New Home Forums Media & Technology thrive themes

25 replies, 10 voices Last updated by  Tree Franklyn 6 years, 10 months ago
Viewing 11 posts - 16 through 26 (of 26 total)
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  • #37832

    Dr.Wayne Buckhanan
    Adventurer
    @waynebuckhanan

    Lorraine, blessings of peace and wisdom as you work through this!

    (To provide more fodder for that peace, I am participating in a “prerelease” right now for a program that will be $6000 when it runs next January. The content is text, a few images, and other people’s videos delivered on a site plus a Facebook group for the interactive portions. It isn’t about the platforms — it is about the content, the connection, and the transformations!)

    #37847

    Sue-Ann Bubacz
    Adventurer
    @sue-ann

    Guys…

    I’ll pipe in here one more time and just put in another 2 cents. I’m hearing you, doc, with concentrating on quality content, the learning journey, etc. as a priority. I also agree we want to experiment to learn and I’m all for producing a “minimal viable product” and making a plan of action to start somewhere.

    But on the other hand, at least in my case, my platform is a key component in my eCourse launch plan and I want to make sure that foundation is properly built and solid.  I also like to have a certain amount of understanding to handle whatever is a part of my business, even the over-my-head digital stuff. At this point, I’ve spent more than I’ve made online so, DYI helps keep costs down while learning as I go, too. I’m excited to be where I am tech-wise but, want to take it up a notch for this project! Btw, it’s the tech I was already working on that brought me to the mountain in the first place:))

    I’m scrapping what I did and starting all the way over—host to nuts—to blow-up my last 3 week experiment and to go from there to conquer this techno ridge once and for all. FB is a great interactive or group experience at the free level so that may be part of the minimal viable start for me before adding forum plugins, or extra memberships stuff, etc.

    Changing, evolving, upgrading is all cool but, I want a solid foundation and my own platform, rather than Teachable or uDemy or Thinkific or whatever. I hope and pray I can, in fact, actually do it!

    I appreciate being on the mountain and learning from everyone. Thanks all:)

    #37927

    Andy Freist
    Mountain Guide
    @andyfreist

    Okay juicy convo here!

    So here’s a nugget of truth: the platform/pagebuilder/whatever you pick will not make your course successful. If you can’t create a profitable course on Teachable, then you certainly won’t be able to do it with a more DIY wordpress-based solution. And in many cases you’ll just end up wasting an insane amount of time mucking around trying to tweak it to perfection.

    I’ve wasted enough time with this stuff. Personally, I find that getting lost in endless feature tweaking is nothing but a big fat distraction from the real work of simply creating something that matters. Something people care about.

    The wiser I get, the simpler I get.

    If I wanted to get a simple course up fast and pro, I’d personally go with Teachable.

    In cases where I NEED more flexibility, such as a community forum, etc and i have actually VALIDATED my idea, then I venture into WP territory.

    My current favorite WP based solution is Social Learner + Learndash + Beaver Builder + Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder. This is basically what we use at GEA right now, except the membership platform pages are built with Thrive. I am going to be converting all those pages to Beaver and wean GEA off Thrive entirely. It’s not that i have anything against it, I just like Beaver way more. The brilliance of Social Learner is that it ticks all of the boxes without needing to do any custom stuff. It just works.

    If you want to do something totally custom, then Beaver Builder Theme is the way to go, but its going to take a lot of work to get all the styling to be tight and consistent with LMS plugins, etc.

    LifterLMS is a good plugin that does a lot, but I am not impressed with the design of their Launchpad theme, nor am I impressed with the design of the plugin itself. It has great features, but doesnt look that great.

    On the topic of page builders, I stay clear of Divi for the simple reason that it will leave a bloody mess of shortcodes if you deactivate it later. Not fun. If you deactivate Beaver, your pages will just revert to the regular ol’ post/page. No mess. You just lose the fancy formatting. Thrive doesn’t leave a mess, because it doesnt leave ANYTHING. If you deactivate Thrive, all your thrive content goes byebye. Though they are planning to change that at some point.

    So again, my current favorite tech is this:

    eCourse Platform: Social Learner + LearnDash + Beaver Builder + Ultimate Addons for BB

    Websites/Landing Pages: Beaver Builder Theme + Beaver Builder + Beaver Themer (advanced tool, which is coming soon) + Ultimate Addons for BB

    I can do anything I dream up with this stuff.

    Hope that helps!

    #37941

    Bobbie Jo Van Den Plas
    Adventurer
    @bobbiejo

    The wiser I get, the simpler I get.

    LOVE all of the things you’ve said, Andy. Thank you! Switching from having my own platform to Teachable had it’s pros and cons, but the pros for me outweigh the cons, as like you said- I feel I’m at the place of wasting too much time trying to figure things out in tech land and would rather just focus more on the creating value. Thanks for saying all of this as it helps me ground into the keeping it simple yet making it significant (words based on a Don Draper quote!).

    I greatly appreciate this topic coming up, as I was feeling a bit lost with what to do in the land of themes, and well, pretty much all the tech. So thank you to all in here! Wishing you all the best in your tech- building!!! 😀

    #38047

    Andy Freist
    Mountain Guide
    @andyfreist

    “Simple yet significant”… Brilliant…

    Truth be told, you’ll never be able to tweak your way to significance in the WordPress admin settings 😉 lol

    #41775

    Akasha Madron
    Adventurer
    @mysticsparkling

    Thank you all for your comments and help.  I totally forgot that I had asked this and am just reading this all now.

    So I am going with Beaver Builder.  Would I need access to the Beaver Builder Theme that you can get at the pro level or should I start at the standard level?  I have no clue what the difference is.

    This is for my business website to start.

    Thanks!

     

     

    #41822

    Lorraine Watson
    Adventurer
    @lorrainewatson

    Akasha @mysticsparklin … in the articles I read while researching this question, the answer was basically if you already have one of the themes that works well with BB Page Builder, then you can go with the standard level. If you want the BB Theme, then get pro.

    I went with Pro to get the BB theme as I have to move away from my existing theme anyway (and would not have played nicely with Page Builder.)

    #41838

    Akasha Madron
    Adventurer
    @mysticsparkling

    Good to know Lorraine.  I am wanting to change my existing website theme as well.    Thanks!

    #41848

    Andy Freist
    Mountain Guide
    @andyfreist

    Yep, def go with the pro package so you get the Beaver Theme. That’s primarily what I’m using these days.

    #41850

    Andy Freist
    Mountain Guide
    @andyfreist

    FYI, it looks very very boring when you first install it. But you can quickly get it looking good by tweaking the colors, fonts, etc..

    These we’re all built with Beaver Theme + Builder:

    https://opulentcreative.com (design agency I am currently launching)

    https://audioalchemyretreat.com

    https://coursesworthsharing.com

    The key is picking the right colors, fonts, sizes, etc..

    Each of those sites are exactly the same under the hood, just with different paint 😉

    #42988

    Tree Franklyn
    Adventurer
    @tree

    SO GLAD I decided to come here to help me make my final decision before clicking the “buy now” button on Thrive Themes! I’ve been eyeing the quiz builder for a while now and was about to go all in with their membership to get everything but figured I’d get the final “expert word” here, so I hopped on this mountain and searched “thrive themes” and landed on this gold mine of info. Thanks so much everyone. I don’t have anything to add other than a note of appreciation for everyone sharing their experiences and knowledge here with each other. THANK YOU!

     

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