RAJAVANYA SUBRAMANIYAN

Category: Thrive Themes Experiences

  • A Better Way For Thrive Themes to Roll Out Their Updates

    A Better Way For Thrive Themes to Roll Out Their Updates

    For the last three years Thrive themes updates have constantly lost thousands of hours for its customers.

    And I have written already about how to survive these updates (and you save at least $1000 for your business, if you value your time at $50/hr)

    It’s happened recently with their 2.1.0 “just user interface update”.

    And now, I don’t know if you noticed, you cannot download their themes and plugins anymore. You need to download a “product manager” plugin and then that in turn manages download and install of all their other plugins.

    This isn’t wrong.

    Many companies do it.

    Its a great way to track installs and find out about the misuse of their licenses.

    It even makes it easy for users to install just one plugin instead of their many plugins.

    But…

    There is a better way to do it, that many companies already do.

    It goes something like this.

    1. Release a new feature (in this case, the new plugin)
    2. Make an announcement to the users – blog post, email list, social media, website ribbon/banner.
    3. Put up a notice on the download section of the website that – the direct-download method will become unavailable at a future date. And ask users to start adopting the new plugin which makes their life lot easier.
    4. Let the users use it, report bugs. If it doesn’t work, they can still download the older way for some time.
    5. Once everything is stable, eventually remove the direct-download option.
    6. Nobody gets hurt, everybody wins.

    This is not rocket science. Software has been done this way for ages now. Its called deprecating a feature, then make it obsolete. Companies should care about testing properly. Companies should care about backward compatibility.

    Ffs, even Apple is making their operating system updates to improve speeds of their older Macbooks now. (I just updated to Mojave on my Early 2014 Macbook Air and love it 🙂

    A new big announcement

    So all this while this email list has been the only way to interact between you and me. Now you can also

    • Interact with other members on this email list
    • Get free fast support from me and few other thrive themes experts when you run into problems
    • Help other thrive themes customers yourself when they run into problems

    How? Simple. I am launching a Facebook group where you can get all of this.

    • Strictly no spam. Spammers will be removed with a 2-strike system. Spam will be deleted asap.

    I am looking forward to all of you joining it today.
    Click here to join the new free facebook group for thrive themes users.

  • How to Connect Thrive Leads to Mailgun Free Account

    How to Connect Thrive Leads to Mailgun Free Account

    Are you frustrated trying to connect Thrive Leads to Mailgun? (and banging your head against the wall in the process?) Maybe the official article from Thrive Themes did not help you. And it looks like Thrive themes customer support forum is getting worse in quality. Sometimes I wonder if they even read my questions.

    I spent almost 4 days and FINALLY figured it out.

    Below is the missing piece.

    Troubleshooting Advice to Connect Thrive Leads to Mailgun

    Did you get the following error when you tried to connect Thrive Leads’ Asset Delivery or API Connections?

    >> The parameters passed to the API were invalid. Check your inputs!Bad Request <<

    Therefore both the values you entered (the mailgun approved domain name and api key) are correct. If you entered wrong values, the error would say invalid credentials.

    So first, be clear about what your error message is. Then move on to next section.

    How to Fix the Invalid Parameters Error When You Connect Thrive Leads to Mailgun?

    Getting the wordpress admin email
    Getting the wordpress admin email
    • Your wordpress admin email must be added as an authorised recipient. Check screenshots.
    • After this the connection to the API will work successfully.
    • Still, if you test the Asset Delivery feature it will not send the email with asset download links as expected.
    • For that to work, you need to add another email as an authorised recipient. Then use that email to test the Asset Delivery feature.

    This is a limitation in Mailgun free account.

    Consequently you can add a credit card to get rid of this. Make sure you understand at what point do they start charging your card to avoid surprises.

    Adding authorised recipients in mailgun
    Adding authorised recipients in mailgun

    If you can’t add a credit card, please understand the free account without credit card is virtually unusable for thrive leads’ asset delivery feature.

