DIVI-Cover

You might already know that Roundpeg builds every web design with WordPress. No exceptions. But while we’ve been exclusively WordPress since the start, we’ve built websites with a ton of different themes over the years. But none that we love so much as Divi, which debuted in 2012. And now we’re stoked for the latest version, Divi 3.0. This release promises a new, intuitive live-editing mode so you can see your changes on-screen as you edit.

Elegant Themes, the makers of Divi, are jazzed too. The new release doesn’t arrive until September 2016, but they’ve been busy sharing a new tip for using Divi every day. Even better, once a week, they publish a free plugin to add a feature to your existing Divi website. With so much great content published by Elegant Themes, what do you read if you’re just catching up?

Start with the announcement from Elegant Themes. You’ll learn more about the features anticipated in the new release as well as get an overview of the Divi 100 celebration.

After that? Skim their blog for all the Divi 100 posts you’ve been missing. But make sure you hit up the following posts. These are the can’t-miss, so-fresh goodies I bookmarked so far.

Better Hamburger Menu

They say it’s the little things that matter the most. I absolutely agree. You can always tell an amateur site or a hastily built site by its details. In a web design built with Divi, the hamburger menu (mobile menu) is displayed on mobile devices and if you’ve chosen the fancy “hidden” navigation for your header. It’s a simple, static icon by default, not animated. Works fine!

But I always wished for a little extra web design love from the developer to put this detail over the top.

Well, guess what? Now you can animate it with one of these neat options! This little feedback animation adds a spark of delight to your site, making it feel even more alive. Click on the embedded code preview to see all the animation options installed by this extension.

Slightly Cooler Blog Grid

Speaking of hamburger, one of my lingering beefs with Divi is the plain-jane look of blog pages and blog posts out of the box. Especially the grid blog layout. With an hour of work to carefully style these pages, I can make it look a little better. But I wish there was more to start with.

Now you can style your blog grid like the info cards seen in Google Now, Twitter and other popular mobile apps. Cards are a concept developed for mobile first that I think we’ll see even more widely accepted. Get on the bandwagon in seconds with this extension.

Screenshot of Divi Blog Extension Cards

Custom Branded Login Page

This one’s kind of a game changer. The WordPress login page is branded with the WordPress logo by default. And it’s a pain and a half to change it. There are hundreds of premium plugins devoted to letting you customize the login page. But the plugins I’ve tried are buggy and often conflict with other code.

This Divi extension promises to be different. Not a lot of options, but it looks gorgeous to start with and should please novices and frustrated Divi pros alike.

Get Some Web Design Inspiration

Along with those great extensions, Elegant Themes is publishing layout packs. These pre-made web designs let you start with a base of demo content and change it all to suit your purpose.

If I’m honest, I have trouble with these because they’re all very minimal and very modern. Almost too nice. Especially these blog post templates. You may be tempted to apply a certain template because it’s pretty, but it may not be the best fit for your blog’s audience and topic.

What I do like about these is their beauty and utility. They’re great for checking out and getting ideas from as a jumping off point. Check out these single-page web design templates for ideas for your own homepage.

Screenshots of Divi Layout Pack for Single-page Homepage Web Designs

The same core elements in all the template web designs are reused for different industries and they all still work! Pretty cool.

10 Helpful Blogs for Divi Users

I honestly wasn’t aware of most of these blogs before. Some target professional Divi web design customizers, others focus on the basics and some of them are really just marketing for the author’s own Divi add-on plugin.

Divi Soup is worth watching and Divi Booster has tips and code snippets to fix some obscure, but irritating Divi issues. Take 15 minutes, read the whole post and find a few new blogs to follow.

5 Pricing Best Practices for Pricing Tables

When Divi first came out, it included a useful pricing table module. Those are the comparison tables you see on so many websites that make it easier to choose from a set of pricing tiers. Divi makes it so easy that I see a lot of Divi websites that miss the point with pricing plans. They fail to write good content for filling up those pricing tables!

This post is a great guide for improving your pricing table content. Especially the technique called “anchoring”. That could really change how you think about your pricing tiers.

Screenshot of Pricing Table Sample

Divi 3.0 probably won’t change my web design style or work flow dramatically. But it will change how I train web design clients to edit their own websites. I’m looking forward to an easier, more intuitive experience that empowers small businesses and website owners to own their marketing and upgrade their game.

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Roundpeg is an Indianapolis web design firm.