Thrive Themes Review

Reasons to switch to Thrive Themes right away

Thrive Themes Review

Introduction

Thrive Themes Review: When building a website with WordPress, like most people seem to be doing these days, it can be a bit of a minefield regarding:

  • Templates for look and feel
  • Editing process and coding for altering look and feel
  • Plug ins etc

The choice can be overwhelming.

I first started building websites in early 2005 and have build hundreds to date. Back then, I started by learning HTML and using Dreamweaver to code each page. At this point, WordPress was only about 18 months old and very much in its infancy so not really an option for me.

My site grew to around 1000 pages. Eventually I bit the bullet and converted my main HTML website over to WordPress. Not only did this mean re-building all the pages and blog posts on the WordPress platform, it also meant creating redirects for every single entry from .html to WordPress.

This took forever.

However, what that process taught me was just how good and simple the WordPress format was. It was still a little "new" at that point and the features were few and far between. However, I got on with it and learned it inside out.

Plug Ins

The trouble was, to get anything done and to incorporate what I had on my .html site onto WordPress, I had to install a whole lot of plug ins.

Note: Plug ins are like apps for your Smartphone. They can become addictive as you load all these funky add-ons. Plug ins come mostly from third party sources and do all sorts of wonderful coding type things:

  • Internet security
  • Image galleries
  • Sitemaps for Google and Bing
  • Add functionality to WordPress
  • Anti Spam
  • SEO
  • Stores/Commerce
  • Contact forms
  • Daily stats reporting
  • Cache monitoring and clearance
  • Email capture
  • Commenting
  • Redirection
  • Sliders
  • Social media
  • Content reveal
  • Styled lists
  • Lead generation forms
  • Countdown timers
  • Testimonials
  • Call to action buttons

...and a LOT more besides.

Big problem

The only problem with all these plug ins and theme templates, and it is a big problem, is this.

Poorly coded themes can seriously slow down your website causing issues with Google and other search engines. This lowers your ranking and traffic flow.

Multiple plug ins can also cause load time issues. Each one needs to "boot" in the background as your webpage loads so again, this causes all sorts of problems.

The biggest issue with both of these is having multiple developers "inside" your website.

Time and time again over the years, I have received alerts telling me that the developer has either:

  • Stopped updating the plug in
  • Sold it
  • Abandoned it.

This could be fatal.

Old, abandoned or stale plug ins could be an easy "back door" for hackers to get into your site. They could log in through these dysfunctional plug ins and cause havoc on your website. Spam, stealing affiliate links and so on.

Lastly, not all plug ins "play nicely" and work well together. Especially when you use multiple plug ins from multiple developers.

But fear not. Done right, WordPress is an amazing platform that is so easy to use and a breeze to create a compelling, money-making website that attracts readers and a lot of traffic.

You just need to know what to do.

Thrive Themes

I have bought and used sooo many themes and plug ins over the years, it has cost me a fortune. Every time I build a new website, I have to buy a new theme for about £50 and a few plug ins. All to do what I need and to be honest I got sick of it.

Last year, I found Thrive Themes and wow, these boffins are amazing.

Thrive was created by a team of WordPress experts who, like me and you, saw the need for a one stop shop for everything:

  • Themes (the shell or look and feel of your website)
  • Plug ins (apps or programs)
  • Training (oh wow, the training)

Those three things are pretty much all you need. Well, other than a domain name, hosting and a couple of additional plug ins to build an online empire.

It took me a while to go through their website. I wanted to absorb everything I needed to know before making the decision to jump on board.

However, since making that decision, updating old websites and creating new ones has been a breeze. It is also incredibly exciting to use all their features and see them in action.

My main website has improved dramatically with regards to load times, page speed and aesthetics. I am getting many A ratings and 100% certifications across the board with all the major website testing and optimisation sites.

Some fall slightly below this but in general, the new site is bonkers fast!

Speed Improvement Example

Ok, I am going to give you a real life example from a website I am currently re-building from scratch. The following is a new post made to both the old website and the new one built with Thrive Themes with dramatic results.

It is a 13 year old website that has been re-hashed 4 times already. I last built the website on Blue Host using what I thought was one of the best (paid for) templates.

The code has gone bad over time. Some plug in developers have abandoned their plug ins. In general, the site is slowly failing from the heights it used to reach. However, I know 100% for sure that when the site is finished, it will quickly get its rankings back to where they once were.

Check this out...incredible.

Note: I am not going to show you the actual site name or anything right now. This is because I am still building it but please be assured everything below is genuine.

Now, the website has already been moved to the new hosting. This had already and dramatically improved the site despite the shortcomings below. Imagine what it was like before I moved from Blue Host to my recommended hosting!

The site was tested on both Pingdom and GT Metrix on three counts:

  • When I built the new post on my old website
  • After the same post had been built on the new website host using Thrive Themes
  • Once the 2 YouTube videos on the page had been optimised using a Thrive Themes feature

Old website post with GT Metrix results

Thrive Themes Review

Pretty poor huh! The page is relatively large, it has a ton of requests and the load time is very slow.