     

  • Cannot Access Thrive Architect Pages After Enabling Thrive Ultimatum?

    Cannot Access Thrive Architect Pages After Enabling Thrive Ultimatum?

    Recently more than one of our clients have run into this problem. So I assume there are more Thrive Ultimatum users out there who face the same problem.

    So, you recently designed a few pages on your website with Thrive Architect.

    Everything looks and works great. Then, you go ahead and start using Thrive Ultimatum. You created a Thrive Ultimatum campaign, configured it and then turned it on.

    Everything seems to work fine. Until, you decided to send your website to your friend, or open your website in an incognito window. You find or hear that many pages aren’t loading. Instead they maybe even redirected to other pages.

    So you login again, check the pages, and a few Thrive Architect options and still nothing. You can’t seem to figure out why those pages aren’t accessible. Probably you wonder if its another one of Thrive Architect’s bugs bothering you. I’m happy to tell you, its not. (At least not this time)

    Don’t panic. Its simple. You cannot load them because you activated a feature called ‘lockdown campaign’ (most probably in your evergreen campaign).

    When you activate a lockdown campaign, you see a screen like the one shown below.

     

    Thrive Ultimatum Lockdown Campaign screen
    Thrive Ultimatum Lockdown Campaign screen

    The page is the middle is the protected promotion page. Thrive Ultimatum doesn’t let you see this page, unless you use a special URL link to access it (explained with screenshot below)

    The reason is that, this is how Thrive Ultimatum is intended to be used and to run limited time sale offers. These pages are supposed to seen only using special links and during limited period of time as configured by you.

    In other cases, which is, if a user visits the page before their promotion period begins, they will be redirected to Pre-access page URL (the top one in the screenshot above). You can use this page, to do things like

    • Setup a big heading saying, the offer hasn’t begun yet. Or simply say something else.
    • Or you can design opt-ins to get them onboard a wait list. You can later notify the waitlist members, when the offer opens again.

    In case the users visit after the promotion has ended, you can simply show them a page which says the offer has ended and ask them to buy your products at normal price.

    So what about that special link I talked about?

    Here is a screenshot to explain about it.

    Thrive Ultimatum Lockdown campaign screen
    Thrive Ultimatum Lockdown campaign screen

     

    You see that blue COPY button? That will copy the link to your clipboard, so you can simply right-click + paste it anywhere. But its actually intended to embed on your email.

    For example, in the screenshot above, our client used ActiveCampaign. So we would take that link, the paste it on an ActiveCampaign campaign email. This email is usually sent to a lead, for whom the promotion period has started.

    Here is an example link which can be used with ActiveCampaign

    https://yoursite.com/your-promo-page/?tu_id=2099&tu_em=%EMAIL%

    ActiveCampaign automatically replaces the %EMAIL% part automatically with your mailing list subscriber’s email before sending that email to them. So the final email might look like this

    https://yoursite.com/your-promo-page/?tu_id=2099&[email protected]

    But, how do I test it without having to send an email from my email marketing platform every time?

    1. Just take the link, replace the %EMAIL% variable with a dummy email, like the last link above.
    2. Open an incognito browser window and paste it in your address bar.
    3. You will see the protected page load in your browser now.

    If this post helped you, leave a comment saying ‘thank you’.

    If you still have problems, leave a comment and I will try to help you.

  • Should You Update To Thrive Architect 2.0?

    Should You Update To Thrive Architect 2.0?

    Update: This article was written a few weeks after an update to thrive Architect was released. Its almost a hate letter. I still strongly dislike Thrive themes’ release practices and how they release updates often without testing. But right now Thrive Architect seems to be a lot more stable and I am back to using it everyday for our clients. Scroll down below for my opinion on how I have decided to overcome this.

    I just deleted 500 words about the new Thrive Architect. It looked like a full-blown hate letter to Thrive themes.
    I’m glad you will never see that.

    Deep breath.

