In this episode, we revisit and update episode 4 from roughly two years ago. We thought it was about time we checked in to see if the reason we love Divi is still viable in 2020.
Keegan 0:00
What’s up everybody and welcome to another episode of the Divi addicts podcast. We’re here we’re almost done with august of 2020. This year has been a whirlwind it’s been a crazy off the wall year. I know whenever January 1 happened, we rolled over from 2019 I don’t know that there’s a single one of us really anywhere on the planet who thought the 2020 would would deliver the things that it’s delivered, you know, the Australian issue earlier in the year the wildfires in California, you know, the loss of so many great people the Coronavirus and the global pandemic that we’ve all been through. It’s really, it’s really created what is one of the most unique and challenging but also most opportunistic years of my life that I can remember, you know, since I was born in 1984.
Keegan 1:09
So, you know, with with it, you know, with with times like this that are challenging, also comes with a tremendous amount of opportunity, because so many people have pivoted, you know, unfortunately, they lost their job, they didn’t have a choice. But a lot of people have, you know, taken the opportunity to go out there and do something that they truly, truly love. Or they’ve tried something completely outside of the scope of what they even thought was possible. And that’s led 2020 to be a unique year. And we’ve seen a lot of really cool things come out of it. You know, I was watching the VMAs the other night, and then an MTV kid, I’m the MTV generation. But the VMAs were were actually really cool even though I’m not the biggest fan of the music that’s in pop culture today. I don’t I don’t hate it but it’s it’s not my go to you know, pure sign I’m getting a little bit older.
Keegan 2:00
But you know the the production was so cool. Just the things that have come out of it. You know, if you’re a wrestling fan, you watch WWE, you’ve seen the Thunderdome. It’s just cool. You are NBA fan, you see what they’re doing in the bubble down in Orlando, they’ve got the fans, on TVs screens on the on the sidelines, I just think it’s super, super cool. It’s a different level of production, it’s a different level of creativity. You see, they even had a, you know, an award on the VMAs for best video made at home. And it’s crowd sourced, you know, we had the sing alongs earlier in the year with Disney and all those different things. Lots of creativity. I even watched the music festival via Zoom. Never thought I could say that. But that’s what 2020 has brought us and it circles back makes me really think you know, I have a full time job that I’m so fortunate to have worked all the way through the through the pandemic. Really no issues there as I stayed very, very busy when it comes to that.
Keegan 3:01
But my side hustle has has peaked, you know, June and July were two incredibly busy months for me. Two of the best income months that I’ve had doing the side hustle with Keegan Lanier media. And so it made me want to go back to the beginning of the journey here on the podcast, and really do an updated version. You know, in Episode Four, we mentioned in the intro we did pi Divi, that was the name of the that was the title of the episode. And it was, you know, a whole conversation about why I ultimately chose Divi and why I continue to choose Divi every day. And at the beginning, you know, we were just getting into it. And the first few, really the first, probably 20 or 30 episodes or so we’re all centered around when Divi was doing their feature releases of the feature sneak peeks.
Keegan 3:47
So man, we’re dropping content every single week about what the new and exciting update was going to be. And we haven’t had that in quite a long time. But everything that they gave us a sneak peek to has all been released. And some like so many more. We just got sticky options that we mentioned in last week’s episode that I’ve actually had the chance to use now and implemented into a project that I’m getting to the beginning of right now just kind of started and will probably implement in a project that I’m getting ready to finish. So it’s really they continue to to release new things. And ultimately the thing the reason To sum it up into maybe just one or two quick sentences.
Keegan 4:32
I use Divi because it’s got a huge, amazing community of people who actually aren’t trolls. They want to help they genuinely want to help and they’re very supportive and very helpful. Number two is Elegant Themes has their shit together. There’s no way to say it other than that, they have it together. They are very thoughtful in the way they grow very thoughtful in the way they release updates. They do not want to alienate People who haven’t updated, they even take into account people who are still in like Divi 2.0. And they can’t be compatible with everything. And there’s a lot of hate if you go into some of the some of the communities or some of the posts, a lot of people who say, you know, I hate Divi, they always ruin my stuff I’m trying, I’m gonna leave and go to element or I’m going to go to Oxygen or Beaver or whatever. And look, if they work better for you, you should, you should try them out, you should see what works best for you based on what you’re trying to accomplish. But for me, Divi is and I can’t see any reason why it won’t continue to be the premier way to build websites.
