Divi Theme Review – The Best Page Builders To Date
Hello 2019!
New year marks a new beginning. New people to meet, new adventures to enjoy and new memories to create.
Today I am going to review a WordPress theme of my choice: Divi.
Even with Gutenberg on the horizon, the default WordPress editor leaves a lot to be desired for many of us.
It’s clunky. It’s limited. It’s utter rubbish.
Try to create any semi-decent landing page with it and you’ll be throwing your hands in up in the air in frustration.
As a freelance web designer who uses Divi theme extensively, trust me when I say “Divi Theme by Elegant Themes is the most powerful, robust and intuitive WordPress theme to date”.
Apart from being a theme, Elegant Theme also provides a standalone plugin :Â The Divi Builder;Â which makes it one of the most advanced WordPress front-end editor and visual page builder. The latest version of Divi (Divi 3.0) is blazing fast & has tremendously improved better user interface from the previous build.
Be it content modules or page customisation, Divi provides extensive features that loads fast and do real-time design changes. Moreover, the A/B Split Testing feature is something none of the page builders have yet.
For only $89 you get 69 other themes alongside Divi and all cool plugins. If you ask me, it is absolutely affordable for those who’d like to get their feet wet with web design. They also provide a Lifetime Plan that ultimately saves you from annual recurring payment unlike other page builders.
Elegant Theme has an excellent live chat support for pre-sales. Once you purchased Divi, you will join thousands of highly active Divi enthusiast within the community. Apart from that, there are many Facebook Groups around Divi users you can join, so you’re not alone.
554,210 Customers Are Already Building Amazing Websites With Divi
The moment I purchased the Lifetime Plan of Elegant Themes, I immediately knew that our Divi is going to be my life changer, hands down.
Two years later today, I developed about 150+ client sites with Divi, one of Elegant Theme’s most powerful and user-friendly page builder.
Divi page builder is intuitive, and most importantly, FAST! Adding sections,
You might
That’s why I decided to write this up-to-date (as of January 1st, 2019) review on Divi Theme that showcases the true potential of Divi 3.0 (the latest version) which has shown the age of WordPress page builders a new perspective.
P.S. This site that you’re on is build with Divi.
The aim of sharing this review is to help you decide and see if Divi is the right theme for you. This will be an unbiased review, so I will talk about some downside of the theme (something you hardly find in other reviews)
If you want to create a custom WordPress website without needing to know how-to-code, Divi is one of the options you’ve come across in a list of drag-and-drop page builders (in fact – that is probably why you are reading this Divi Theme review!).
One thing for sure is, Divi lets you build your WordPress website with simple drag and drag and real-time previews. The ease of use, plus a huge third-party support eco-system and plenty of unique features, are things that make the theme so popular.
In this Divi Theme review, I will then give you a hands-on look at how Divi can help you build a beautiful WordPress site.
The Divi Theme is a multipurpose WordPress theme, which means you can use it to create pretty much create any type of website. Watch this mini-clip of what you can achieve with Divi 3.0.
Flexible and customizable. With Divi, you can easily create:
- Landing Pages / Sales Pages
- Corporate Websites (Small Businesses or Client Websites)
- Blogs / Niche Sites
- Portfolio Sites
If you’re planning to build an eCommerce store, Divi supports WooCommerce. You can easily design your own custom product listing on your site.
Divi also integrates with Etsy if you want to create an Etsy-based shop to sell Etsy items on your WordPress blog.
That is not all, there are more cool features than you can even imagine. Allow me to make a clear definition of what
Divi is a powerful, multipurpose magazine-styled WordPress theme by Elegant Themes. Divi comes bundled with the Divi builder; the drag-and-drop page builder plugin to customize your site the way you want it to be.
It enables you to create beautifully designed Divi blog layouts, high converting landing pages, new brandable personal portfolio sites or client sites in minutes.
Divi theme is one of the most powerful, yet easy-to-blend with your own WordPress website.
You can design your website on the front-end with Divi. Write blog posts, add elements like pricing tables, drag & drop over 40 different content modules, customize the text you type, change colors, layouts everything visually in front of your eyes. What more can you ask for?
Elegant Themes website claims that Divi powers over 554,210Â WordPress websites and this shows how a good theme with powerful features can help you build such a large community of happy users.
If you’re looking for Divi theme examples or sites build with Divi, here are some websites that are build with Divi theme. I am sure they will give your creative brains a knack for what you can do with Divi theme and page templates.
