Every month, I update the community about our progress on Divi 5. Divi 5 is the next big version of Divi that will introduce a new foundation for the builder, focusing on improving performance, stability, scalability, and extendability. It won’t come with many new features. It will, however, give our team and the development community the tools to push forward into the future. It will also make Divi much faster, among many other things!
If you want to learn more about Divi 5, check out my original announcement.
What We Accomplished Since My Last Update
Last month, we announced the release of Divi 5 Dev Alpha, the first phase in the Divi 5 beta program. This phase is focused on solidifying the new API and working with Divi creators to make sure we give them the tools they need to create great modules and convert their existing modules to take advantage of what the new version of Divi has to offer.
Over the past month, we released many significant updates to our new Divi developer documentation, including long-form tutorials that walk you through creating Divi 5 modules and converting Divi 4 modules to the new API. This new developer documentation is incredibly in-depth and will eventually dig into every function and hook in the new version of Divi.
We improved backward compatibility with Divi 4 modules and are working towards our initial promise that nothing will break when you update to Divi 5. We also fixed random bugs found by participants in the beta program related to features and functionality already existing in Divi 5. That’s one of the great parts of releasing these very early alpha versions; by the time we get to the final release, there will be no surprises.
The most significant update in this release was work involving Divi’s element style components, which significantly streamlines the process of assigning design settings to individual module parts, making creating Divi modules faster for our team and the team community. It also opens the door for nested option groups.
Finally, we filled in many user-facing features, including the Global Elements, Divi Help Modal, Save to Library functionality, Section Divider settings, and more.
A Deep Dive Into Divi 5’s Progression
I want to take some time to explain the five phases of the Divi 5 beta program and how we are approaching Divi 5 development so that you can put our monthly progress updates into perspective.
First, let’s put this project as a whole into perspective. What is Divi 5?
Well…we are essentially recreating everything related to the builder from scratch! Iterating on the Divi 4 codebase isn’t sustainable forever, and it’s time to build a new foundation. So, how do we approach such an enormous project with such a daunting roadmap?
That’s where the five phases of Divi 5 come in.
The Five Phases Of Divi 5
We are building Divi 5 piece by piece in a modular fashion, starting from a functional base. Every two weeks, Divi 5 gets a new version (we are currently on version 3), and a few new pieces of the puzzle are filled in. Everything that gets merged into Divi 5 is finished, and even now, Divi 5 works! It’s just missing features.
This allows us to get Divi 5 into the hands of the community sooner because even though it’s missing features, it works, and it’s fast. You may even find that using an upcoming public beta version of Divi 5 is preferable to using Divi 4 if the missing features aren’t features you use.
The first two phases of Divi 5 are Dev Alpha and Dev Beta. These versions will only be available to developers while we focus on solidifying the module API and getting feedback on the technology stack; all the while, we’ll also be filling in features in preparation for the upcoming public phases.
The third and fourth phases of Divi 5, Public Alpha and Public Beta, will be the versions we release to everyone. These versions will be like a “Divi Lite” version of Divi 5. They won’t be feature-complete, but they will have enough features to make them worth testing and using. From there, we’ll keep filling in more features as we work towards the final version, which will be a regular update in the WordPress Dashboard on all Divi websites.
While it’s hard to estimate when we will reach each phase, our goal is to get into the public beta stages this year so that everyone can get their hands on Divi 5 and come along for the ride as it gets better and better with each update. Divi 5 and Divi 4 will exist in tandem during the beta phases, receiving their own regular updates, and you will get to decide which version is right for you.
Stay Tuned For More Updates
I hope this post gives you a clear picture of how we plan to manage this massive project in the most advantageous way for Divi users. Even though this is a big project, you won’t have to wait until the end to get your hands on Divi 5 and enjoy its benefits.
Right now, we’re focused on ensuring the backend is solid during these first two development phases, and we’re working towards the public beta phases as fast as possible.
We’re also working on some great non-Divi 5 features that I think are exciting, so stay tuned for those as well. If you have any questions, be sure to leave a comment. Stay tuned for next month’s update, and I’ll see you in the next one!
that’s awesome! thanks for the hard work, i hope you add some AI features too.
Also, what will happen to the Extra theme it seems that it has been forgotten, will you bring the new shortcode and other Divi features to Extra theme too?
We are working on AI features right now, which is one of the non-Divi 5 features that I am really excited about 😁. Just like Divi Cloud, our Divi AI project will live outside the builder as its own app, which means it can be developed even while Divi 5 development is underway.
Extra and the Divi Builder plugin will both benefit from the Divi 5 update. They will receive the same foundational changes because they are also built on top of the builder.
I’m an Extra user and I love it but it is such an old generation. I agree with Alex Lopez above that Extra has been long forgotten. Please give it an update.
Great to hear about AI in DIVI, this will be a game changer, especially because Elementor will drop that soon (and I want to stay with DIVI)
Hi Nick,
will there finally be an option to globally set font properties for headings (h1, h2, h3, h4, etc.) and paragraphs including weight, size, line spacing etc. in the Divi options? I think about a setting that you can set once and for all modules. The current default font settings are very poor…
Our goal isn’t to add new features in Divi 5. However, the new foundation we build will make it much easier for us to develop new features in the future, develop them faster, and with fewer bugs along the way.