New Thrive website post with GT Metrix results

Thrive Themes Review

Definitely getting better. The requests have fallen dramatically and the YSlow score has improved a lot. However, the page size and load time are still bad because of the two embedded YouTube videos.

This is how it ranks after I used the Thrive Architect feature to combat this:

New Thrive website with GT Metrix results

(after YouTube correction)

Thrive Themes Review

Boom! I have more than halved the page size, the requests have halved, the load time is a third of what it was and the scores have improved dramatically.

Now, Pingdom...

Old website post with Pingdom results

Thrive Themes Review

Awful. The page is slow and large with far too many requests and this shows in the results.

New Thrive website post with Pingdom results

Thrive Themes Review

Wow, that is a huge improvement across the board! Pag0e size more than halved, load time more than halved, requests are a quarter of what they were and the speed has doubled!

New Thrive website post with Pingdom results

(after YouTube correction)

Thrive Themes Review

Page size, load time and requests have all practically halved again and the performance grade is almost 100! It is also faster than 95% of tested sites on the web!!!

This is how the homepage of the same website is now scoring...

Pingdom

Thrive Themes Review

GTMetrix

Thrive Themes Review

All I need to do now is add and use a CDN (content delivery system) and the site is perfect. Note: A content delivery system holds your images and large files at locations around the globe. It then delivers them from the nearest location to the person visiting your website. This again speeds up your website to the Max!

​Update 2019: You now get a free CDN (content delivery network) with all WPX Hosting accounts which we also recommend. I was paying £178​ p.a. for ​my CDN so I immediately cancelled that, got a pro rata refund and added the WPX CDN...happy days! ​IMO, the Thrive Themes/WPX Hosing combination for a WordPress site is simply ​unbeatable!

​I really hope you are starting to get the picture here. Most of the pages I am building get a score close to 100 at Pingdom with better results at GT Metrix too.

Embedding Videos

You may find this interesting if you embed videos on your website. It can affect your page speed and therefore affect your SEO rankings with the search engines. The reason for this is that your site/host has to pull a lot of extra data to get the video to load and play.

There is a way around this however. What I do is use a cool feature of Thrive Themes where you attach the video to an embedded image. This way, the search engines only have to load an image (usually less than 100kb) rather than the video.

Here is a video I made using this technique so click the "image" below and watch the video pop up:

Google Page Speed Test

All of this will seriously give your new website and business a major head start. I haven't even shown you what this all does when viewing on mobile devices either and that is a huge area for the new Google algorithms.

Thrive Themes

With Thrive, you only get a small selection of themes to choose from (around 9 with more coming) but this is slightly misleading. WordPress and third party websites have literally thousands of themes to choose (and buy) from. However, in my experience many are pretty poor and frustrating to use. It is a bit of a pain find the perfect theme that works.

Each new theme has a sometimes steep learning curve. You need to understand how it works and what functions and features it has. They are pretty much set in stone too with very few simple modifications available.

When you install any Thrive Theme, you have infinite possibilities to change the:

  • Look and feel
  • Colours
  • Layout
  • Fonts
  • Functionality

All this to tweak to your heart's content. You can even start with a blank template on any theme and build it exactly how you want. This is using their incredible "Architect" system which has just been updated beyond brilliant.

You can release the inner designer in you and create the exact website you or your client wants!

Plug Ins

Just a quick note and piece of advice here. Rather than buying an individual, annual licence for each of the following plug ins, and if you are serious about starting or improving your web business, go for the full membership like I did. You get the lot:

  • The Full Suite of Thrive Themes WordPress Plugins
  • Constant Updates and Instant Access to New Plugins
  • Exclusive Members Only Courses (Thrive University), Templates and Content
  • Unlimited Support

Thrive Architect

"The fastest most conversion focused visual editor and page builder for WordPress"

Wow, wow and wow. Since learning how to use this my website building life has changed so much for the better. I will tell you now there is a learning curve with Thrive Architect but you quickly get used to it.

When you do, you will love it and never go back to the standard editing feature of WordPress.

WYSIWYG

If you didn't know, this means "what you see is what you get". It relates to being able to see in real time the changes you make to your website.

WordPress works pretty well in this regard. However, each time you make a change and want to view the changes you need to open a new browser tab.

When using Thrive Architect, you are actually working on the page in real time. This means you see the changes happen right where you are. Thrive Architect makes building and editing your website that much quicker.

