Divi 5 is live...let's talk about it

For all links mentioned, head to my new Divi 5 blog post here

Transcript

Why Talk About Divi 5 Now

Josh Hall 0:00

All right, my friend, we got to talk about Divi. Divi5 is officially live, and I realize I have not been doing much Divi content recently, or even talking about my stance on Divi, where I'm at with Divi, how I'm using Divi, my future plans for Divi. So that's what I want to do in this little pop-in chat with you here on the podcast. Now, there's a couple pieces of content that are going to be going along with this because I'm going to be referring back to this particular piece of content for a while now, or for a while ahead. So I am going to be mentioning some links, and I do want to mention this is going to be actually like a decent sized blog post that I'll be, again, referring back to quite a bit moving forward. So that will be linked below. And all of the other links I mentioned here are going to be below as well. I also plan on releasing a video version of this that I will keep a little more tightened for YouTube and a little more edited for YouTube with some visuals. That's going to come out shortly after this goes live on the podcast and in my newsletter. So again, if you're not on my newsletter yet, that's where this is stemmed out of before it becomes a blog post. And that's at joshhall.co slash newsletter. So go sign up, you get it for free. And yeah, it's a good compliment to this podcast. So let's talk about Divi with Divi5 being live. There's a few things I want to cover here. There's five things plus a bonus. Number one, I'm going to share with you my honest thoughts about Divi, Divi5, the pros and cons. Number two, I'm going to share where I feel Divi is in the market of website builders. And this is really important for the future of Divi and my plans for Divi. Number three, I'm going to share my advice on when to migrate from Divi4 to Divi5. Number four, Eric, the CEO of my agency Intransit Studios, has graciously given me the uh SOP, the standard operating procedure that Intransit Studios is going to be using for our migrations from Divi4 to Divi5. So it's available for you. It's a Google Doc, and he has, again, been gracious enough to give it to me to share with you for those of you who want to use it for your migrations for Divi4 to Divi5. Finally, I'm going to share my plans for Divi, my content for Divi moving forward, and I'm going to give you some resources, both premium and free for you moving forward. So, number one, my honest thoughts on Divi5. Now, I have been very public about the fact that I started using Divi5 live on Webdesigner Pro.com way before I would recommend anyone else do so. I actually started using Divi5 in August of 2024. Like right as it be like went out in alpha phase. It was, yeah, it was quite buggy, but it was just one page at that time, my site. So I didn't need literally any additional plugins. It was literally just a sales page. There really wasn't much that could break, even at that point. So I went ahead and got used to it and got used to the new interface. And uh I would only recommend doing so. Even now, I'd only recommend using Divi5. It's if it's an extremely lightweight build with not many additional plugins or features. Uh so I've seen the entire progression and all the innovations here firsthand, but I've really truly only scratched the surface of a lot of them because as you'll find out here, it gets pretty complex pretty quick, especially if you want it to. So let's start with some of the pros. Divi5, most important to note, even if you're not a Divi user, I think it's important that you know kind of where Divi's at in the WordPress market. Divi5 is not just a fresh coat of paint, it is a complete rebuild of the theme and the builder. They went down to the studs, they ripped everything up and completely built it from the ground up. And I mean that by every sense of the word. If the internet has a ground, they build it from the ground up. Now the good news is it is very fast, it is very snappy, and it is very sleek with it being a modern interface, much more, much more 2026. It's the 2026 version of Divi, not the 2016 version of Divi. Um, and I actually showed this off practically. I did a video about showing my site speed with my site back last year in 2025 on how I'm using Divi5 and how I'm using SiteGrounds hosting and speed optimizer to get those speeds. I will post that in the link below as well. So you can see that if you've not seen that yet. And the reason I wanted to make sure I talk about this is because I don't want to, I don't want to brag, but I'm gonna brag a little bit because it's pretty freaking cool that Elegant Themes featured my testimonial snippet uh about using Divi5 early and my thoughts on it being fast and snappy on the Divi5 sales page. In fact, my testimonial is the first testimonial, and I'm only saying that because it is a win for SEO. My fellow SEO is out there, Michelle Bourbonier was on the podcast a while back. We talked about this live. We talked