Divide and Conquer Divi

Welcome to the new John Meyer Books website! And I can honestly say this extensive rebuild is completely powered by Divi (by Elegant Themes). I’m sure you’ve heard of it. According to its own website, it’s “more than just a WordPress theme, it’s a completely new website building platform that replaces the standard WordPress post editor with a vastly superior visual editor.”

They’re not wrong.

Homework

Before my purchase, I absorbed several comprehensive reviews from some of the internet’s leading web designers and they all basically agreed on this one basic point: it’s a powerful building tool with a steep learning curve.

They’re not wrong.

However, there was one essential ingredient missing from all these comprehensive reviews. They were written by highly skilled, tech-savvy designers who could confidently navigate the exhausting Divi landscape from concept to finished product without hesitation.

But what about the amateur web designer? Like me? I mean, I write books, not computer code. How is the Divi experience if you’re a web designing rookie like me?

Well, I’ll tell you, it was kind of like a love affair.

The Sale

First, there was the courtship. Go ahead and log onto the Divi website and you’re immediately confronted with internal and external praise of the product with various lists of benefits to suggest a long and prosperous partnership.

Fair enough. But first, you will have questions. Are you sure it’s right for me? I mean, I’m good at this but not so good at that. So are we compatible? Will it fight with me? Will it grow with me?

Well, there’s a chat box for those possible questions. However, please remember that you’re chatting with the sales staff—and not anyone you will ultimately rely on with your website build.

This sales staff will answer you back in seconds. They’ll be enthusiastic and they’ll use a lot of emojis to sell you on their product. And there’s nothing wrong with that.  But be very aware that this does not add up to the actual customer experience once you sign up and give up the digits of your credit card…

Let’s Get Started…

All right, so you’re purchased Divi and you’re ready for your first date. But think of it as your first dates when you were an awkward teenager with little to no experience on how to get someone to like you.

I say this because those first few moments with Divi won’t be easy. And you might be overwhelmed. You won’t know where to start and it’s not exactly crystal clear on the Divi documentation page either.

First of all, you’ll see 6 collections of tutorials and 8 pages of articles. Let me cut to the chase: ignore all those articles. You might think that they go together with the modules somehow, but trust me, they present the exact same content as the modules but in a completely different, haphazard order. So stick with the modules. There… I’ve just cut your overwhelming amount of information in half.

Actually Working with Divi…

After the awkward introductions with Divi, it’s now time to begin that relationship and work on your website.

I recommend you take the Learning the Basics courses first, followed by the Using the Builder section. Then when you’re ready to start designing your actual site, you’ll continue to take some (if not many) of the module courses (and later, even the advanced courses).

Each course is about 10-30 minutes long with added documentation to help you with your notes. How many will you take? Well, obviously, that depends on the complexity of your site. But I can faithfully tell you my own statistics: 15 pre-design courses followed by 21 more during the site’s re-creation… for a total of 74 hours over 33 straight days plus one day off because I was too frustrated to deal with Divi that day.

Oh, yes, you will be frustrated. Things will not turn out as simple as the courses suggest.

And you will spend an inordinate amount of time re-sizing your images.

And know that the Divi Builder is an unforgiving beast that just might break some of your well-earned designs that you faithfully crafted following the advice gleaned from the more user-friendly modules.

What does all that mean? Well, I don’t know what you want to create, so it’s hard to explain in specifics. But I can say that—for me—the header and the footer were the trickiest parts to design, especially considering that you have to configure three differing versions of your site for desktop, tablet, and mobile. That’s right. Everything you do may take triple the time to create it.

Still… my advice is to happily create the full desktop version first, before you go back to tweak every page and every post for your other two versions. If you create all three at the same time, your page progress will be so much slower that you just might get too frustrated with your daily output. Trust me, by the time you get to the tweaking stage of your content, you’ll be so much more efficient with the tricks of Divi that your modifications won’t take too long (maybe another week’s worth of work on top of the original desktop creation).

Customer Service

Now for a few words about the Customer Service experience. This is where the other website reviews failed me. The highly-skilled, tech-savvy designers never touched on this aspect of the web building experience. Because this is where your love affair with Divi may lead to misunderstandings, long waits (for answers), and frustrated conversations with the tech support team who might not understand what you mean or why you’re so frustrated.

Part of the problem is that the speedy sales staff will have set you up for a false sense of expectation when it comes to the customer service department. And their own initial level of enthusiastic swiftness will erode over time (just like any relationship). During that first week of web building, the techs will reply within minutes. Two weeks later, expect to wait a full hour for any reply. Then within the month, they will ignore your concerns for two or more hours. Now to be fair, the IT chat box does warn you that it might take several hours for a reply… but after such initial speedy service, it becomes a red flag of disappointment later. (I swear there’s a “reply algorithm” that caters to new customers first…)

The next frustrating thing about the customer service department is that most of them will want Remote Access to your computer to address your problem. I don’t know about you but that is a cybersecurity issue for me and a hard “no.” Plus, you won’t learn anything. The whole point about Divi design is to build everything yourself so you always have complete control over your product. How will you learn to fix your design issues if you just give the Divi tech the keys to your computer?

I did… once. The problem was with my defective blog archive and it proved so confusing and frustrating to fix that I eventually agreed to allow the Divi tech to gain Remote Access. The fix itself was five minutes or less but it took her eight hours to do it. In the mean time, my computer was left vulnerable to a stranger while she seemingly searched for the solution. When she did get around to fixing the issue she never explained to me what the exact error was or what I could have done to avoid it. It’s still a mystery.

However, every “other” issue I had with Divi was fully explained to me… because I insisted upon it. Following my disappointing experience with Remote Access, I added a note to each and every query after that: “No, you may not have Remote Access to my computer because it’s a cybersecurity issue. So here’s my problem…”

This cheeky addition forced the techs to explain the ensuing problems to me and then offer suggestions on how to fix them. And I learned. And I didn’t make those mistakes a second time.

However, be prepared that your initial notes may be forgotten if you embark on a long back-and-forth conversation with your Divi tech. After a few e-mail exchanges—lasting minutes or hours depending on your problem—a new technician could eventually enter the conversation to “take over” the issue. And guess what? The first thing they’ll ask is, “Can I have Remote Access?” And no, they will NOT take the time to read the previous conversation. You’ll have to start over from scratch like the previous exchange never happened. (I would just cut and paste the previous conversation and ask them to read it thoroughly. Then sit back and wait… and wait… and wait for their reply.)

In Conclusion…

So is Divi worth it? Of course, it is! Just like any worthwhile relationship, there will be bumps along the way, compromises, and frustrating moments. But ultimately Divi is worth your time and considerable effort. Just be aware… it won’t be easy. There’s that steep learning curve. And that steep drop-off in enthusiastic and efficient customer support. But you will eventually divide and conquer Divi.