• Added the ability to drop columns into columns.
• Added the ability to drag and drop existing columns.
• Made multiple improvements for more accurate dragging and dropping.
• Added responsive settings for margins, padding and borders.
• Added new content page templates.
• Template images are now loaded via HTTPS.
• Added the ability to open a lightbox via a button.
• Added the ability to add an alpha slider to color fields.

There has already been much buzz about the columns in columns and the ability to drag-n-drop columns. so let’s take a deeper look at one of the other new additions you might overlook.

Lightbox Option for Buttons

Now there is a new option called Click Action where you can select between Link and Lightbox. Link behaves like you expect a button to behave, by linking to somewhere. The lightbox option opens a simple html editor for adding content, then opens that content in a simple lightbox.

Lightbox Content Type For Video

If you want to open video in the lightbox, there is a Content Type option where you can simply paste the link.

The options are few so those who need more options will want to look for a suitable addon, such as Power Pack for their modal popups module.

How did you come to WordPress? For many in the WordPress community, especially the do-it-yourself-ers who have no interest except to maintain their own website, you were using WordPress to blog before you ever considered customizing the theme or making unique pages. For the website designer or developer, however, our path to discovery tends to be driven by the needs of our customers.

My discovery started in about 2008 with a brother asking me which I thought was better for him to use for his own site, Joomla or WordPress. I was building Facebook apps at the time and hadn’t been building sites for clients in about eight years, so I hadn’t heard of either at the time. That didn’t stop me from realizing the incredible value WordPress was for developers and it wasn’t long before I pivoted away from Facebook development to building client projects in WordPress exclusively.

It was probably four or five years later, however, before I wrote my first actual blog post. I was never a blogger, I was a developer. I didn’t have time to blog. Besides, what would I write about, I’m a boring developer. [Side note: Interesting parallel to my current excuse for why I don’t use Instagram more.]

Eventually I was pivoting away from being a freelance developer to bootstrapping an agency and started paying attention to marketing, more specifically the eventual buzz word worthy inbound-marketing.

I started adding how-to articles on my website. Usually I was explaining to myself how I did something interesting to me. They were also based in tools I used and was often a recommended developer for.

The benefit to me was not in large amounts of traffic to my blog. There’s no one in the world who understands what web developers do who would consider me a guru. But time after time, as potential clients would find me through Google searches on the issue they were having. Finding my article added credibility when they later considered hiring me.

I’ve also shared that proud moment Sal referred to in his Wordcamp talk when Google directs you back to your own article that you hadn’t even remembered writing.

Read Sal’s accompanying article for his WCUS 2016 talk, How Blogging Helps Me as a Developer.

I know I wrote about this as past tense, but I still write on. Different brands and different goals, even using better authors whenever possible, but the value of inbound marketing to the developer far outweighs the time loss.

What’s your experience been?

Hello. I’m Michael Davis. Some of you may have seen Ian’s post in the Beaver Builder Facebook group last month seeking someone to take over Beaver Brains. While he loved creating and operating Beaver Brains, a job change was forcing him to realize he needed to let it go. Over the next few weeks Ian received a number of proposals, mine included and before I knew it I was having an Oh Shit! moment when I received Ian’s email saying he had picked me. Now what!?!

While I have grand plans for the future of Beaver Brains, the immediate challenge has been to make the transition as smooth as possible. There has still been a few hiccups, but for the most part they should be ironed out now. Please reach out to me here if you catch a bug that got past us.

New Sites in the Showcase

Browse the showcase any time you are needing some inspiration.

Beaver Builder Plugin

This biggest news in November for the Beaver Builder plugin is that it’s almost over and December means we’re mere days away from the release of version 1.9,, a.k.a. Shasta, and the release of the most saught after feature since the day the beaver was born, columns within columns. Columns are going draggable so you can drag one or more colums and drop them into any other column. Smooth and easy!

Here’s a couple of videos to tease you while we wait for a first week of December release. If you can’t wait, however, the latest beta (0.2 at the time I’m writing this) is available from the downloads page within your account.

Matt Maderios, of The Matt Report podcast, made a video about the Shasta Beaver Builder update.

Also have a look at the official preview video from Justin in the Shasta Update post from Beaver Builder.

