks Daniel!
Thank you for this update overvieuw. That helps a lot to keep up and to start using new things I might wouldnt be aware… doing things as beeing used.
Your great and you all are doing a great job !
Michael
I am very happy with the post list updates!
Feature request: it would be awesome to have a category and tag selector above the post list. When I use the default WordPress sidebar for catagories and tags and somebody clicks a category, they see the default WordPress blog layout instead of the nice post list layout.
Is this already on your list?
So, you mean the filter can be controlled on the front end by your visitor? We have got this as a feature request, but we’re unsure about implementation yet. Your default Blog/ Category page is controlled by your WordPress theme so that’s a theme improvement – exactly what we’re building Thrive Theme Builder to do.
Yes, I mean a frontend filter so I can use the post list to build a portfolio where the visitor can view specific categories. By selecting a category the post list rearranges the posts instantly and only shows the posts for the selected category. Also useful for blog articles.
Good to hear that the new Thrive Theme Builder will solve my problem. But while waiting for the new theme I am still building new websites with Ignition and it would be nice to have this feature also in the post list.
Thrive Architect is getting better day by day and makes blogging so lively.
A lively Blog is what we like to see
I would LOVE to be able to have a player element available in the post list grid so I can have a page of all my podcast episodes (Title, image, description/excerpt), but also a play button so people can listen right from that main page without having to click into the post to hear the show.
Hi Greg,
I just tested a Soundcloud player in the excerpt (embed code). When I use the excerpt in the post list I see the Soundcloud player on the posts page. Maybe you can do the same for your podcasts.
Wouter
Thanks, Wouter. Unfortunately, Soundcloud is pretty much the worst (IMO) for podcasts. It doesn’t look at your RSS feed like every other service (iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, etc.) and instead expects you to upload each episode individually to them, in addition to the service you already use. I’ve been podcasting since 2005 and support of RSS feeds is just standard on websites.
Thanks for all the wonderful new updates 🙂
I noticed Shane said he writes blog posts in Thrive Architect – I do, too, but (unless I’m missing something) that prevents the Yoast plugin from providing me valuable feedback as regards my SEO efforts. So my question is if there is a way for Yoast and Thrive to work hand-in-hand. Thanks 🙂
Keep up with the good work! I’ve been using Thrive for a few months – despite initial problem with ConvertKit integration. I was wondering if there’s a way to put custom Javascript code within the section on individual page/post when editing with Thrive Architect?
Hi CV, yes – you can use the “Custom HTML” element available in Architect to do this.
I love ThriveThemes which always keeps moving forward and developing new and amazing functionality.
One function that I think of now and I really need is a “Search Bar” element, so that I can put it in the website(for example, at the top of the landing page) and the viewers can search my whole website including my all posts and find what they want quickly. Will you develop this function?
Thank you very much.
Henry
You’ll be very pleased to know that this is already in development and due in an update quite soon
Nice article thanks for sharing very useful Updates Feature, Post list, Hyperlink Design