The main benefits of Thrive Architect are:

  • Instant drag and drop editing
  • Landing page templates with no design skills needed
  • Pre-built conversion elements
  • Build beautiful, high converting sales pages
  • Built in lead capture elements
  • Easily build webinar and product launch pages
  • Ultra flexible column layouts
  • Attention-grabbing text and image combinations
  • Total font customisation
  • Full width layouts with a wow factor
  • Advanced, attention grabbing hover effects
  • Style every detail with no coding required
  • Check and edit your design quickly in three mobile responsive layouts (instantly preview your page on different screen sizes)
  • Dynamic actions and animations
  • Call to action buttons
  • Capture testimonials
  • Styled lists (like this one)
  • Credit card icons
  • Lead generation forms
  • Content boxes
  • Animated countdown timers
  • Content reveal
  • Click to Tweet
  • Social share
  • Disqus comments
  • Facebook comments
  • Custom menus
  • Full scalable retina icons
  • Post grids
  • Star ratings (for reviews etc)
  • Tabs and toggles
  • Responsive video embed
  • Table of contents
  • Google maps
  • WordPress content (add the original editor anywhere you like)
  • Data tables
  • Custom HTML/CSS

There's More

I told you it was good. There is a fair bit more besides the above list but in general, you will only need to add one or two third party plug ins to compliment this incredible feature set.

  • Yoast SEO
  • W3 Total Cache
  • Sucuri
  • Contact Form 7
  • Google XML Sitemaps

These are all highly regarded, well built and fully supported plug ins. All have excellent history and features that will do wonders for your website.

Later on and as you become more advanced, you might want to add:

  • MaxCDN (content delivery network)
  • Membership site plug in

I promise that by this point if you have all of the above, there is nothing more you need for your online business but small steps. Start with a domain, hosting, Thrive Themes and you are good to go for the foreseeable.

I won't go into too much detail regarding the rest of the plug ins you get with a full Thrive Themes membership. Just know this, they are all amazing and bought separately from other sources would cost a fortune.

Leads

Thrive Leads is a simple and intuitive plug in to help build your mailing lists faster than ever before.

Ovation

Thrive Ovation gathers and display testimonials on autopilot for social sharing.

Ultimatum

Create evergreen countdown campaigns with Thrive Ultimatum.

Headline Optimizer

Quickly and easily A/B split test blog post headlines to get more clicks using Thrive Headline Optimizer

Clever Widgets

Show individual widgets on pages and posts based on categories, tags and more with Thrive's Clever Widgets.

Quiz Builder

Something I have paid good money for in the past and it is included with membership. Easily boost website engagement and readership through funky quizzes using the Thrive Quiz Builder. They are also a great way to capture incredibly useful buying information etc.

With my old quiz builder, I had to create the quizzes outside of my website and then upload and install them via FTP. What a pain.

With the Thrive Quiz Builder, this can all be done from right inside WordPress!

Comments

Make commenting engaging and fun for your readers which is great for SEO and traffic.

Apprentice

Thrive Apprentice is a huge feature. You are able to build beautiful, engaging online courses, directly in your WordPress website. Again, this is a feature plug in that in the past you would pay hundreds of Dollars or Pounds for. I love it.

Training

The training inside Thrive Themes as a member is second to none. You get extensive training and support for each of the plug ins and features of Thrive Themes. Plus you get so much training on all aspects of building and maintaining a responsive, attention-grabbing and super fast website.

Inside your membership account you have free courses on (among other things):

  • Product tutorials
  • Knowledge base
  • Support forums
  • Demo websites
  • Webinar recordings
  • The amazing Thrive University which, at the time of writing, 33 superb courses on things like:
  • 22 Tips to Build Your Mailing List Faster
  • Build a Conversion Focused Website From Scratch
  • Create a High Converting Sales Funnel
  • Landing Page Copy-writing Course
  • How to Use Quizzes to Boost Conversions

These courses are being added to all the time as are the plug ins, themes and more.

As a full Thrive Themes member like myself, you will receive:

  • The Full Suite of Thrive Themes WordPress Plugins
  • Constant Updates & Instant Access to New Plugins
  • Exclusive Members Only Courses, Templates and Content
  • Unlimited Support

Conclusion

Having worked in this industry for 13 years, I can honestly say I have never seen anything like Thrive Themes. If I had this from the beginning my life would have been complete.

The founders, trainers and boffins at Thrive are genuine, intelligent and incredibly nice people to deal with. They really know their stuff.

If you are serious about building super cool websites and/or starting a thriving online business, use Thrive Themes as your "motherboard" or foundation for doing just that. Just note that there is a learning curve with this that takes time to study.

Once you have everything on this page, along with decent hosting, I can almost guarantee it will be impossible for your website to fail. The only thing that will cause that to happen is you.

Create great, unique and useful content on a regular basis and watch the traffic come in. Watch your business grow from strength to strength and enjoy the ride.

Head over to Thrive Themes right now and sign up.

Thrive Themes

Final note on this Thrive Themes review

Caveat: This is an important point so I hope you have read this far. You are here to learn how to build a web business from scratch and I am here to teach you. In order for me to keep giving support to you once you get started, I want to ask a favour.

This website and the free training has taken weeks for me to write and prepare. The information and guidance within the site has taken over a decade to accumulate. I don't get paid by anyone for doing this. So...

If you sign up to any of the recommended products through any of our courses or this website, I get a small commission. You don't pay any more, in fact you may even get an offer or two along the way, but I get locked to you so we all win. I get a small commission and as a thank you I will give you additional and free training. The circle of life!

Please share this page ​below​, much appreciated.

>