Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder 1.8 Gordon – New Landing Page Templates, Import/Export Improvements, and More

Robby McCullough - May 4, 2016

Beaver Builder 1.8 is live! This post covers the high-level changes. For all the gritty details, be sure to see the Beaver Builder Change Logs. Enjoy.

Beaver Builder 1.8, named after the Gordon Dam, is here and it brings several great new features. In Gordon, we’re releasing over a dozen new landing page templates and several other major enhancements and fixes. Also, for theme authors, we’re releasing some new tools that enable you to create templates for your themes and bundle them with the free version of Beaver Builder.

New Landing Page Templates

We’re thrilled to be launching 16 new landing page templates! These will be available to use and modify from the template selector panel in the page builder plugin. For several months, we’ve been working behind the scenes with the very talented Thomas Melgard of Mint Creation. These templates are gorgeous, and we’re thrilled to get them into your hands.

Here are links to all the new template demos along with some brief descriptions:

Zen Life – Generic, New Age Business Template
Janelle Awkward – Photography Portfolio Template
Let’s Meat – Restaurant / Menu Template
Moon Landing – eBook Template
Beaver Agency – Web and Design Agency Template
Beaver Royal Academy – Educational Institution Template
Fashion Freaks – Fashion Blog / Editorial Template
Acme Tools – Coming Soon / Email Sign-up Template
ProCraz – Mobile App Template
Fullscreen Fun – Fullscreen Design Template
Wooden Beavers – Construction Business Template
Motor City – Automotive / Dealership Template
ProBiz – Modern, Generic Business Template
DJ Beaver – DJ/Band Template
The Body Factory – Gym, Crossfit, or Fitness Template
The City Lawyers – Law Firm Template

The templates are included with all of our premium packages and they work with any theme. Of course, for the best results, we recommend using them with the Beaver Builder Theme!

16 new landing page templates are coming to Beaver Builder Share on X

Unlike our existing templates, which were created using an early version of Beaver Builder, many of these templates utilize new modules and layout features. Also, most of the images carry a Creative Commons CC0 license!

Beaver Builder Template Enhancements

One of Beaver Builder’s most powerful features is the ability to save templates and import/export them to other WordPress installs. In Gordon, we added several enhancements to make the template import/export functionality even better.

Individual Template Export

You can now select individual templates to export using the native WordPress Importer Plugin. This means you can create sets of templates on a single WordPress install or staging area, then easily move them around to other installs. It should also make creating templates to resell or distribute, much faster and simpler.

A Patch for the WordPress Importer Plugin

The WordPress Importer Plugin leaves a lot to be desired. In rare cases, we’ve encountered a bug that will corrupt the serialized data in Beaver Builder’s template export files. In this release, we’re including a patch that fixes this bug.

This patch is applied seamlessly behind the scenes. If all goes as planned, it will “just work.”

Theme Authors can Bundle Templates with Beaver Builder Lite

If you’re a theme author looking to bundle a page builder with your theme, we’ve got a great new feature for you: the ability to include pre-built templates with Beaver Builder lite.

Theme Authors will soon be able to bundle templates with Beaver Builder Lite. http://bit.ly/1NWqOgI Share on X

We don’t support bundling or reselling our premium packages, but we love when theme and plugin authors include the lite version of Beaver Builder with their products. Most themes these days include one or more pre-designed landing page templates. If you’re creating themes, you can now create these pages with Beaver Builder, then bundle them (along with Beaver Builder light) with your theme.

To learn more, see our Knowledge Base article on this feature.

Somewhat Minor Enhancements

Hide Rows/Modules for Logged Out Visitors

visibility-settings

We love getting to implement features that are very highly requested. This was definitely one of them: the ability to show or hide rows and modules depending on whether a user is logged in our out. You’re welcome. 🙂

Expand Settings Lightboxes

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This was another feature that we heard from you, the ability to make setting lightboxes full screen. You can also check out the resizer plugin from BeaverPress.

Video Backgrounds from a URL

Background videos are hot at the moment, but they are usually large files that can eat a lot of bandwidth. Now, you can host your videos on a separate server like Amazon S3 and load video backgrounds from a URL.

