Affiliate Disclosure: I use DIVI since years, meanwhile even exclusively, simply because I love it. I can therefore full-heartedly recommend it. Since ElegantThemes offers an affiliate program, I decided to take part. All links to DIVI and ElegantThemes are affiliate links, meaning I receive a commission. There is absolutely no disadvantage for you. I am not associated with or act on behalf of ElegantThemes, I just love their work, making my own so easy.
I have high expectations and would not rashly praise software. But the DIVI theme and its included page builder – meanwhile even available as a stand-alone plugin – deserves all the kudos and undoubtedly sets a new standard in WordPress usability.
The DIVI page builder saves, loads, copies, disables, stores, exports and imports single modules, rows, sections and whole layouts
I appreciated Elegant Themes already before DIVI, but with its release their flagship was born. I started to use it on small websites, and already back in December 2013 in version 1.0 the page builder was a much greater pleasure to use than the free Page Builder by Site Origin or even the famous premium plugin Visual Composer. But actually all page builders were lacking some essential functionality that makes them quite unusable for bigger projects: the ability to save and load, copy and disable, import and export modules.
My yearly subscription ran out and I nearly forgot about page builders, when in June 2015 a newsletter informed me about the major update to DIVI 2.4 – I nearly couldn’t believe my eyes. Elegant Themes did the magic, and now not only whole layouts could be saved and used on other pages, but every single module, row and section could be saved, loaded, copied, temporarily disabled, stored in the library, exported and imported – an astonishing new range of possibilities in website creation opened up. With the DIVI library introduced in version 2.4, the DIVI theme has definitely transformed WordPress into the greatest and easiest website builder and page toolkit available nowadays.
DIVI’s Synced and Global Modules – incredible Magic
But the miracle didn’t stop here. Elegant Themes pushed the magic even further with their genius idea of synced and global modules, rows and sections. With this option they’ve raised the flexibility and usability not only to the top of all existing page builders for WordPress, but even far above, setting a completely new standard.
What do they do? Nothing less as their name promises. After customizing a module to your liking, you can not only save it into the library as it is, but select which parts of the module settings (General Settings, Advanced Design Settings and Custom CSS) will be saved. When loading the module, only those saved settings will be taken, while the other parts come with their blank default settings.
Global modules, rows and sections can be published everywhere on the website in infinite instances, and whenever a change is made to one of them, all the other instances change accordingly throughout the whole website! Shouldn’t this be a standard option? DIVI truly paves the path for the competition.
But the best: Selective Sync and Global can be combined, opening a so far unknown versatility in website creation. You can create a global header module with synced Advanced Design Settings, and not only that the design will be loaded when using it, but whenever you change an option afterwards, it will be synced globally in each and single one of them, while the content that you’ve defined in the General Settings tab can stay individually different in each single module. Global Modules in combination with Selective Sync truly unfold a whole new potential.
In essence, you can choose which settings you save, and only those settings will be used upon load. In regular modules these settings can afterwards be still changed individually, while in the case of a global module any change of an option within the synced settings will be applied to all instances of the module throughout the entire website as well. Absolutely amazing, isn’t it?
Magic² – the Page Builder of the DIVI Theme as a stand-alone Plugin
But not even here they exhausted their sorcery, and when I read a few month later about the publishing of the DIVI page builder as a stand-alone plugin, it was hard to believe. A dream came true, now the DIVI page builder can be used with any WordPress theme. I nearly finished my own theme at that time to make my life easier in creating simple websites for private clients, and with the DIVI page builder I could now complete it to a full and easy drag ‘n’ drop system.
The DIVI Theme is extending WordPress into a truly professional Website Builder for everyone
The DIVI page builder is closing an important gap for me and my clients. I was always praising WordPress as the most simple, easy and pleasurable CMS out there (which in a way was and is still true), but still, for clients without any coding experience I often reached its limits. Also in my WordPress seminars the most simple questions like “how can I make the background green?”, “how can I change the appearance of the quote” or “how can I make such a 3 columns thing” always ended up in an abashing “you need to ask your webdesigner to do it in CSS”. After three such answers I doubted my own praising of WordPress as a simple and easy solution, and even started to consider recommending some do-it-yourself online website builders.