Keegan 5:36
The customization is there. If you know what you’re doing with code, if you know flex, if you know CSS really well, you can really truly bend Divi, to do whatever it is that you want to do. And, you know, the final final kind of reason that I continue to use Divi is that it’s always getting better. It’s always growing, it’s always becoming a better version of itself. You know, the efficiency features that they released a couple of years ago that were back to back where there was copy and paste, you know, the Find and Replace was huge. We want to change a color on something, oh my gosh, it’s so good. Now that now we’ve got these Divi presets, which have kind of taken the place of the global styles. That in itself is so awesome, because you can build your theme, you can build your brand style. And you can build a preset for each one of your each one of your modules. And then if you change it in one place, you change it across your entire site that is powerful is huge.
Keegan 6:40
Now we’ve got sticky headers or sticky sections, you can do so much with that, especially if you’re doing an LMS site or on an e commerce site. You’ve got categories on one side, you can make sure they’re sticky on desktop, and it’s just so many different things. We’ve got the Theme Builder where we can use the Divi Builder for headers and footers. It is absolutely just powerful. And the implementation of it is done in a way where it’s not hard to use. It’s very user friendly. And the way I’ve always summed this up, and I’ve probably said this in Episode Four is that Elegant Themes has built the apple ish theme for WordPress. And what I mean by that is, you don’t get a ton of you don’t get a lot of customization with Apple, you know what I mean? Like you get what they give you, it works, it’s pretty, it’s easy to use. Now they have almost all of that Divi, it’s pretty, it’s pretty, it’s easy to use, it just works. But they’ve managed to add in a tremendous amount of customization.
Keegan 7:38
He got a platform that you can get in, you can build, you can use it very easily. And when you need to really grow it, there are either PlugIn developers or child theme developers who have taken Divi to the next level. Or you can go in and put in your own code because it makes it super, super easy to add in JavaScript, jQuery, custom CSS, any of those things, they’ve got code modules, and they’ve got any spot where you can go in and add in your own code. So for all of those reasons together, Divi has become and has remained the premier and honestly the only thing we use to build WordPress websites. It’s just it can’t be compared to reviews to oxygen. I’ve used element or I’ve never actually tried Beaver Builder, but I’ve used pretty much everything else.
Keegan 8:30
And I’ve even tested out webflow and there’s just nothing, nothing at all that compares to the ease of use and the scalability and has as much of a third party market, as Divi does it to the point where Elegant Themes actually has opened up their own marketplace for people to sell their Divi products, Divi layouts and child themes and plugins and all of those things. So that is why and at least here in 2020, and who knows what’ll happen in the future. But here in August of 2020, Divi is still it for us. Divi is what we use. It’s what we love. It’s what we’re going to continue to use until something either comes along that’s better or Elegant Themes decides to stop making Divi which I do not ever see happening, or at least not anytime soon.
Keegan 9:21
So I can’t thank you enough for being here for another episode. This is number 806. not officially 806. But it’s Episode 806 meaning season eight, Episode Six. I think this may be episode in total like number 120 something or other. So I appreciate the fact that you’re here every week. If you’re listening to this and you’re a regular subscriber, you are the reason that I do this every single week. So thank you for being here. This is the first time you’ve ever listened to the podcast and you’re hearing my voice right now. If you liked what you heard, please hit the subscribe button. Stay in touch get new episodes every single Tuesday as we drop and connect with us on the socials Find us on twitter at Keegan Lanier Media, that’s where we’re like having real conversations. We want to continue to grow that and we want to ultimately be able to help you. Take whatever it is that you’re doing in life, transition into web design, be a web developer, grow a side hustle and hopefully give you the freedom to live the life that you want on your own damn time.