New Features in Divi
The Divi WordPress theme is loved by many website designers, and I am one of them. It is fast, flexible and you can customize it to make any type of site you can imagine. I’ve used it in many of my own client websites, and websites I’ve built for my own business. Heck, I am an affiliate of Elegant Themes because I love it so much. With that being said, Divi has had it’s drawbacks. There are a few simple things that you’d either have to drop in your own CSS for, or you’d have to install a plugin to do. Let’s take a look at a couple of new features in Divi that I am excited about this month.
Backgrounds
If you’d ever tried to create a cool or interesting background, either with an overlay or a gradient, you quickly learned that you’d have to add all of that CSS yourself. Not anymore! Now, you can add image backgrounds, custom solid or gradient overlays, or videos.
The entire functionality of how this works has been streamlined and overhauled. Gradients couldn’t be easier. You can select 2 colors, as well as their transparency, which makes it easy to do a gradient overlay over a photo. These options are available in both the section modules, as well as the row modules. Simply place a photo in the section module, and in the row modules, set it to full width with the lowest gutter setting and add enough padding to spread it to each edge. Select your gradient colors and lower the opacity. What’s even better about this is that you can visually adjust the angle of the gradient with a slider. You aren’t stuck with just a vertical or a horizontal gradient. You can even adjust starting and ending positions of your gradients.
You can still create Parallax effects, which keeps all of the features from before. On top of all of that, you can add the same effects to individual columns in the row module. I imagine some web designers coming up with some interesting effects. Oh, and you can’t forget the new blend modes feature!
Contact Forms
The next thing I always struggled with was Divi’s contact forms. Why have a form module, if you have such limited options? Now, you can create just about any type of form you can imagine. You have more field type options, which means you don’t need a plugin or a hacked up child theme to accomplish this anymore. Now you can have check boxes and radio buttons, and making multiple option forms has never been easier.
Another thing I couldn’t stand was the lack of validation or restrictions. People could just put whatever they wanted in fields and Divi would take it. Now, you can set up form validation, such as letters or numbers only. You can even limit characters. This feature cuts down on a lot of spam you may receive.
I am so glad that they went a step further and added conditional logic to their form module, too. Now, your visitors can see certain form fields, depending on their input in the form so far. This enables you to collect more sensible information from people that fits their particular situation. Everything is controlled with drop down menus and options in the Divi builder!
With these upgrades and new features, you can build better websites than ever before, all with the Divi WordPress theme. Elegant Themes is constantly making improvements to their theme to make it easier to user, and feature rich. Do you use Divi to build your websites? What new feature would you like to see in the near future!