about this a lot in pro and some coaching calls, but like there could be no better SEO win than to have your website linked to, you know, like a lead page for a product. So there's a little SEO tip for you. Sometimes testimonials can give you a hell of a backlink. However, yes, there are some downsides. Divi5 is, it's fair to say, and this is not just me, I know this by a lot of conversations I'm having, is it is not even a little overwhelming, it's a lot overwhelming. And that's because there are so many new feature-rich options. And by feature-rich, I mean not like modules yet, but like core elements of the way you build sites. One of the big new, like not even new, but one of the best ways to like professionally build sites now is to make sure, and this is true 10 years ago, but even more so now, it's gotta be scalable. And by scalable, it means there are things like global styles, there are variables, there are presets, there's a lot of new features that Divi has added, or elegant themes, I should say, has added with uh CSS, flex, clamp. I didn't even know what clamp was until recently. You can do a lot with like content loops that they have. There's a ton of pretty robust features that definitely take some time to get used to. And I'm in the industry and it was definitely quite overwhelming for me. So I can only imagine somebody who's mostly designer-minded and more DIY-minded, it's got to be completely overwhelming. So there's a learning curve to Divi5. Not necessarily like if you know Divi4, you'll pick up Divi5 pretty quick, the basics. But once you get to a point where you kind of know the interface and you know the modules and you know the system of Divi, it can get pretty complex if you start mucking up the variables and presets and you know, having those all looped together. So it does take, it takes more intentional design, is what I would say. Now, that is very good long term. This is a short-term challenge because it's a lot to learn, but it is very good long term because once you know your system and once you either create or take a system that somebody creates with Divi5, it's gonna make you way more efficient moving forward. It's definitely uh you could stack it up against builders like Bricks and Etch and others in the WordPress realm that are very, very like scale, like scalable minded, uh, and like best practice with yeah, web building. And it's similar to Webflow and Framer and Wix Studio and some others in some ways, but not as clunky, I would say, because it's like I said, super, super fast. But this is what Divi is not, and this is point number two. Divi is not a DIY tool anymore. Back when I got started back in 2014, Divi was known as the like designer-friendly page builder and often a DIY builder for WordPress because Divi came out before even Elementor took off. At that time, there was only a couple other visual page builders and they were just god-awful. And that's being nice about it. Divi was the first one that was design friendly, that was fast for its time. It was drag and drop and visual. And then it was just, yeah, like DIYers. Really, at that time, for those new to the industry, if you were somebody who was somewhat savvy and you wanted to build your own website, back then your choices were get a basic Wix site or get like a GoDaddy page builder, which was atrocious, learn Dreamweaver, or do custom code, or Divi on WordPress. That was pretty much it. So that's why Divi really rose to the ranks and became the designer's friendly page builder for a very long time. Now, pros still used it, even back then, because you could get really advanced with it too back then, but it's changed now because Divi5 is not a DIY tool. The interface, things like variables, presets, CSS, flex, clamp, loops, those are not DIY friendly terms or features. That said, those of you who have clients using Divi sites, you can strip down Divi5. There's a lot you can do, and I'm really doing my due diligence on like seeing what they're doing, because I need to know about this too. We were just talking about this in pro. Whitney Bateson, who was on the podcast a while back last year, um, she has a lot of clients using Divi. She had a post in pro that we were talking a lot about this. Um, I just had Jay Kramer on the podcast, who they are managing over 500 Divi sites, and a lot of their clients use Divi, but they're using Divi4. So you're not alone if you have clients using Divi and you want to make it DIY. There are options, but just know out of the gate, Divi is not a DIY builder anymore, which they I think is by design. Because quite frankly, I per my this is my hunch. I think DIY websites have already moved to AI builders and hosting and platform builders. For example, Circle has a pretty handy website builder. It's only going to get you so far, but my friend James Barnard, who just launched his community last year, Designers, he used the website builder that Circle provided. And it's fine. It's a one-page website, it's a landing page, sales page. He didn't need you know extravagant