The WordPress pagebuilder, Divi, has been the primary website building tool for MS Digital Solutions for the better part of 7 years. The vast majority of the websites we have built, have been built using Divi. Most of them on some variation of Divi 4. Which came out in 2019. Like any software, Divi, developed by Elegant Themes, has been in a steady and almost constant state of development. There has been a steady stream of releases with new features, new capabilities, security patches, and performance upgrades.
Today, Elegant Themes announced that Divi 5 will be coming out of BETA status on February 26th.
Why Divi
WordPress is an exciting and constantly evolving Content Management System (CMS) for websites. But its native user interface for designing and building websites hasn't always been that great. We choose Divi as our primary site design and development tool for two reasons. The first is that steady development cycle already mentioned. That cycle ensures that as WordPress continues to evolve, we have a safe, secure, and feature-packed pagebuilder, to build our clients websites with. We also choose Divi because it's user interface and documentation is one of the easiest to use. This means you don't have to be a professional web-designer or developer to make many common, every-day, updates to pages, posts, products, and other post-types. It is complex enough that we can leverage the the advanced features to build exciting website designs and complex functional website solutions for our clients. But it is also easy enough that we could hand it over to any of our clients that wanted to be able to do some of it themselves.
What is Divi 5
Divi 5 is the next evolutionary step of the Divi pagebuilder tool. When Divi 4 was rolled out, it introduced a lot of theme builder tools and performance upgrades over its predecessor versions. Divi 5 is taking those tools an equally large step forward. It is removing the dependence on shortcodes and more fully embracing a number of modern design tools to give us more control and more flexibility in how we design and build websites.
The user interface didn't change a whole lot. Yes, a few things are moved around. But, anybody familiar with Divi won't be lost in the new interface.
In terms of performance, by eliminating shortcodes and fully embracing direct support for Flex and other design standards, we get a more robust, but streamlined and faster loading set of tools. Not just in the back-end where we build. But on the front end too. Where speed counts for your visitors and your SEO.
How will the change impact my business
For customers on a support plan with MS Digital Solutions, the answer is simple. It wont. We are going to handle the transition for you. Elegant Themes built in a migration tool that should seamlessly convert older versions of Divi to the new platform. The only real question is how some of the 3rd party plugins play with the new version. But the developers already thought about that. Divi 5 was build with a compatibility mode that allows it support older plugins that were not build specifically to work with Divi 5.
Older sites that are dependent upon many old plugins may not see much of a performance boost. But they will continue to function as they always have. Newer sites, with plugins that fully embrace all that the new builder offers, should see noticeable changes on both the front end and back end performance.
For those not on a support plan, no changes will take place on your site until you pull the trigger on the update in the back-end of your site. We are always here to help you if you have any questions or encounter any problems. You can also engage us to perform the update on your site as an hourly billed task.
How will MS Digital Solutions handle the upgrade
We started testing Divi 5 while it was in BETA, back in November. We tested the conversion tools and switched over late last year. We aren't willing to do something to a client's site that we haven't tested. We'd rather our site be the guinea pig if something goes wrong, not yours. So this site, https://msdigitalsolutions.com will have been on Divi 5 pretty close to 4 months by the time we get to the release date. So we have gotten fairly comfortable with the conversion process and the new interface.
We will NOT be taking sites live to the new version of Divi on February 26th. Our plan is to wait a week or two, switch-over a few of our non-client sites first, make sure everything is still going as expected. Then, when we are confident we can make the updates without major problems or experiencing major down-time, we will begin the process of rolling out the updates.
We will follow the same process we always do. We will prioritize the simple sites that have the most common plugins installed, first. If we see something go wrong here, we hold off on all updates until we see a resolution. We will then proceed to the 2nd group with a less common plugin load. Then on to the sites that have the most unique configurations. As we go through these groups, many of the updates will be done on staging environments where we can fully kick the tires before moving the changes live. But in all cases, we will have and keep backups handy, both on-site and off-site. So we can immediately roll a change back if problems are encountered.
It's a tried and true, time-tested procedure that we do many times per month as we routinely update and maintain the sites we are responsible for. As we get closer to the release date and closer to running the updates, we will post an update on how things are proceeding.
If you are not an MS Digital Solutions Support and Maintenance client, but would like have us take over the management of your website contact us today through our contact page or use that little chat widget down in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen.