Article By:Huh, a review about Divi 4.0? That’s not even out yet is it?
Nope, it isn’t. And no, I don’t have any inside information on Divi 4.0. But it is undoubtedly coming soon, and in this review – which is actually a preview – I’m going to tell you what I think will be the most important features in Divi 4.0 🙂
If you’ve been following Elegant Themes blog, you’ve probably seen their sneak peek posts, which they publish almost every week. They also roll out a new feature almost every week, but lately most features are just small workflow improvements. I think the features below won’t be rolled out as a stand alone feature, but as a part of one big update; Divi 4.0.
Divi theme builder
First and foremost, Divi 4.0 will feature the brand new Divi theme builder, which will finally allow Divi users to edit every piece of the page: not just the content but also the header, footer, sidebars, menu etcetera.
You will not only be able to make custom templates for pages for pages and posts, you will also be able to make custom templates for specific pages like the homepage, the 404 error page and blog archive pages, or for posts in a certain category.
Of course, everything can be done using the Divi visual builder.
Update: Divi 4.0 will be released on Oktober 17th!
At April 12, 2019, Nick Roach, the owner of Elegant Themes, finally broke the radio silence about the release date of Divi 4.0. In the Divi Theme Users Facebook Group, he posted a message stating “Theme Builder, Global Defaults and WooCommerce Builder are all in the works and will be released soon.”
That’s nothing new, they’ve been saying that for months already. However, this time Nick actually added a time frame: “Within the next month or two“. Well, that’s about time! So after a full year of waiting, it looks like we’re finally going to get Divi 4.0 very soon!
Update September 4, 2019
So those “next month or two” came and went, without the promised updates 🙁 Well, we got the global defaults in July, but for the theme builder, we only got “it’s in the process of Q&A testing”.
Until today, because today Nick posted a topic in the Divi Theme Users Facebook group that the
Theme Builder will finally be released in the next four weeks 😀 Let cross our fingers!
Update September 26, 2019
Today Nick posted another topic in the Divi Theme Users Facebook group – this time with an official release date for Divi 4.0, which of course features the new theme builder!
Dynamic content
The second feature in Divi 4.0 will certainly be Dynamic Content. This makes it possible to insert data from the database anywhere you want. This is necessary to build archive pages, custom single post templates etc.
If you’re building a post archive page, you want to automatically load the featured image, post title with a link to the post, the post excerpt, the publish date, the author etc.
Since the Divi builder supports custom post types as well, Divi users will probably also be able to build custom WooCommerce pages with dynamic content fields for price, product description, reviews etc.
UPDATE 11-10-2018
Dynamic Content has been implemented since October 11th! However, we’ll still have to wait for the theme builder to make it really usefull.
Global defaults
Another long awaited feature in Divi 4.0 will be global defaults. This is something that Divi really lacks at the moment. You can customize just about any element, but there’s no place to set global options for a specific element or module.
That makes it really hard to keep a consistent design and it’s something Divi users have been complaining about for years already.
The new Divi global defaults feature will let you set default settings for all modules.
Not in the theme customizer, but in the module itself by flipping it over 🙂 That way, you don’t even have to leave the module or page.
Of course, you will have to confirm before everything is updated and you can also undo your changes if you don’t like them after all.
So the global design for modules will be done this way, which is fine. But they also need a way to set a global style for things like headings so you can change the font, color or size of all h2 tag for example, no matter in what module they are.
Also, Elegant Themes has to make sure users can choose whether or not to keep changes made in individual modules, as well as templates stored in the library.
More column options
Divi users have been complaining for years about the fact that there are too few column structure options in Divi, so Elegant Themes sneak peeked an update that will introduce some new column structures.
This should be a relatively easy one to realize for the Divi developers, but the sneak peek was more than 2 months ago and it’s still not rolled out yet. Therefor, it will probably be part of the Divi 4.0 update.
Or maybe it’s taking so long because they want the same flexible column system as Elementor, which lets you just drag the columns to the desired width.
UPDATE 30-08-2018
Divi implemented this update on August 30th, but they also sneak peeked a whole new implementation of columns. In the near future, columns in Divi will be added as a module, giving you total control over column styling with animations, borders, shadows, color filters and all other option you have with any other module.
They also announced that you will be able to drag columns to the size you want soon!
UPDATE 20-06-2019
The implementation of columns described above has been implemented on June 20th.
We still can’t drag columns to the desired width though, but it’s a major improvement nonetheless!
Woocommerce builder
WooCommerce is the most popular webshop plugin for WordPress. You can use WooCommerce in Divi already, but you have no (or very limited) control over how your shop page, archive page, product page, cart page and checkout page will look.
That will change with Divi’s upcoming WooCommerce builder. This will allow you to place every element where you want with the Visual Builder. So you can control the size of the product image, the position of the price and add to cart button, where to show the reviews etcetera.
This will give you great design freedom when you’re building a webshop!
Divi 4.0 most important features
In my opinion, these will be the most important features in Divi 4.0. These are all features Divi users have been requesting a lot, and Divi really needs those updates so they don’t lose their customers to builders like Elementor or Oxygen.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Elegant Themes raises it prices after releasing Divi 4.0. Especially the lifetime licence is really competitively priced. It wouldn’t even surprise me if they would
stop offering the lifetime deal all together, like a lot of other software companies are doing at the moment.
The future for Divi looks great, so get your lifetime licence now!
Divi 4 will launch on October 17th.
That’s another delay: on September 4, Nick promised it would be released in the first week of October at the latest. But at least we have an official release date for Divi 4.0 now!
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