Have you seen the new Divi 3.0 by Elegant Themes? It's a game changer. In fact, it's so good that it may cost us our jobs as web designers. That's right, we may as well use our design talents to refresh our resumes, because if our clients find out how easy it is with Divi 3.0 for us to create and edit their websites, they may not want to pay us the big bucks we charge.
Ok, I jest. I don't really think we'll lose our jobs because of Divi 3.0. But Elegant Themes has made it much easier for code challenged designers to excel in the web design game.
I've spent many years honing my skills in web design. Starting in the 90s with simple WYSIWYG applications like Adobe Pagemill. Then learning HTML and CSS to hand code sites. Then on to more complicated languages like PHP and MySQL. Nowadays I build most websites on the WordPress platform. It's robust enough to handle very complicated web projects, and yet it's simple enough to shave hours off the time it used to take me to build a website.
On September 7th 2016, Elegant Themes released their much-anticipated update to the already amazing Divi theme, and it's taken web design to a whole new level. A level I hadn't even imagined before. No more back-end coding, no more playing in a web builder wondering what the outcome will be, no more hitting the Preview button to check what you built. Divi 3.0's new Visual Builder allows you to create and make changes to your website… on your actual website! Meaning you actually get to manipulate the website as you see it! Want to change some text, simply highlight it and type in the new text. Highlight and adjust the font and style as well. Don't like where an element of the site is? Simply drag it to a new location. There's no need to preview or refresh the page because all your changes happen in real time right on your page.
See the Visual Builder in action.
Jumping Into The New Interface.
If you are already familiar with the Divi theme you'll have no problems making the move to Divi 3.0. All the familiar modules and options are still there, they're just much easier to access and manipulate. Easier in fact, since you don't need to guess at CSS edits. Simply click and drag to adjust padding, margins and so much more.
If you've never used Divi before, Elegant Themes offers a wide variety of tutorial videos to walk you through everything from A to Z. But trust me, it won't be long before you're shutting off the tutorials and just diving in to experiment on your own.
Simply put, Divi 3.0 is so easy that anybody can use it.
Are We Out Of A Job?
So what does this mean to us as web designers? It means that I hope our clients never find out about Divi 3.0 or we might be out of a job.
Again, I don't really believe that. There's much more to designing a good website than being able to move and edit content on the page. Clients hire web designers because they believe creating a website is hard. We are the wizards of the web after all. Now Elegant Themes has changed that with this new release. Imagine if our clients found this amazing new theme and decided to try managing their website themselves? It could render us obsolete.
So what I'm saying is embrace the new Divi 3.0 theme and create wonderful sites with it. Just don't tell your clients how easy Elegant Themes has made it for us web designers. If you do, we may all be out of a job.
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Full disclosure, I am an affiliate of Elegant Themes and will earn a commission if you purchase Divi through any links on this website.
I'm a designer just like you. Let's see how we can do more designing and less of the other business stuff that takes up our precious time.
It won’t make the client a great designer any more than owning Photoshop makes one a great image editor. There is still the strategic and problem solving side of design. No machine or software will replace the human brain and the human experience.
I fully agree with you. In the article, I state that I don’t really believe we’ll loose our jobs because of DIVI 3.0. I was going for a sarcastic tone. Can clients build their own websites easily with DIVI? Yes, they can. Can they build well designed and well-functioning websites? Probably not. Our jobs are safe.
I do not think, personally, we will have any issues with losing any clients. Firstly the businesses need to know about Divi 3 before they can use it, and also the clients that would use it to create there own site instead of hire a professional, well those people never would have hired a professional to begin with because they obviously don’t believe it is worth the money, and whether it be something like Divi 3.0 or (Lord forgive me) Wix, they would find a way to create there own site for little to no money regardless.
Also, and of course only serious business owners will care about this, there is so much more to just throwing up a website, there is the whole SEO aspect, not to mention the average person from my experience can’t get past the purchasing a domain name part.
Now all that being said, there will be those more tech savvy businesses that will figure it out and get it working for them, and thats great for them, but again those are the businesses that do not value everything that a professional would brings to the table for there business anyway, we do far more than just put a pretty website up, and at the end of the day, those are not the businesses you want as clients!
(Reminds me of a time a client refused my rates and told me “I get emails all the time from india saying they will make my site for $40, I can just go to them”)
So I say use Divi 3.0, make some kick ass sites for real clients, but do not be in fear they will “discover your secret”, because chances are they wont even care, it is far more convenient to have you do it in a matter of minutes than it is for them to take time out out of there day to fiddle with it just for a simple change. Because Its easy for use as designers to pick up and go, there still is a learning curve for average people!
Thanks Norman, This article was meant to be more of a tongue in cheek joke. I don’t actually believe we’ll loose any clients because of Divi 3.0. I wanted to illustrate the fact that this updated theme is so easy to use that even non-designers could build beautiful websites with it.
Ouch I totally missed the sarcasm in the post haha. Oops.
I bought Divi recently but now I am reading that is rubbish for SEO is there a way around this?
In my opinion, there’s no such thing as a theme that is rubbish for SEO. It all depends on the content you publish on your website. If you put out crappy content you get crappy SEO. If you put out good content you get good SEO. The theme has nothing to do with it.
I’m Sorry Haneefah I personally dont use this product or WordPress in general so I’m not sure about the SEO aspect for either. However I believe from my personal experience, so long as your marketing and your H tags and such are on point you should be fine! It may just take a little more time to organically see results on Google.
should I panic? or i’ll be fine if my marketing is on point?