Minor Enhancements

Along with the major features announced above, we included several minor enhancements in Gordon:

Line height and letter spacing options in the Heading Module
Button styling in the Contact Form Module
Icon and background opacity options in the Button Module
Link target and individual icon color options in the Icon Group Module
Set width and alignment in the Separator Module
Ability to elements to the top of a full-height row
Ability to vertically center elements in an equal-height row
Reverse the column stacking order on mobile/responsive views

That about does it! You can always see our bug fix reports and the nitty-gritty breakdown of changes on our Changelogs.

We’d love to know what you think about this upcoming release, and or, if you have any trouble with the beta, please send us an email or leave us a comment below. Enjoy.

37 Comments

Mike on May 4, 2016 at 12:26 pm

I put a post up in the facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beaverbuilders/permalink/595527110606642/
regarding an issue I found with the settings lightbox and plugins that use javascript (I guess) to expand more settings. In this case, it was a recent posts widget plugin. Is there some way to get to the settings of this plugin since I can’t access them via the settings lightbox when adding it to a sidebar through beaver builder?
- Robby McCullough on May 4, 2016 at 3:44 pm
  
  Thanks for the heads up, Mike. It’s possible that the two aren’t compatible. We’ll take a look. 🙂
Jason on May 4, 2016 at 12:37 pm

Looks like an awesome update guys. Cant wait until it’s a full release. Already have a customer after a website like the new landing page templates. So great timing.
- Robby McCullough on May 4, 2016 at 3:45 pm
  
  Alright! Great to hear.
Traci on May 4, 2016 at 1:21 pm

yay reverse orders of stacking rows!
vit on May 4, 2016 at 2:22 pm

Hi, Im about to purchase BB Standard. Im using Genesis and Dynamik W.B. Can you explain me what would be the reson for me to upgade (after I test BB standard) to Pro version? It seams to me I dont need it when I use Genesis & DWB. Or do I missing somethink about Pro version?
And one more question: can I use rows and other segments from new templates and mix it with other ones from other tamplates?
- Robby McCullough on May 4, 2016 at 3:56 pm
  
  Hey Vit. Thanks for the message. The Beaver Builder Theme and multisite are the main features of the pro package, if you don’t need either of those, the Standard should be just fine!
Mel Richards on May 4, 2016 at 3:31 pm

Wow, incredible update guys!! Can’t wait for the real version to drop so I can update all my sites!! Woo!!
- Robby McCullough on May 4, 2016 at 3:46 pm
  
  Thanks, Mel 🙂 Hopefully in a few weeks.
Craig on May 4, 2016 at 9:36 pm

Super fly templates. Kudos!
- Robby McCullough on May 6, 2016 at 3:45 pm
  
  Woot! Thanks, Craig!
Athlone Harris-Compton on May 4, 2016 at 10:18 pm

Wow! Guys these new page templates are stunning! What a step up to slick and smooth and beautiful.
- Robby McCullough on May 6, 2016 at 3:35 pm
  
  Thanks, Athlone! Much appreciated. 🙂
David on May 4, 2016 at 11:05 pm

“Minor Enhancements” ha ha ha. I read major improvements. I particularly like.

1.Reverse the column stacking order on mobile/responsive views

2. Ability to (put?) elements to the top of a full-height row

Congratulations guys on this amazing work.
- Ed Stutzman on May 5, 2016 at 1:24 pm
  
  You’re absolutely right, David. I had the same thought when I read “minor enhancements”.
  
  This is a fantastic update that not only adds great functionality but also shows more of the power that beaverbuilder brings to the screen when putting a site together.
  
  Great job, everybody!
GaryK on May 6, 2016 at 12:26 pm

Fantastic…! I’m sure glad I just recently jumped on the love train for BB! I’ve punched BB into Genesis and Dynamik Builder. I think I was shedding a few tears last night it was working so beautifully together. Don’t spoil the fun and keep the good work going guys!
- Robby McCullough on May 6, 2016 at 4:27 pm
  
  Alright! Thanks, Gary. I imagine you’ve seen it, but just in case, be sure to checkout Dynamik Beaver: http://dynamikbeaver.com/
John on May 7, 2016 at 2:05 pm

I was looking at the Beta Landing page templates and to see how they were set up.
Looking at the left only, right only columns and centered column rows, I noticed that the column text and graphic content are held in position by an opposite empty column for left and right, AND empty left and right columns for middle column content. Is this standard practice for column position or am I doing the hard way with CSS margins and padding?
- Robby McCullough on May 16, 2016 at 9:32 am
  
  Hey John. I think this is one of those “there are many ways to skin a cat” things. I’ve done both, using margins/padding or empty columns, and they both seem to work well. I think using margins/padding might be a bit more flexible if you’re writing media query CSS, though.
Stéphane on May 16, 2016 at 8:20 am

This upgrade looks awesome!