    Short answer: Don’t update to Thrive Architect if you are looking for a stable tested software that “just works”. If you are an early adopter who loves to fiddle around with new features and don’t mind bugs, then go ahead.

    As of writing this, their version is 2.0.7 and I had to spend an hour porting a previously created page from version 1.5 to 2.0 because I had to change some text in few places. And they claim that the pages built with old version just work. But once you click migrate button on few sections, many things break.

    I faced problems with mobile responsiveness, styles, custom css etc. Their new mobile responsive features are so buggy, that I had to reset all formatting, delete elements and recreate elements to get them to work.

    As with the long history of Thrive themes as a company that aims to make just-good-enough software and ends up making less-than-good-enough-software, this release isn’t any different.

    Its time Thrive themes realizes that they aren’t a startup anymore, and start behaving like a company that makes software for serious businesses.

    Generally users are divided into various segments based on how eager they are to adopt a new technology or feature. These segments include innovators and early adopters.

    Innovation adoption lifecycle
    Innovation adoption lifecycle

    My clients expect me to create solution that work well, and in defined timelines. So I rarely fall into early adopters category. I rather value my time, and don’t derive pleasure out of just playing around with beta software.

    In fact no serious business would ever fall into early adopter category. Unless their business is about reviewing software.

    And the worst part is, they remove access to their last stable software version. You can’t even rollback the plugin. This is against software release best practices. They force all of their users to use their alpha/beta level software after a major version release.

    The same happened for TCB version 1.5 when hundreds and thousands of customers came screaming to their forums with bugs and frustrated clients.

    I would expect a company to learn from their mistakes. But looks like this is a deliberate strategy move on their part to compensate for poor software development and release practices.

    Update: My Solution to Preventing Problems Like This

    • Never update your plugins or themes immediately after a major update is released. This is true for all WordPress plugins and themes. But more true for Thrive themes’ products.
    • How do you know if its a major or minor update? Every WordPress plugin and theme has a version number that looks like this – 1.4.8.
    • If the last number changes (eg. from 1.4.7 to 1.4.8) then in 99.99% of cases its perfectly okay to update without thinking much.
    • If the first two numbers change, then its better to wait for a while. During this period there are other users testing the software and reporting bugs. So eventually you can start using it after those bugs are fixed.
    • Have a hosting solution that provides you with staging feature. Like Siteground’s GoGeek plan which I use, love and recommend. (Disclaimer: Affiliate link).
    • Perform updates on the staging site, test it well and then apply the changes to live site. Its the safest way to keep your online business functional.
  • Updated: Does Thrive Architect Support Genesis Themes?

    Updated: Does Thrive Architect Support Genesis Themes?

    Updated on Jun 16, 2018

    Short answer yes. Check out the pages built using Thrive Architect on Genesis child themes on this blog post.

    sleektechnique homepage designed using thrive architect on genesis child theme built with dynamik

    Thrive Architect works well with most well coded themes. Genesis is highly known for its code quality, its extensibility and developer support. So naturally Thrive Architect plays pretty good with Genesis themes or its child themes.

    There are 2 modes of using Thrive Architect you need to be aware of.

    Method 1: Using it with one of the built-in landing page templates

    Method 2: Or we could use it to design a page start from the default page template that comes with a theme

    With method #2 you get

    • Theme header / footer.
    • Fonts, colors, spacing and styles of your theme.
    • Looks more seamless and have lesser need to be customised to fit your site’s design. I love this personally, as it helps me build branded pages fast.

    With method #1 you get

    • Loads of editable readymade templates (landing pages, sales pages, lead generation pages etc.)
    • But it would take time to modify them according to your site’s style.
    • This is how most hosted tools work too – clickfunnels, instapage, leadpages etc.
    • Remember that when you use their templates of pages, not everything will fit your site’s style.

    Another example, which is built from the blank Thrive Architect template

    Desktop resolution

     

    Tablet and mobile resolution

    One thing to note that will save you hours of headache: When you use their templates for Thrive Content Builder, it strips out the scripts which have been inserted in your site’s header and footer.