features and it links right into his community. So honestly, like he didn't need WordPress. I'm fine with saying that. He didn't need Divi or an advanced theme for that. Um, SiteGround has, you know, SiteGround, I love, I love their hosting. They have a very slick builder. And honestly, if I were, if I just need a like super duper simple portfolio information based one-page site, like that is a fine way to go, honestly. Um, and there's some times where if you wanted a more robust one-page site, you would want WordPress for sure. But it especially when there's like a sales page, honestly, those solutions are fine. And a lot of those solutions are are implementing AI to actually build out the frame or a wireframe of a page, and then you customize it from there. Pretty much all those builders are doing that. So my hunch and my suspicion, which is already playing out now, is the DIY market is going to be moving to AI builders, which is good for them. We don't want to be working with too many DIYers. We want to work with serious DIYers as business owners, but not like, you know, your uncle who's trying to get his own website up and is going to try to do it all himself. Yeah, different ballgame. They can go to a hosting platform or another platform and just do an AI builder. You want to be a website professional for professional business owners. So I think that's the big shift we're seeing. Uh, and again, you can do a lot with limiting access with roles inside of WordPress and Divi and Divi5. And you can actually customize what people see in Divi5 for clients. That's going to continue to evolve as well. Um, and before we get into point number three here of when to migrate, I do want to say the only thing about Divi5 is the core is redone, but there are still a lot to be desired with the modules. Um, the modules are still pretty much status quo, they always have been. But the reason Elegant Themes did that is because you don't want to create a bunch of new modules and change the framework. You know, so they started with the foundation, and then I think over the next six to 12 months, we're going to be seeing a ton of new modules and revamp modules inside of Divi. Now, let's say you're on Divi4, you're freaking out. You're like, oh my God, Divi5's live. I'm not ready. I don't have the time to learn. I have clients. Do I bail? Do I jump ship? What do I do? Good news. Hold on. Deep breath. Take a deep breath with me. Get in your yoga pose. Deep breath. I want to share something with you that is public, but in case you didn't hear, Elegant Themes announced, because they're a freaking awesome company, that they are going to support Divi4 for at least another year. So you're good at least through February 2027. And they said likely longer if the need is there. I have a feeling it's probably going to be 18 months at least. That's my guess. So to that end, there's no immediate rush to upgrade to Divi5. So just know that. Just know that you don't need to upgrade today. You have plenty of time and let Divi5 evolve, but you do not need to migrate Divi4 to Divi5 yet. And when you do, you can check out this SOP that Eric and my team have put together at Intransit Studios to use. So again, that's kind of where Divi5 is at now. You can use it, and I would recommend using it if you want to try it out for, again, a simple site in the way of like no e-commerce, no advanced features that are using third-party plugins. Just like I'm using it on webdesignerpro.com. It is a multi-page site now with content, but not advanced features. Like I don't have a bunch of plugins on there. So that's how and when I would use Divi5. But I would stick with Divi4 for a while. In fact, my other site, joshhall.co, which is my personal brand site that has most all my resources, including this podcast and my newsletter, that's on Divi4. And that's because I have a lot of customizations with WooCommerce, and I still have LearnDash set up there for legacy students of mine who have access to the courses from years ago. So I am not in a rush to migrate from Divi4 to Divi5 and JoshHall.co. I know it'll be way faster. I know I'm hurting my SEO rankings a little bit, but I'm okay with it. It's fine. I'm gonna stick with Divi4 for quite a while until I'll probably do a staging site and uh we'll we'll see what breaks when I upload to Divi5. But um no rush on my end, so no rush on your end either. That is when you should move to five, when they get further along, and you've got at least a year at this point. Now, as I mentioned, number four, if you want to know the steps to migrate efficiently, especially for those of you who have a lot of clients, because some of your clients have simple sites, which you could upgrade too soon to Diffy 5. Some of your sites are really complex, and you're not gonna want to upgrade until probably later this year or maybe even early 27. Um, Eric has made the In Transit Studios D4 to D5 migration SOP available for free. That is gonna be linked below in the post that has all these resources. So make sure to hit that and