If you have been working with the Divi theme for more than a year, you know that the folks at Elegant Themes roll out updates almost every other week. Most of the updates are feature updates with fixes and improvements mixed in.
Here is an example of the latest update as of publishing this article.
Stuck in my Divi Ways
If you are like me, and have been using Divi since the day it was released, you may still be married to the Classic Builder on the back end. In fact, the first thing I do when starting a new project, is enable the classic builder.
Is Divi Getting Slower Or Is It Just Me?
In December of 2018, some major functionality improvements were made to the theme core files, including the way the classic builder loads. In the months that followed, many people started experiencing slower and slower performance while trying to work in the back-end, including our team over at Monterey Premier.
In fact, if you sort through the version release notes through June, July, and August, you will see a number fixes related to speed and performance on the back-end. For example, take a look at this version release on 8/15/2019.
While I was confident that this was only a temporary issue that would eventually be corrected, I realized things kept getting slower and slower while working on pages in the back-end on most of the sites that were currently active.
The Latest Divi Builder Experience
Ok, I know it is not necessarily new anymore, but I am an old dog still learning new tricks LOL.
Just yesterday, one of my clients was told to enable the New Builder Experience to speed things up and sure enough, he was right. It made a pretty decent difference on that website. So I tried it on a few more websites and sure enough, it helped quite a bit.
Then this morning, in one of the Divi Facebook groups, there was a long thread of people also at odds with this issue. And before I could respond, Nick Roach, the owner of Elegant Themes, had this to say about it.
Be sure to switch to the new Divi Builder experience. The Classic Builder is getting slower with age. It’s built on old technology that isn’t meant to scale. The new Divi Builder experience is the default experience for Divi and is only active if you have chosen not to switch on an old website. It’s faster and comes with years of new features – Nick Roach
Am I Disappointed With The New Builder Experience?
Not at all. In fact, I love it even more. I rarely use the Visual Builder but using the Wireframe mode in the new Divi Builder is fantastic. So many new options and shortcuts.
For example, check out this view of the Divi Settings.
Getting to see all three tabs in a single view is so time saving for me.
I also love how you can edit section, row and module names without even opening the settings.
If you are like me, and ready to dig into the new builder experience, take a look at this great resource by Elegant Themes.
25 “Hidden” Divi Features to Boost Productivity and Design
In Closing
Since the question keeps coming up, I thought it would be good to share my experience. If you have been using the new builder, and have more quick tips to share, please feel free to leave them in the comments.
Perfect timing! Will check this out today.
Let us know what you find Sandra 🙂
Agreed! No more classic builder for me. Just today I moved to VPS hosting and wow not more issues. I love Divi!
Great move to VPS hosting. Thanks for sharing.
Great article Geno. We’re all creatures of habit and resist change at times, I also hesitated .. “I like my builder just the way it is” .. then after I switched, I loved the new platform. It only took a few hours of working with it to notice significant UI enhancements, and it’s only gotten better. Wishing you much continued success. Cheers, Keith #divirocks
Thanks Keith. Good to hear from you again 🙂 #divirocks
But the new builder doesn’t work the same like the category builder for DIVI.
And i just tested that today.
I have not used the category builder. Is that a plugin? Thanks for sharing the update.
Very timely post Geno. Like you I am very conservative and have a predilection for the Classic Builder. I am now getting used to the change.
Me too Martin. Thanks.
Hi Geno
Consider to use the plugin query monitor. I found amp plugins creating the error of the general performance
But I will follow you advice and will give a try to the Divi builder (I not using for the post, only for the pages)
Regards
Let us know how it goes Pedro.
Thank you Geno for sharing this crucial thing about New divi, I was also feeling vexed while editing the pages in backend not knowing what to do.. Thanks for clearing this..
Thanks Siva 🙂
hi geno,
how did u get the 3 column view? i couldnt find it in Divi Settings
cheers
First, make sure you are using the latest Divi Builder Experience and disable classic builder. Then when you open the settings (section, row or module), click on Contract Module in the upper right hand corner. Then mouse over the bottom left hand corner of the settings box and you will see the drag option. Drag it as wide as you can and you will see all three tabs (content, design & advanced) in one screen like the screenshot. I think it is from one of the most recent updates because so of my older sites do not open up into three columns unless I update to the latest version of Divi.
Thanks, Genoa! Guess I’ll dive into the new builder this weekend! I’m just being a creature of habit, but the slowness is cramping my style. 🙂
Sweet. We are two birds of a feather
Hola Geno, recibe saludos desde Madrid – Spain, muchas gracias por compartir este gran aporte. Pero la verdad es que no puedo obtener la vista de las 3 “tabs” en una sola pantalla, Si no fuera molestia, podrías hacer un vídeo muy cortito de unos 20 segundos, mostrando la manera correcta de aplicar esos cambios, aunque sea sin “audio” es que intento hacerlo y no lo consigo. Muchas gracias de antemano por tu apoyo. Recibe un cordial saludo desde web-creativo.com
Thanks Luis. I will try to make some time to make a video to show how to do that. Thanks for the suggestions.