New Module added to Power Pack

Example of Fancy Heading with Clip to Image option

Power Pack from Beaver Addons received a new module in November. Fancy Heading gives you a few new ways to customize your headings. Check out other examples in the Power Pack Demo.

Swag Love

Have you seen the Beaver Builder Swag store? I couldn’t resist buying a couple t-shirts as soon as I saw the announcement. Not that I needed more geeky t-shirts, but I do live in The Beaver State of Oregon so I felt an urge to represent.

Important Links

• Every product made for Beaver Builder by anyone
• How to get started with Beaver Builder
• Showcase of site built using Beaver Builder

Michael’s vision for the future of Beaver Brains includes expanding the current resources and introducing new tools and features for the Beaver Builder community.

When I started out looking for a new owner, my ambition was to find someone with the resources and know-how to take Beaver Brains and elevate it to the next level.

Michael showed both the capability, energy and enthusiasm required to take on Beaver Brains and so I am really excited to hand it over to him and see his exciting plans unfold.

I would like to thank everyone in the Beaver Builder community who made my journey, creating Beaver Brains, such a great experience. I’ve made some great new friends that I take away with me to cherish.

See you soon and always; ‘Be A Better Beaver!’

Ian

We love the variety of the sites we see, so keep sending them in. Here is the top ten list of Showcase sites for August as voted for by Beaver Brains visitors…

Top 5 Sites

The top five sites all gained three 5 star ratings each.

UABB Website

SPACEROCK Trail Race by New Global Adventures

VALENCIA Trail Race by New Global Adventures

1 Day Webs by 1 Day Webs

Next 5 sites

The next 5 sites attracted two 5 star votes each.

Hi-Chew by IdeaBox Creations

Melanie Gard by Melanie Gard

Brazen Racing by New Global Adventures

ProBeaver

Most voted for site

Sugar Five Design was the winner for ‘most voted for site’ attracting 6 votes with an average 4.7 out of 5 stars.

Sugar Five Design by Sugar Five Design

Right now it’s possible to add videos to rows by hosting mp4 and WebM files in your WordPress media library or by adding them via URLs. Vimeo and YouTube have so far been off limits. Current Beaver Builder plugin version is at 1.8.5. So expect this update pretty soon!

Create video backgrounds in Beaver Builder by using media library hosted files

Create video backgrounds in Beaver Builder by using mp4 or webm URLs

Following on from our blog post last month, here are a few new updates to add to the upcoming plugin features…

Beaver Builder Plugin Updates

Justin Busa has recently updated the Trello Beaver Builder Roadmap with two very exciting features; the much-anticipated Columns in Columns and Dragging Columns. You can see these features and how they are expected to work in a preview here and if you’re a member of the Beaver Builder Facebook Group, visit this post.

Column feature upgrades

What this means is that unlike the current version where you cannot add columns to existing columns, this update will make this possible by allowing you to drag a column module into an existing module to create ‘nested’ columns. What’s more, the video shows how the Beaver Builder team have worked out the functionality for dragging columns to new locations with a simple pick up, drag and drop feature.

The current version of the Beaver Builder Plugin only allows you to drag modules to new locations, creating new rows if required, but this new feature will ensure that you can drag and drop complete column arrangements out of rows into new locations. A simple blue marker highlight shows where your columns will be located when moving around the layout. This is a much-requested feature and we’re certain that it will make the creation of complex layouts a breeze!

All this is expected to be released in the next update to the Beaver Builder Plugin, Version 1.9

User Interface Improvements

One of the great successes of the Beaver Builder Plugin is the editing interface. Back when page builders first became popular, front end editing was clunky and often saw users returning to backend admin editing screens to layout complex pages. The Beaver Builder Plugin changed all of that with a simple, intuitive interface that was easy for both designers and their clients to manage. True front end editing was born and the team at Beaver Builder ensure they still lead the way through innovation and clear development goals.

However scaling an application such as this requires an interface that is able to accommodate a growing list of features, modules, and 3rd party add-ons. Enter Brent Jet, designer and developer, drafted onto the Beaver Builder team to explore interface ideas. Brent’s work on the Plugin interface looks to be bringing a little bit of finesse to the Beaver Builder sidebar and explores an alternative way to display templates, rows and modules. Included in the update will be a preview and save on the fly button – something that 3rd party developers like MapSteps have offered with their Peek-a-Boo plugin.