These are just a few Divi sites you can find out there. You can view the latest submitted Divi sites here.Â
So I’ve given you some general thoughts on the Divi Theme, let’s jump right in and see how things actually work.
I’ll give you a quick tour of the Divi Theme in the order that you’re likely to build your website. I’ll first show you how to style the base theme. Then, I will go through the standard functionalities of the Divi Builder.
As I mentioned earlier, you will see two types of downloads when you purchased the Elegant Theme package:
- Divi Theme zip file
- Divi Page Builder zip file
Divi Theme zip file
Download this if you want to use Divi as your main core theme for your WordPress site.
Divi Page Builder zip file
Download this if you want to integrate Divi with other themes previously installed on your WordPress site.
There is no need for you to set up both at the same time. Either way, you will still get the same function for what Divi entails as a robust page builder.
Using the WordPress Customizer to Style Divi Theme
Divi uses the native WordPress Customizer to make style changes.
This approach makes Divi Theme more user-friendly compared to other themes that rely more on custom theme options panels on the backend. Customizer allows you to preview all of your changes in instantly.
Here’s what a freshly activated copy of Divi looks like on a brand new WordPress install:
You can start customizing the header of the theme in the ‘Header & Navigation’ section. Choose your desired header style:
default header
centered header
inline-centered header
There are 2 more header styles that you can try out. They are the ‘Slide In’ & ‘Full Screen’ mode. Those are equally good, depending on what type of site you are building.
Another example of what you can do to the header menu is changing its colors. Go to the ‘Primary Header’ section and make changes to the background colors, text colors, and active link color.
I guess you get the idea! Making basic theme changes are easy and seamless with Divi and the WordPress Customizer.
Apart from changing up your header, the WordPress Customizer also lets you:
- Change the basic layout of your site
- Selecting a new color scheme
- Change typography (fonts and colors)
- Styling the buttons
- Customizing your footer and widgets
- Tweak changes for mobile and tablet screen for responsive design (a big plus feature that not many themes offer)
Using the Theme Options to customize the Divi Theme
While you can customize the front-end elements via the WordPress Customizer, Divi also includes a custom theme options panel with even more settings and options.
In my opinion as a developer, some of these options that deal with front-end appearances could’ve also been included in the WordPress Customizer.
Still, that’s not a huge deal because many of the settings here aren’t visual.
Across its many tabs, Theme Options allows you to configure things like:
- Sidebar layouts
- Which post metadata to display
- Smooth scrolling
- Fixed navigation
- Built-in advertising spots
- Many more!
Using the Divi Builder to create custom layouts
Once you configure your base theme with the WordPress Customizer and Theme Options, you can start building the rest of your website using the Divi Builder.
Essentially, you’ll use the Divi Builder to create all of the content that fits within the ‘header – footer – sidebar’ framework that you choose.Â
You can launch the Divi Builder by clicking the big purple Use The Divi Builder button inside any post or page.Â
After which, you can choose to build your page’s design via Divi’s back-end or front-end builder:
- Back-end – you build your design using abstract blocks that represent elements (pictured below)
- Front-end – you build your design in the exact same view as your end users will see your design
In the latest Divi update, you can build your front-end design in the back-end! It’s called the ‘The Latest Divi Builder Experience’:
After which, you can choose to build your page’s design via Divi’s back-end or front-end builder:
- Back-end – you build your design using abstract blocks that represent elements (pictured below)
- Front-end – you build your design in the exact same view as your end users will see your design
In the latest Divi update, you can build your front-end design in the back-end! It’s called the ‘The Latest Divi Builder Experience’. Here’s what I’m talking about:
backend building block editor
back-end | front-end editor
visual front-end editor
Whether you use any of the above methods, it is nice that Divi gives you various options to choose. Many page builders only offer one or the other. This is something unique that separates Divi from others.
The key feature of Divi is its drag and drop builder. Building layouts are easy and fast, making it ideal to create mockups and wireframes, prototyping a design, and creating the website itself. Whether you build from the frontend or backend, the Divi builder is intuitive. It’s very straight-forward to learn and can be used by non-developers to create beautiful websites. As for developers like myself, we can customize it with code (CSS styling).