Luis, Here is a quick video walk through https://www.montereypremier.com/maximizing-your-workspace-in-the-new-divi-builder-experience/
Geno, you are the best!! cheeers from Madrid.
THANKS! I too am (reluctantly) having to switch to this new builder. I’ve been using the classic builder for years and like with most major releases of any software, things are rearranged and it takes a whole new learning curve to get used to it. Hence rather not having to.
However, the slowness of the classic builder has now reached an unusable state, I’ve tried everything but it basically cripples my editing.
So here we go, time to bite the bullet!
I like this split view for the 3 settings columns already!!!
Awesome!
Shawn, here is a quick video walk through https://www.montereypremier.com/maximizing-your-workspace-in-the-new-divi-builder-experience/
Good piece, useful and informative.
Thanks Nick
Thank you for bringing light into this dark tunnel!
I am using DIVI from the first version and I am so tired of the permanent Update trouble, the slow support and the standard suggestions to disable all plugins when it’s a DIVI problem and their complete ignorance of absolutely bad language files
I am (mostly) a rational person and like to build posts, pages, templates with an editor and not a clickieclackie tool, so I stick with the classic editor until now. When DIVI got slower and slower and even refused to load the builder why there was no clear answer/explanation from the developers?
As I never listen to podcasts and video tutorials (because american pronounciation is almost incomprehensible for oxford english speakers) I was searching for help in documentation etc. and nothing… and now the big master and entrepreneur, Mr. Roach, graciously explains the reasons for the slow performance: .It is a neglect of the basic functions in favor of visual gimmicks
I love clear instructions, I love to work with tools instead of searching for workarounds, my clients don’t pay me for this,
DIVI is gettng more and more unproductive unfortunately
I just had to say that ;=(
Connie
This can also be a safe place to vent Connie 🙂 Thanks for reading the article and taking the time to share. I hope this helps speed things up for you. I am a CSS guy so I do 95% of my styling via CSS on the stylesheet, so forcing all those settings on me was getting crazy. But this actually works quite well for me. 🙂
Hi Geno,
Thanks for the insight, I switched to the VB a while ago because of the extra options.
One problem I experience and I’ve seen people mention this, is that the editor loads twice, like it freshes before finally loading to a point where one can start editing.
Is this something you have seen?
Is there something I can do about stopping that?
Thanks
Hi Hurri. I noticed that as well. Fortunately it is pretty quick for me. I use the “Preview” button more often than hitting save so I do not deal with that as much. I also have multiple monitors so I can have multiple windows open at the same time.
I think I’m missing something… like what new Divi Builder experience? I can only get visual builder, there is no backend editor anymore and hasnt been for ages, at least with me. On the backend, editing a page I only have the option button to ‘Edit with Divi’ which loads the Visual builder, I havent been able to edit, create or move sections on the backend of a page for months…
Make sure you enable the new experience in the Divi Theme Options > Builder > Advanced > Enable The Latest Divi Builder Experience
Hey,
that’s interesting and reflects my experience with the Divi builder.
As a matter of fact – releasing small bug fixes every week doesn’t look like they have good testing and quality assurance… small things break very often and right now the Visual Builder is loading twice on activating it 🙁
I hope it gets better soon,
Michael
omg.. I have been struggling with this – Chrome disk use goes through the roof when I’m editing with DIVI. I’ll disable Classic builder and see how it goes.
Cool. Let us know how it goes for you.
Geno, thanks for the wonderful article.
In fact in these days in the Italian community the problem of the speed of Divi is much discussed and this your experience I consider decisive.
With your permission, I will provide for the translation of the article and sharing.
Thank you again!
My pleasure Michele. I hope it helps out with those in the Italian Divi community as well 🙂
Thanks Geno, great timing!!
thanks Geno, as always, you are a veritable treasure chest of answers and solutions!
My pleasure 🙂
Hi Geno,
Perfect timing for me! Your article answer a performance issue that I’ve have been struggling with for days and weeks recently. Same as you, I was preferring to use the classic builder because I have been a Divi user for more than 3 years now. I’ll now switch to the new builder. Great article as always, thanks for sharing your experience with us lonely web designers behind our screens.
Denis
My pleasure Denis 🙂
This may be fine for those who are in the business of building websites. However I have several clients who, for the most part, maintain their own sites. It was a bit of a job to get them to understand the Classic Builder process in the first place so I really cannot see them learning the new setup. Also, I feel the Classic Builder is much easier for non website designers to understand, since it has the boxes all in the same positions as the the front end content.