I have just one question. Will the video backgrounds support YouTube or Vimeo URLs? I tested locally and it didn’t work but might be because I was on a local server.

Thanks!
- Robby McCullough on May 16, 2016 at 9:30 am
  
  Hey Stéphane! No, unfortunately, it only supports video files that are hosted on a separate server. For example, if you want to store your video files on Amazon AWS or a CDN, you can link to the file as opposed to needing to have it in your media library.
Daniel on May 23, 2016 at 11:02 am

Open Open Open! 🙂

So excited to see more modern, stylish templates on the way. They are looking great. Keep’em coming!
Nick M on May 24, 2016 at 12:00 pm

These look much more modern, will there be anyway to add menu’s to these layouts so that can be used for more than just landing pages.
- Robby McCullough on May 24, 2016 at 3:23 pm
  
  Yup! Definitely. On all the demos and screenshots we just show the page content, but you can definitely enable a header, logo, or navigation menu.
Troy on June 6, 2016 at 5:54 pm

Features needed with Beaver Builder:

1. Subscribe Form and ActiveCampaign. Need the ability to send tags along with the adding of a subscriber.

2. Light Box Pop Up Window/Modal needed. (This would allow for showing an image, video, custom HTML.) You already have the code for the most part, just needs some adjusting. That way I don’t have to go out and pay for a Light Box solution to show my videos.
- Robby McCullough on June 8, 2016 at 9:23 am
  
  Great suggestions. Thanks, Troy. I will add these to our ideas roadmap.
Tyler on June 7, 2016 at 5:44 pm

Hey Robby! I hope you are doing great! Thank you for the hard work. I am trying to update to 1.8 and it is saying update unavailable. I have copy and pasted my license key into the automatic updates as well. It still wont work. Any help to get this bad boy updated?
- Robby McCullough on June 8, 2016 at 9:27 am
  
  Hmm. Not sure why that’s happening. Sorry for the trouble. If you can, shoot us an email via our support page and we can take a look: https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com/beaver-builder-support/
Sean on June 8, 2016 at 4:39 am

I’m going to have to be a massive geek and say that the line height and letter spacing options, along with reversing column order, are my favourite changes here by far!
- Robby McCullough on June 8, 2016 at 9:27 am
  
  Haha, I am a big fan of the typography settings too! <3
gsibergerin on June 8, 2016 at 6:19 am

Had the beta installed on a dev site, now 1.8 is out. Beta doesn´t seem to be updateable (is that right?), so do I just backup – deactivate – install 1.8 – activate? Or do I loose stuff that way?
- Robby McCullough on June 8, 2016 at 9:28 am
  
  That’s correct. You won’t be able to update the beta, but you can deactivate and delete it, then install the release version. You won’t lose any of your work if you do this. We don’t delete the database data on uninstallations (although, there is an option to do this in the settings panel).
  - gsibergerin on June 8, 2016 at 11:20 pm
    
    Thanks for confirmation, Robby. Excited this is official now, great work!
Alexander on June 16, 2016 at 11:24 am

Content align bottom would also be useful on full height rows (for photo captions in my case). Have been using css to reposition my captions, but a ui control would be nice.
- Robby McCullough on June 22, 2016 at 10:02 am
  
  Thanks for the suggestion, Alexander. We’ll keep that in mind.
Paul on August 8, 2016 at 9:38 am

Hi Robby,
I came across BB about a week ago and I’m really impressed with the potential it has to offer and its current capabilities… as well as the interaction and communication you guys/gals have with your customers!!!
Now, a bit of trivia…. I couldn’t help but comment as I found it rather interesting the latest version is named “Gordon”. I live in Tassie!, and I remember all too clearly as a kid all the politics surrounding the Franklin River and Gordon River dams. The photo and name of this version of BB made me feel like you named it just to get my attention! You really didn’t need to, as I was planning on purchasing soon anyway. LOL. Cheers, Paul.
- Robby McCullough on August 8, 2016 at 10:13 am
  
  Haha! Hey Paul. You figured out our plan! 😉
  
  Thanks for sharing. What a small world!