Finally, they built it

Since I’m doing some work internally on the website, there’s something I’ve begun to use in Thrive Architect that I thought was pretty cool.

If you’ve been with me awhile, you know that I am an avid user of Thrive Themes tools and I make heavy use of their Thrive Architect page builder. But, there was a big limitation that I often found annoying about it.

Each page was it’s own standalone island unto itself. You could do all the work to design some section of a page and make it look awesome, but the underlying code you had created was “stuck” on that one page. If you duplicated that section onto other pages, then each one was a separate thing.

Yes, Architect had the ability to save templates. In fact, you can save an entire page as a template, or you could save a section as a template. So, for example, if you do the work to create a pricing table, you could save that pricing table as a template and easily insert it on other pages with a few clicks.

The problem was…

What happens if you make a change? For instance, if you created a pricing table and then you changed your prices, how do you edit that if that pricing table appears on multiple pages?

Well, you had to edit each one. One by one. And, it’s annoying.

Recently, Thrive Themes came out with an update which incorporated something called SYMBOLS.

Now, when I first saw this, I thought nothing of it. When I see the word symbols, I thought it was referring to the ability to insert icons and other special characters.

But, then their video came out which explained it. Actually, Symbols is EXACTLY the solution I wanted to this mass-edit problem.

In Thrive Architect, a SYMBOL is a page element that you have designed and then saved as a symbol. Then, you can insert that symbol anywhere, on any page. And you then have the ability to edit that symbol in one location and it will change across your whole website.

Awesome!

Admittedly, I don’t know why the hell they used the word “symbol” for that. It is confusing.

This allows you to have global elements across multiple pages designed with Architect and you have the ability to control it all from one central location.

So, now as I redo some aspects of the BMA site, I am moving some elements over to a symbol, therefore allowing me much more convenience later when it comes time to make an edit.

And I’m doing a strange and awkward happy dance as I do it.

– David