For this reason alone I certainly hope ET does not do away with the Clasic Builder.
Most of my clients maintain their own as well. If they are not having performance issues, I will leave them be. But for the ones who have had slow sites, they understand the update is necessary and the new builders wireframe is so similar to the classic builder now, that training them has been seamless. I still steer away from the visual editor though but some of my clients love it. It is great for just flowing in content for non techies.
In my opinion, the Visual Builder still offers a better experience compared to the new divi builder in the backend. Do you want to know why? Because when we are in the backend with the new builder, if we hit the save button or “ctrl+s”, it loads the whole page again. I can’t picture myself waiting for the page to refresh everytime I save it. On the visual builder (front-end), we save it on the fly, the page is NOT refreshed = faster! Unless I am missing some important settings.
I am a bit old school in that I like to make changes to the front end via css and dev tools. Then when it looks exactly how I want, I just add the css to my style sheet which is open in another monitor. These days I only use the back-end for flowing in content, not design. I totally get why people love the visual editor when using the module settings for all the design and style.
I totally agree
Very timely, we just tried to address this concern with ET support and got no where. I appreciate that the new visual builder, or wire frame, will be fast, but why does it take an extra click to get there? When I select “edit”, why not go right to editing instead of the SEO/informational page where I then click the edit button and wait (and wait) for the visual builder to load. This is one reason I resisted the change in the first place. (Not your problem… I will pass along to ET.)
I’m not married to the Classic Divi Builder, but I haven’t stopped using it either. I tend to use both editors interchangeably and I find the classic editor much better for a few things, most notably composing or editing text. I have always used Divi Booster to expand the classic builder to a full screen editing experience and other things that should probably be built into the core program. The little boxes that appear when using the Visual or Wireframe editors pale in comparison.
I find that while design work is best done with the new builder, especially when considering responsive tweaks, explaining the structure of Sections, Rows and Columns/Modules to my clients is much, much easier with the classic editor. For most of my clients, I teach them to make simple content updates using the front end Visual Editor but shy away from overwhelming them with the new backend editor. I know my clients and I know that most of them have limited patience for complicated user interfaces.
As long as I am complaining, let me add that I’m not sure if I have been experiencing a less than stellar Internet connection of late, but for the past week or so I have been annoyed by Divi’s lack of focus issues. These include Divi losing focus when typing content in the new editor, where the typing suddenly stops and the focus jumps somewhere else. It is as if I am tripping over keyboard shortcuts causing unexpected results. Very annoying and very time consuming behaviour.
Despite these problems, I consider Divi the most valuable asset to my business, however going back to the marriage reference, there have been a few bumps along the way.
Thanks for sharing John. I rarely use the visual editor and now I may never have to. I would only use it to access certain features that were not in the classic builder such as adding dynamic elements. Enabling the new builder allows me to access all the great features of the visual editor in the backend without ever having to actually use the visual editor. win/win
Another thing that bugs me about the new backend builder is how as soon as I start using it, it wants to reload. Just another quirk I guess.
Has anyone else noticed this lost focus issue I mention above on Divi lately?
When I noticed that I could no longer use the Classic Builder, I warmed up to the Visual Builder. Now, it feels relatively quick, straightforward, and intuitive. I don’t miss the backed builder at all. And I’ve been using WordPress for over 10 years.
Good to know. Thanks for sharing Mike. I am warming up to the new builder much faster than I expected.
Thanks for this … its a real struggle to move away from what i know…. I hardly ever use the visual builder and all my sites have the classic editor enabled.. After saying that – i see everything slowing down, so will take your advice and give it a blast…. Thanks for sharing 🙂
No problem. Keep in mind you do not have to use the Visual Builder when you make the switch. Make sure to enable the New Builder Experience and use the wireframe mode on the back-end and it works and looks just like the classic editor.
Thanks, we will try to get used to the new version
Thanks, Geno. The problem you described is exactly what I’ve experienced recently with the Divi Extra Theme I use for my blog and profile website. I ended up raising a support requests with Elegant Themes and we seemed to be going around in circles blaming the Child Theme (which has very little customisation) and 3rd party plug-ins (of which I only use a few and they’d all paid-for pro versions by reputable developers). Then I found your Why Has Divi Become So Slow? article and in particular, your quote from Nick Roach, recommending the switch to the new Divi Builder. I’ve stuck with the Classic Builder because that’s the one I know well and it’s easy for me to use to create posts. But I tested switching to the new builder on the previously slow pages and the editor response was brilliant! So much for Child Themes and plug-ins being the culprits! ??♂️
Geno, thanks for your thoughts, I’m off to look around at more of your articles. This was informative
Its been an interesting discussion on this, because in my experience the Classic Builder is still significantly faster than the new Visual Builder. I suspect this is a javascript issue because I am using ‘old’ browsers, it’s a long story but I still use Mac 10.6.8 fo some editing.