grab it. It is a Google Doc. Thank you so much, Eric, for putting that together. Now, the final, most important thing to mention, what you've all been waiting for, the coupe de gras of this audio podcast episode. Josh, when are you gonna revamp your course? Are you the Yoda of Divi? What are you doing with Divi content? Tell me more, you say, and I will say finally, I will share my plans for Divi after this Divi5, released since it just went live. I find myself in a not a pickle, but a tricky situation. It's tricky because unsurprisingly, I have become truly a web design business coach over the last five years. Since starting and building Web Designer Pro, coaching web designers, many of whom are at six and multi-six figure levels. I just recently opened up our first little, I'm dubbing a mastery sprint, which is a beta round for a couple members and pro who wanted more intensive coaching, and I'm really enjoying coaching at a deeper level, like business strategy, web business strategy. And it's where I'm needed. It's where I'm most needed. People are coming to me with six and multi-six figure web business problems, and that's where I'm needed. There's a lot of people who teach Divi. There's not that many people who teach where I'm at as a particular like web design business coach. So that's what I'm leaning into. That should be unsurprising because it's what I've been leaning into for the past five years, slowly but surely. Now, I'm not bailing on Divi. I'm not not gonna talk about Divi. I'm not not gonna produce content about Divi. But this may be hard to hear for some, but again, shouldn't be a surprise. I am not the Yoda of Divi like I was back in 2019. That was literally my handle and my subtitle and my email was I was Josh, the Yoda of Divi. I'm just not. And I'm not because yes, I use Divi. Um, like I said, I've been using Divi5 since it was in Alpha, but I've barely scratched the surface. And I've realized too, because I've so much more focused on helping people build their businesses, I've fallen quite behind on CS. I didn't even know what the hell clamp was until recently when they announced Clamp was available in Divi. I was like, what is that? Um I have a clamp in my garage. I didn't know I could put it on my website. So I'm just, I'm not, I'm not the I'm not the like technical Divi CSS guy anymore. So to that end, I am not retiring my Divi4 course yet, but here's my plan. I'm not gonna close it down, but I'm gonna keep my Divi4 beginner course up until at least through the end of this year, until 5 officially takes over. And then uh what I'm gonna do is because Web Designer Pro is an agnostic community, uh, we have people using Elementor, Webflow, not even WordPress, like other builders. I am not gonna have Divi as a part of my core curriculum. However, I do plan to make Divi5 a like masterclass free course on my YouTube channel. So I will still have a Divi5 beginner style course. I'm gonna wait till the modules get further along. The last thing I want to do is create a course on Divi5. And then because it's not like my main focus, I don't want to have to recreate it in six months because I'm doing a lot of other things helping web designers build and grow and scale their web design business. I'm only gonna do Divi stuff if it's gonna be relevant for a long time and it's not super time intensive for me. So I have a couple Divi resources I'll share next, but that's my plan. I will do some Divi5 stuff, but it's gonna be smaller pieces of content and it will be geared around a free course on my YouTube channel for those who want to learn Divi, and then it will be a beginners course. It's not gonna be advanced because I'm not advanced with it, and I'm honestly fine with that. Uh, but for those of you on Web Designer Pro or just joined my Divi course and you're like, dang it, I just joined, you know, the course is TREN Pro. First off, there's a ton of other courses there. Go through my business course, build recurring revenue with my maintenance plan course, go through my scale your way course, go through my design and SEO course, and my DNS course and my process course. All my courses are there for you. But just know you can still go through my Divi4 course. It is totally valid, nothing has changed. There's a few add-ons in there, but learn Divi4 and you will pick up Divi5 a lot faster. But if you want to go with Divi5, here are the next resources that I would recommend for you. Uh, my buddy Tim Streifler with Divi Life just came out with the Divi5 expert course. And if you want to learn Divi5 now and you want to become an expert, that's who I recommend. His brand is Divi Life. He is on the leading edge of Divi, and he's one of the top creators around Divi, and he has created a killer new course that is like the most robust that I've seen for Divi5. So Tim has set up a very killer discount for you as a listener. It's limited time, but you can get 50% off his Divi5 expert course. That link will be below. Um, it's a discount is automatic. So go check that out. The link will be below and