Hello and welcome to our multimedia department blog series where we give our thoughts on the industry, helpful bits of info as well as discuss topics like web development, design, self-publishing and more
Our topic today is “Divi”
The topic of this blog post is the Divi theme made by Elegant themes. Divi is a WordPress theme that has a visual web builder built in. Because it is virtually WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) it provides an ease of use to both tech and designer. Divi is one of a number of excellent visual web builders available to web development teams, and we are in the age of the visual web builder where the technology has advanced enough to hold its own with traditional web dev methods.
Brief history of web development at Paraclete
in 1996 we designed and built our first site (our company site: paraclete-press.com) with Photoshop and wrote the HTML. Soon after we started using Adobe Pagemill a young HTML editor. Adobe kept pace with the developing web field (for the most part), giving us Adobe Golive and then Dreamweaver (bought from Macromedia!) which we used in our workflow for over a decade. In 2017 we began to use Divi enabling the designers to place images and text onto the staging site and depending on their skill level, bring the site quite far along. The instant upside was a more integrated team, with better design, as the designers began to understand the limitations of the web and better design with these limitations in mind.
Faster Workflow
Today Divi gives us maximum flexibility for our small team. Once styles and layouts are approved and fonts and general styling are put into WordPress, a number of scenarios are available. The designer can start bringing in elements, defining type sizes, uploading photos and assets and arranging them on the pages. Then meet with the tech side for collaboration and further development. We often trade crossover work back and forth. The new workflow gives us the ability to not have to rely on static comps so much and to move into client reviews on staging sooner.
Responsive/Adaptive Web
Divi has some basic responsive tools that are simple to use and the designer can work out some of the issues ahead of time on staging. The tech dept can fine tune issues with media queries or address anything the designer couldn’t do, usually this stage is worked on together and Divi makes it much easier to get closer to a final product that looks good on tablets and phones.
We are quite happy with the type of flexibility and options that the Divi theme gives us and look forward to applying it to future projects both website updates and website revamps for the foreseeable future.
Have you used Divi? Or other visual builders? Comment below!