    This was annoying. Yes, its not a big thing to fix, but its something we expect out of a theme. And when we don’t notice this, it costs a lot of time and effort.

    Of course, you can insert custom scripts on each page of their template or on all their templates.

    But it also means there is no one place to manage them when you change them. You will need to maintain a checklist or keep one extra thing in your memory when you make new pages or install a new script like a tracker.

    You can do this now using a new section in the thrive dashboard as shown in the screenshot below.

    Landing Pages Analytics & Scripts for Thrive Architect Pages
    Landing Pages Analytics & Scripts for Thrive Architect Pages

     

  • Can you setup WooCommerce on Thrive Themes?

    Can you setup WooCommerce on Thrive Themes?

    Update (28th Oct 2020): This article is outdated and Thrive Themes apparently supports Woo-commerce way more than it used to. Check the video by Doug at convology.com below for the full-integration. I’ve stopped focusing on Thrive theme builder and Thrive Architect and switched to Elementor for theme building + page builder for various reasons. I still recommend Thrive leads, Thrive Ultimatum.

    You can. But I don’t recommend it. Not if, the main purpose of your site is to be an e-commerce website.

    I will explain you the details.

    Over the years, I have served a huge array of clients with a variety of requests related to Thrive themes. They ask for customisation, mobile optimisation, making child themes, and also integrating woocommerce with thrive themes.

    After working on two such woocommerce related projects, I started to pass on tasks like that. Even though it is possible, its a HUGE amount of work to get even of basics of it looking good, usable and right.

    It needs a huge amount of customisation in terms of CSS. And then you might also need to child theme and modify the woocommerce PHP files.

    So what do I recommend?

    First, ask yourself

    • Are you trying to setup a full fledged ecommerce site?
    • Are your products going to have multiple screenshots, a full page description with images and sections?
    • Do you need an extensive cart modification functionality?
    • Do you expect simple basic UI elements of every ecommerce store to make the user experience easy? E.g. Like wanting a  + and – button on your # of items box. (See this demo woocommerce store by thrive themes, and notice how the product page doesn’t have a button to increase count of the product)

    If you answered yes to questions above, then don’t use thrive themes for an ecommerce store. Simple.

    But if you want to sell a courses, informational products etc which don’t require extensive cart modification functionality, you will do just fine with Thrive Themes.

    Thrive themes wasn’t built specially for running an ecommerce store using woocommerce. Its built for lead generation, conversion, content, courses etc.

    1. So I suggest setup a subdomain. If your domain is skreechers.com, then setup a store.skreechers.com. Make it a separate wordpress install, get a flexible super-fast WooCommerce theme that supports WooCommerce out of the box. (As of updating this article, Its got 73000+ sales with 4.8 stars avg. Flatsome theme is so good and popular that there are 3rd party WooCommerce plugin developers who support it)
    2. The theme is 59$, but trust me you will save loads of time and banging your head against wall compared to trying to punch thrive themes to look good with WooCommerce. Also I have used Flatsome theme personally for a client’s website which continues to run fast and reliably long term over years.
    3. Use the exact same fonts, logo and colours that you use on your thrive themes site, so that when the user switches between the store site and content/membership site, they get a seamless experience. This is important to not scare your users and provide a seamless brand experience.

    But again…let me repeat this, *if* you are selling just few products, and you don’t really need a special product page, special cart experience etc. And all you need is for the user to click on “add to cart” from your sales page, see a checkout page and finish payment, then don’t bother to setup this special store subdomain.

    I am a thrive themes consultant myself and been following the forums and company closely. Their roadmap doesn’t have any new WooCommerce features in the near future as of writing this post. Their support for WooCommerce was just to clear an objection that many users might have before buying their themes.

    Leave a comment below if you have specific questions.

    I made a 10 minute video tutorial on how to setup WooCommerce on Thrive Themes. You can see how the result looks along with my recommendations on who should and shouldn’t use it.