it'll be on the post for this. But that's what I'd recommend. There's actually an option for a one-time payment and a four-month payment plan, 50% discount on both. That is limited time. So make sure, if interested, that you jump on that ASAP as possible. So I worked it out with Tim to give you an offer since I don't have a Diffie 5 course and I don't plan to have a robust one like Tim does. Um, mine's gonna be free uh on the internet here soon. Yeah, at least six months. I'm not gonna, I'm definitely not gonna do it within six months. I'm gonna wait till a lot of the new modules are recreated. Uh so likely fall 2026 at the earliest. Uh, but yeah, that's the plan. And Tim's course is the way to go. And I'm a proud affiliate for it, disclaimer, but that's who I would learn Divi from. Now, if you want to go further into the CSS and Divi side of things, if you want to learn more about Clamp and Flex, and if you're really more interested in the like Advanced design side, Anya Romanoski, who was my second guest on my podcast ever, her and Tim were a couple of my first guests. She has the Divi Stylist Academy. And if you've never seen Anya's work with Divi Lover, she is one of the best designers I know. It's worth looking at her site, even if you're not a Divi user, just to like get some ideas about unique designs because she's incredible. Um, just incredible. Well, I don't know what is in the water in Poland, but man, do they kick out some good designers over there? But she is not only really good with Divi and Divi5, but she's really uh she has an expertise in design. So again, if you want to go further with UX and CSS and scalable design principles, she would be another great course to check out. My link for that will be listed below as well. Now, heads up, Anya has an open and closed course model. So as of now, at the time of releasing this, you'll need to join her wait list and then she'll let you know when the next opening is for her Divi Stylist Academy. But I fully back and recommend both Tim and Anya, Tim with Divi Life, his Divi5 Expert course, which is very robust and is live now. And then Anya with Divi Lover, her Divi Stylist Academy. And stylist is aptly named because she's gonna take you further with CSS in styling. So those are the premium resources and courses I would recommend if you want to go further with Divi5 right now. Now, some free resources before I leave you. Um let's see here. I've got it listed. Oh, yeah. My friends at DiviChat, which I was a part of, I was a panelist for a long time. Um, I must have missed my invite in the mail to do that call recently. I don't have to let them know I didn't get the invite, but they did a panel discussion last week about Divi5 on the day of its release, and it was so good. I watched it, it was so, so good. Actually, Eric mentioned the SOP from D4 to D5 there, and that's what I pinged him. And I was like, dude, is there a chance I can have that for my crew, for you? And yeah, so yeah, that's really, really worthwhile because you'll hear from a lot of Divi creators, including Eric, my CEO. And they covered a lot of good questions too that came on live. So I'm gonna have that link below. I'll also link to a couple additional Divi resources. Number one is the official Divi5 launch video that Nick with Elegant Themes put out. And then I'm gonna give you the link to all Divi5 feature release articles so you know where to go to have the latest on Divi5. That will all be linked below at the main blog post for this episode. And again, I'm going to be doing a video very soon, likely right after this comes out, uh, that kind of comes like covers this just a little more briefly and visually on the YouTube. So there we go. All right, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this check-in. Those are my plans. Those are my thoughts on Divi, my plans for Divi, my resources for Divi. If you would like to share your thoughts, I understand some of you are going to be bummed, some of you might be mad, some of you might be glad because I'm helping you build multi-six figure businesses and you want me to have more bandwidth and focus there. To which I say, you're in really good luck because that's exactly what I'm focused on moving forward. So um, yeah, I hope this helps. And I'd love to hear from you. The the uh link will be below for the post for this. You can also email me, josh at josh hall.co, if you would like to share any thoughts. And I'm active on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn at Josh Hall Co. if you want to DM me. If you don't want to email. Email is preferred, but you can DM me too, and uh I'll be happy to hear your thoughts. Yeah, on Divi. So there we go, friends. Hope this helps. Check the links below and be sure to check out Tim's course or Anya's course if you are ready to learn Divi5 right now. All right, my friends. Cheers. Hey, make sure you're subscribed because the next episode on the podcast here is an in person interview, and it was so good. I can't wait for you to hear it. So I'll see you next week.