Want to test drive Divi yourself? Click on the button below to try it out.
modules
Tons of modules are included to add features such as
- Google Maps,
- Contact forms,
- Blurbs,
- Countdown timers,
- Sliders,
- Toggle,
- Portfolio,
- Gallery,
- Pricing tables,
- Call to action,
- Buttons,
- Person,
- Shop,
- Social follow,
- Tabs, and lots more.
The modules can be customized with standard settings or enhanced with CSS.
layouts
What’s cool about Divi is, you will never need to start your site from scratch. Divi includes dozens of premade layouts to help you get started. These layouts include blogs, shops, homepages, landing pages, splash page, about pages, maintenance, coming soon, project, portfolio, contact, case studies, creative agency, product features, and more. You can also craft your own layouts or upload layouts that others designers have created. Customization wise, the sky is the limit!
a/b split test
Perform a/b tests to improve your site’s conversions. See stats on each test to help you choose the best design (colors, text size, font-weight, etc). This is great for calls to action, sign up forms, or anything you want users to click on. I must say, this is my favourite Divi feature! If you are developing a result-driven website, you will thank Divi for this.
As you can see above, the ‘Call To Action 1’ & ‘Call To Action 2’ are the same buttons. We can view the stats of the split to see which variation is performing the best out of the 2.
divi theme search engine optimization
Is the Divi Theme SEO friendly? Absolutely! Divi is 100% SEO friendly. In the theme options, it includes all important SEO features a WordPress site should have. A few features that make Divi SEO friendly are the presence of schema markup, better site structure, canonical URL feature, and features to add meta titles and descriptions etc.
In fact, you wouldn’t even need Yoast SEO plugin to add breadcrumbs. InÂ
Here is a screenshot of how the SEO section in the Divi Theme Options look like:Â
Elegant Themes have schema markups that let search engines like Google understand what your business/blog is about and can potentially rank better. One thing is for sure, Divi uses shortcodes to display your design elements and to style your writing. As search engines are getting smarter, shortcodes do not affect rankings in any way.Â
divi theme role editor
Another essential Divi feature that you’re unlikely to find in other themes is the Divi Role Editor. Why is this feature important? Having control over which user gets access to what feature is very essential because you wouldn’t like your guest contributors to mess up with your posts or someone change something you are already running split testing campaigns. This is great for protecting your sharp design from anyone with access to the backend.
vast third-party ecosystem
By now, you should agree that Divi is an amazing WordPress theme. As an awesome theme, it can still be expanded through plugins. While any theme can make use of third-party plugins, Divi is special in that there are tons of plugins made specifically for it. There’s a huge third-party ecosystem for support and Divi add-ons. A big plus!
The community within the Divi space is massive. Divi developers always find ways to enhance the core theme features. There are many Divi-related sites out there that provide tutorials and support to the community. Once you join, you will never turn back!
Let me list a few of the popular ones so you can check them out:
price: how much does the divi theme cost?Â
Divi is a product of Elegant Themes. So when you make the purchase, not only you get Divi, you will get 86 other pre-built themes and 6 plugins. Elegant Theme priced their membership at $89 annually. There is a lifetime membership plan which cost $249. You pay it once, it gives you lifetime access to the theme, plugins, support, and all future updates. If you are tight on budget, you can start with the annual plan first. I personally purchased the lifetime plan because I know this investment will be my bread and butter of my business.
I might be biased, but it’s definitely bang-for-the-buck, you hardly find anything better than Divi and the Elegant Themes membership.
Just so you know I truly believe Divi is the solution of all your web design problems. The value of you getting from this purchase is thousand times the price. So buy with confidence. If you sign up from my link, I will receive a small commission for recommending this theme. Click on the button below to get to their landing page.
Okay, let us wrap this review up.Â
Here’s my thought on Divi:
Divi is an undeniably powerful multipurpose theme in the WordPress market. It can easily create ANY kind of website without you needing to know how to code. If you know basic HTML and CSS, that is a bonus. Divi is the best framework to start with if you are a beginner. Give it a few weeks, you can master its features and build awesome websites and landing pages in no time.
If you plan to start freelancing with web design, Divi is your answer. Hands down. Because it can create anything from a simple website to a complex type of site, you name it. So in conclusion, I highly recommend Divi for those who are new to web design, freelancers, seasoned developers or even those who are using other WordPress page builders and currently ‘struggling’.
Thank you for your time and I really appreciate you reading up to this point. I truly hope you enjoyed my Divi Theme review. If you have any questions or inquiries, feel free to comment below and chat!
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