My issue is that the latet releases of Divi are far, far slower ‘across-the-board’, to the point where the Visual Builder is unusable. Same site as I had before, but it just keeps on getting slower and slower to edit. For me the whole point of using something like Divi was that it isn’t trying to be ‘Wix-style’ editor – instead it was logically ordered for a coder and relatively fast – only loading the data that I actually wanted to edit.
Now the Visual Builder is, IMHO, just another a ‘Wix-style’ clone. It’s heavy, slow and obviously becoming dependant on the latest & greatest technology to operate at a usable speed.
I’ve never been a fan of bloated software releases constantly requiring you to update hardware (ie. thanks Bill…..) to keep doing exactly the same thing as they did before. It’s just lazy programming IMHO, because instead of working to optimise the code you simply tell customers to use a faster machine to do it. And so on for the next release, and so on for the next release, and so on for the next release – see my point?
I’m not saying there isn’t an argument for this type of development path (think of games) but Divi is really just a fancy HTML coder isn’t it?
I guess it’s because Divi is now trying to grow by marketing itself to the “Wix-customer’ who demands the ‘simplistic’ WYSIWYG editor, but as a developer it’s not a path that I’m keen to see Elegant Themes moving down 🙁
Just for interest here are some figures for Chrome & (Chrome Helper) – both running at 64bit – after loading a page and letting it all settle down – numbers are CPU% – threads – RAM
1. Load Chrome to Google
chrome: 0.5 – 42 – 124Mb
helper: 0.0 – 11 – 94Mb
2. Load to WP Dashboard
chrome: 0.0 – 46 – 163Mb
helper: 0.0 – 10 – 163Mb
3. Load Page List
chrome: 0.2 – 45 – 164Mb
helper: 0.0 – 13 – 131Mb
4. Load Home Page with Classic Builder
chrome: 0.1 – 45 – 168Mb
helper: 1-6 – 45 – 377Mb
So you can see a massive jump in the ‘helper’ Memory use, and even though not doing anything at the browser the CPU demand of the ‘helper’ constantly cycles and records spikes of 20-48%
5. Load Home Page with Visual Builder
chrome: 0.0 – 46 – 173Mb
helper: 1-6 – 12 – 414Mb
* again the CPU is constantly cyling between 1-6% with occasional spikes of 13-35%
Remember the ‘Google Chrome Helper’ CPU cycling is with the page loaded into the browser but just sitting there doing absolutely nothing at all.
———————————————–
What is curious is that I loaded another non-divi site, when at the WP page editor the performance figures, especially the CPU demand, look almost as bad if not worse…
chrome: 10-12 – 37 – 136Mb
helper: 15-17 – 11 – 240Mb
However for the user the difference is chalk-and-cheese, because this non-divi page is fast and responsive to edit. I don’t know enough on this stuff but it seems odd that Divi doesn’t seem to use the actual browser (Chrome) to do any CPU lifting, I wonder if this is related to the ‘slow responsiveness’ of Divi?
Divi is so slow it’s ridiculous. Every “upgrade” makes it slower.
Nice article! I have written a tutorial with some useful tips about how to make Divi faster (without any plugins). Let me know if you find them useful: https://yonkov.github.io/post/optimize-divi-for-speed/
Thanks. Looks like a great resource!
Thanks Geno.
Useful information. I’ve also never used the Front End builder so it was almost like learning a completely new system. It works great, but it doesn’t always load 100%. Sometimes I have to refresh twice before everything loads.
Anton
I should have listened to you months ago! Back then, I took a quick look at the new builder and decided I was happy with “what I knew”. But I reached my breaking point yesterday. It reached a new level of slow, made even worse by getting tangled in caching issues, etc. I recalled this post, reread it, and finally took the plunge and used the new “Divi Builder Experience”. It took much less time than I expected to learn the (only slightly) new flow. As always, great advice, Geno! Thanks!
I always love reading in-depth insights into Divi.
At the end of the day, I am sticking with Divi for the long run and not going anywhere 🙂
I wish I started with Divi from day 1 like you did, still I started a few years back and not looking back.
hi. great article. As an early DIVVER LOL I have found it really hard to use the builder but it has gotten so bad it is time to do it. I do have a question. When I flipped to the builder I noticed the areas that should be telling you what things were either blanked out or you had to hover? Do you think that is a function of turning something off or on or has anyone else seen this issue in the builder? thanks.
That’s how I was for years. I was so used to the classic builder but ET kept adding features for the visual builder. They weren’t really focused matching the classic to the visual builder. So finally, I gave it a try and never looked back ever since.
As a new divi user its really informative and useful. Thanks Geno.