Imagine how many times you go back and forth between the WordPress administration area and the post or page just to make sure it looks good. That quickly adds up. If you preview a post 20 times before publishing, and you blog three days a week, that’s 24 hours a year spent previewing and reviewing. Blog daily? Double that figure.
We can save you that time, and make the process incredibly fun by moving past the post editor completely, and instead editing content directly on the front-end. We can do this using a new, hyper-minimal editor that’s acts as a layer on top of your existing post or page content. No more wasting time previewing the post. Everything happens in real-time, right before your eyes.
This new editor is called Lasso, and after nearly six months of development, it’s finally available.
[aesop_image lightbox=”off” captionposition=”left” caption=”Lasso together with Aesop Story Engine provides an amazing front-end editing and story building experience.” align=”center” imgwidth=”900px” img=”https://lasso.is/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/lasso-with-aesop.png”]
Lasso is a front-end editor and story builder plugin for WordPress. It’s designed to remove the friction created in the writing workflow, in addition to making content creation fun and entirely visual.
The best part, is that it’s engineered to work with most WordPress themes, and their existing content.
Copy First
Lasso’s mantra, summed up in only two words; copy first. The most important part of any article is the copy. Everything starts with the copy, but yet todays tools to create copy seem to largely be structured around building. This is where we hope to shake things up a bit, and help put the focus back on the written word. Page builders are great for building sites, but they’re not geared for writing (or building) posts.
[aesop_quote type=”pull” cite=”– Jeffrey Zeldman” quote=”Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.” size=”1″ align=”left” height=”auto” text=”#323232″ background=”#140f43″ width=”470px”]
Lasso is one of the only editors available for WordPress that puts writing first, and building second. We do this by taking a minimal approach to our editor, while providing a layer of on-demand, interactive story components. In addition, we work directly within the post itself, just like the backend post editor.
Story components are provided by Aesop Story Engine, and with this free plugin activated, opens up a whole world of possibilities for writers, journalists, storytellers, and content creators alike. Since we also wrote Aesop Story Engine, the integration between the two plugins is incredibly seamless. All of the component settings are adjusted in real-time with no second guessing what they’ll look like. For once, what you see, is what you get, with markup that’s semantically correct.
[aesop_image lightbox=”off” captionposition=”left” caption=”Building incredibly interactive stories with Aesop Story Engine is as easy as drag and drop.” align=”center” imgwidth=”900px” img=”https://lasso.is/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/building-with-lasso-C.gif”]
Instantly add a variety of interactive components from galleries and maps, and break a story into chapters with the Chapter component.
And for developers, it’s incredibly extensive. 20 hooks and 24 actions to be precise. You can instead think of Lasso not as a front-end editor, but as a front-edit editor framework. One that, with your creative alternative implementations, will make you the super-content-creator that we already know you are.
Theme Compatibility
From day one Lasso was engineered in a way that would make it entirely portable, and extensible. It only requires the CSS class of where you’d like for it to go to work. Most users would just put the CSS class of the post entry. Although this approach is a “technical” learning curve for non-developers, we’ve included automatic support for a number of existing themes, which automatically provides this class to the user.
[aesop_image lightbox=”off” captionposition=”left” caption=”Lasso is compatible with a number of themes by automatically providing the user with the CSS class needed to use Lasso.” align=”center” imgwidth=”900px” img=”https://lasso.is/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Image-2015-03-19-at-4.01.32-PM.png”]
In addition, our help portal includes step by step instructions on how to use inspector in Chrome to located the CSS class for themes that aren’t automatically supported by our status wizard.
*Note: If you’re a developer, and your themes post container is dedicated (i.e, no other markup inside of it) then email us with your themes text domain, and CSS class, and we’ll include support for your theme within the status wizard when Lasso is first activated.
Beta Release
We’re releasing Lasso as a beta, as we still have a long road ahead to a Version 1.0. We’re eager to get this into your hands now, so that you can shape the future of it. We have some incredibly huge plans in store, but we just want to make sure it’s what you want.
Despite the beta label, have no fear; it’s completely stable. All of the posts and pages with text on this site were crafted using Lasso. It’s the same editor being used on a multi-site network over at Story.AM, and it’s being used by countless others who have helped test on their own sites prior to release. Basically, we’ve been using it for months. It’s absolutely a breeze to use, not to mention incredibly fun!
Be the judge for yourself, and see just easy and effortless front-end editing can be. You can try a live demo within seconds. If you have some questions, read up on the FAQ, and if you still have more questions, just reach out! Email us help@lasso.is and we’ll help you find the information that you’re looking for.
With Lasso you can finally focus on writing, without worrying about what it’s going to end up looking like. We really can’t wait to see how much time this is going to save you and your clients, and are super excited to have developed an editor that makes writing fun again!