But these online website builders are very limited, and if they offer a bit more potential, it quickly gets costly. My own attempts to get warm with such systems ended up in frustration. Most don’t even get close to my expectations and despite their big advertising promises of simple creation they lack any chances for profession.
In my opinion, WordPress combined with the DIVI page builder became the first professional, well-thought and easy to use webbsite builder out there nowadays. Besides the drag’n’drop ease of the builder, the DIVI theme itself comes also equipped with many theme customizations. Now everyone can customize over 1.000! design modifications right on the spot. Each single module comes with an Advanced Design section in which many options can be easily set without any coding knowledge. But even the coders find a Custom CSS section in every module for easier application.
The DIVI amazement continues in 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7
With DIVI 2.5 also came the DIVI Role Editor to allow or deny access to certain modules for certain user roles, the Live Preview to see the result of your settings without leaving the module and even in three responsive sizes, an elaborated Undo and Redo functionality with a complete History of your changes that you can browse and switch through, right-click options including Copy & Paste even from one page to another and many more astonishing functions that proof once more how well-thought-out Elegant Themes work.
With DIVI 2.6, besides amazing new modules and header styles, the new Responsive Editing System is again an abolute peak of editability. It introduces settings for the three breakpoints for Desktop, Tablet and Smartphone individually. Gone are the days of strenuous child-theme @media coding.
With DIVI 2.7, Elegant Themes introduced an A/B testing system that can be applied to each and single module! Alongside a greatly improved import/export functionality that let’s you create your own DIVI Packs, opening a whole universe of interchangeability to the DIVI community.
Also check out their extensive DIVI Documentation to get a better overview of the whole DIVI magic, and say Hello to Extra, their most powerful Magazine Theme that is also powered by the Divi Builder.
DIVI 3.0 lauched the best visual frontend page builder WordPress has ever seen
With its current update 3.0, DIVI launched the best frontend page builder that WordPress has ever seen. DIVIs page builder was always pushing WordPress to ever new heights in usability and ease, but with their new frontend page builder Elegant Themes now definitely broke through anything that had existed before. A long awaited dream comes true.
Page builders in WordPress were all missing the kind of intuitive and joyful usage that online webkits as Wix, Weebly or Squarespace offered. Even if they equipped WordPress with drag n`drop creation, it was still not a true What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get experience of comfortably editing text, intuivitively adding and setting up new modules and simply repositioning elements directly on the website itself. The attempts of the builders on the WordPress market to become frontend were clumsy to use or felt fragile, severely limiting the joy of creation.
The DIVI 3.0 frontend page builder is once more honoring the name of its creators, Elegant Themes – it is simply elegant. The first truly simple, fluent and joyful frontend experience arrived, and creating websites in WordPress became an intuitive experience even for non-designers. The Visual Builder is continuously improved since its first release, setting ever higher stakes for its competition and en ever bigger joy for its users.
Elegant Themes is not only DIVI, but no less than 87 themes which can now all be used with the DIVI page builder
Yes this is correct! For an annual subscription of $89 you get ALL their 87 themes, plugins, updates and support. With the $249 life-time subscription even forever and ever. Check the discounts you might currently find on elegantthemes.com
Since DIVI 2.4, Elegant Themes have completely convinced me. I stopped extending my annual license and upgraded to being a lifetime fan of Elegant Themes. So now you’ve read through the personal testimony of a long-time DIVI user, I want to highly recommend you a test-drive (Elegant Themes offers a 30-day-money-back guarantee so you have nothing to loose) to feel for yourself the amazing easiness. With DIVI it became possible to create simple but highly professional websites in a day or even less.