New Beaver Builder Sidebar panel expected in version 2.0

The new panel an updated tab arrangement for displaying Templates, Rows and Modules and presumably offers key areas for 3rd Party add-ons to co-exist alongside core features. A handy save, settings, preview and close panel buttons site at the top of the panel and expand to show key information / additional links where necessary.

It’s great to see the many ways Beaver Builder is being put to use with the majority of the submissions using both the BB plugin and theme. You’ll also get to see what the developers and designers are adding to their sites to get the best from BB. PowerPack by IdeaBox Creations and Ultimate Addons by Brainstormforce are popular add-ons for many of the sites.

Check out the links alongside the entries to visit the showcase websites, the agencies that put them together and the products they used to create them.

Vote for your best site or simply like the post to get your favourite showcase featured in our monthly newsletter.

Thank you to everyone who submitted sites – we hope we’ve done you justice!

Plugin Updates for 1.9

Version 1.9 of the plugin will bring copy and paste for rows and modules and custom units for margins and padding. Included in the release will be new content page templates; a list of which you can review here. An update to the way margins and paddings can be set to allow for responsive screen sizes is planned along with an undo / redo feature that will save plenty of time and heartache!

New content page templates

We’ve grabbed a few screenshots of the new page templates designed by Beaver Builder and to be released in the next plugin update. All the layouts seem to incorporate plenty of white space and keep things pretty minimal.  See more templates here.

New Beaver Builder About Me content template

New Beaver Builder Team 2 content template

New Beaver Builder Team content template

New Beaver Builder Services content template

New Beaver Builder FAQ content template

New Beaver Builder Contact Me content template

The big new features listed on the Roadmap are the new Beaver Builder Theme Builder and Field Connections options that will allow you to create whole new templates for your single posts, custom posts and page layouts and connect areas on the layouts with existing fields in your editor.

This will make creating richly diverse websites a real possibility and with connections to ACF fields also planned, the sky is the limit!

The theme builder is planned as an add-on at this stage so we hope that the templates it creates can be transported without it. A transporter would be ideal for child theme designers and developers handing over sites to clients that don’t want to bundle the theme builder to drive their designs and need to ensure template images are faithfully transported too.

The Field Connections feature is another powerful addition to the plugin roadmap. We use ACF fields extensively on Beaver Brains and adding them to the front end requires PHP, CSS and messing with child theme templates and functions files. It can quickly add up to a confusing mess. Having an easy way to map ACF fields used in combination with the template builder will save a lot of headaches. We’re definitely looking forward to both of these updates. Thierry Pigot has been showing a similar feature in his upcoming Ultimate Beaver add-on pack so it looks like we may have plenty of options in the near future.

A new lightbox module is planned that will open an image or video from a button on your page. Other plugin developers have released similar functionality that also includes HTML or Templates as popup content. So we hope this lightbox will do a little more than images and video alone. Last, but not least, a new table module is ready for release in 1.9 which hopefully adds sortable columns and a way to display data responsively.

Theme Updates for 1.6

1.6 of the theme release will feature CSS support for WooCommerce tabs on the ‘My Account’ page. WooCommerce recently changed the way tabs are displayed and Beaver Builder will update the theme to suit the new layout.

New presets in the theme customiser will bring further starting points for designers – at the moment there are 9 presets that allow you to quickly find a style that suits your design. It’s not known whether or not the new presets will add to, or amend those already available – we hope to see a few more on the dropdown!

Current theme presets available in the customiser

Full height rows in the BB Theme will now account for the header height. So adjusting the header height or even making it transparent (see below) will affect the height of the full-height row accordingly.

Arrows will be offered as part of the drop down menu configuration options in the theme customiser which will match that available when you manually add a menu to your page.

Menu arrows planned to be included in the customiser

The largely anticipated features are the transparent header and header design controls. At the moment, to do anything creative with the header like transparency requires add-ons or coding to achieve. Having this built in would bring the Beaver Builder theme in line with many others on the market. The Facebook Group and UserVoice forum take requests for these two features often, so we’re looking forward to seeing these incorporated into the core.

Conclusion

There are so many cool features listed in these update notes and if all features make it to the final releases we’ll be very happy Beavers. We can’t wait to test them out!