Nick, thank you for the reply. It would be best if you had implemented the feature ten years ago. Without it, websites created with Divi seem to be a bunch of unrelated pieces, a chaos from typo point of view.
Agreed!!!
I was thinking the same. This feature should be there.
Hmmm…. I’m a little concerned about “and we’ll be adding things along the way” comment (or something like that) when there is certainly a stable roadmap in place. But if there IS discretionary time, I for one still encounter “legacy glitches” in core Divi modules that just never seem to get fixed. Mmaybe Divi 5 will catch a lot of those inherently by going thru such an exhaustive redesign process. Looking forward to it Nick and ET team !!!
“Adding things along the way” refers to progressing through the roadmap, which moves Divi 5 through five beta stages.
I am always keeping an eye out for all the updates on Divi and I believe version 5 will bring significant improvements in performance, as well as adding new functionalities. To me, the true big upgrade would be the incorporation of features such as CSS Grid, Flexbox, native pop-ups and Offcanvas.
I am confused as to why they didn’t implement Flexbox from the beginning, especially since the builder was rebuilt from scratch. This would have been a great opportunity to include a new layout system to Divi, making it even more powerful and efficient.
Nevertheless, I am happy about the arrival of the new version of the great Divi.
Success, Nick.
I agree all these are important to complete.
CSS Grid, Flexbox, native pop-ups and Offcanvas.
Wil all the templates that currently exist be compatible with divi 5 once fully released?
Yes, they will still be compatible. There will be a conversion mechanism that consumes legacy shortcodes and converts them to the new framework.
It all sounds promising.
Can you confirm that shortcodes from third party plugins will still render if used in modules? I use Toolset and have sites where I include discrete templates made with it within Divi layouts. I am hoping these will still work.
I am needing to know the same please. I have sites completely done using Advanced Custom Fields and Custom Post types and need the site to keep as is and not break please.
Yes, shortcodes will still work inside of Divi-made pages.
What about shortcodes that are nested within Divi modules. For example, shortcodes nested within a Divi tab module?
Great work! I’m excited to checkout the new module creation walkthroughs.
That is very exciting.
I’m looking forward to work with the future Divi 5 and see how fast the builder will be, especially on long pages. That will certainly be a game changer, as well as the new functionalities which will be added later.
Thank you for keeping us posted.
Very well thought out! It was for sure the right decision to start from scratch. For everybody. Divis UI is great but the bloat put me, off.
Congrats to this move.
Great to hear about the coming update. I am a little concerned about how long it takes to get new visual features to enter Divi. I use both Divi and Elementor and Elementor seems to be pushing out a lot of feature updates and even had a facelift recently. Divi has had very few visual updates for a long time. Yes, building speed and performance for Divi’s future is great, but we as clients would like to see new visual features appearing in Divi’s updates as well. We also do not want to rely on adding tons of third-party plugins to achieve some basic things that I think should be on Divi and now have to rely on these other plugins to further bloat you site you are building.
I know it is great that you share with us on the progress updates, but I think you need to have goal dates for each step plus the finish date so you can share these with us. I do understand that every month’s goal is not achieved as it is the same as in the corporate business retail stores that I used to run, one month you fall behind but the next you push hard to reach that month’s goal and try to make up last months lost goal effort.
Thanks for the update
I don’t know if I was talking to much here but this is the way i feel at this stage.
Right now we have a feature freeze on the builder since it is being redeveloped in Divi 5. Anything we add to Divi 4 would just have to be created all over again in Divi 5. That’s why there haven’t been featured updates for some time.
As soon as Divi 5 has been released, it’s full steam ahead on new features.
Thanks for your Reply Nick. Looking forward to seeing new Divi in action.
I totally agree with you. The process is very slow. It seems that there are continuous delays and it has been a long time since new features have been created.
sounds like you’re shooting for Black Friday! 🙂
Great job team!
So, just to add and improve performance, in the Theme Options part, where we add custom CSS, could the size of the whole box be increased? That is to say, to be able to better edit our css.
Thank you.
And… It will definitely be faster on the front end? Page load speed etc.?
I have been comparing lately with other themes and it’s a mixed bag with some of the sites I have built with Divi. All my sites are on SIteGround entry level shared hosting. They stoped the free Cloudflare offering and now offer their own CDN. During Beta of this I found the free CDN offering didn’t make a difference the premium version was an improvement but in my mind not as good as Cloudflare’s CDN. Configuring Cloudflare is now a little more involved. Maybe one just needs to pay a lot more for SiteGrounds more premium tier hosting and CDN for faster loading Divi sites and a lot of my clients just don’t want that expense.
I really need a theme that just performs well out of the box without all the caching and CDN fuss and expense that, in my experience, just makes building and maintaining sites time consuming and over complex. Divi is a great tool to work with int terms of design and I want to stick with it but the output really needs to improve in terms of speed.
I wish there will be smooth upgrade from v4 to v5 as easier as clicking a button.
Divi 5 April progress Update setting