The whole decade has been much like the Biblical story of Moses leading the Israelites through the desert. That was 40 years, and through all that time, things just didn't seem to get better. Promises remained unfulfilled. The talk was that, "some day, you will get to the promised land".

That describes my experience with Divi. When I first got it, all the hype was focused on Version 3 and the Visual Builder. It was "just wait! It's gonna be amazing!" After six months of relentless proselytizing, the visual builder arrived. And it was slow, buggy, and often unusable.

It remained so for years to follow, with only marginal improvements. Then came the hype about Version 4 and the Theme Builder. Same thing, except that the hype went on for a few years. Then, finally, Version 4 arrived and it was...meh. Surprisingly little in the way of customization options, especially navigation bars.

Meanwhile, Divi always remained awkward, slow, and buggy. Always with the exhortation to "just wait...as soon as we launch [insert promised new feature here] it's gonna be great!"

Fast forward to 2026. We have been hearing about Divi 5 - I kid you not - for around five years now. It's still in beta. And it's very buggy, slow to work with, clumsy, and nowhere near as good as using the default WordPress theme coupled with the Twentig and GenerateBlocks plugins.

Do NOT waste your (or your friends', colleagues', or clients') money, time, and effort. Just learn block editing. It's so much faster, simpler, and better. For example, the subpar Divi text editor STILL doesn't let you create internal links without technical knowledge. Yet, core WordPress has had that feature in its text editor for well over seven years. Furthermore, I can no longer save or reuse layouts I've created, as the Divi Library and Divi Cloud no longer work for me. And sometimes page images inexplicably won't display.

I could go on. Reach out if you want more details on problems I've had with the Divi WordPress theme.

Not that it's 100% bad. On the front end, pages load quickly enough for visitors and generally look good on mobile screens, with only minor tweaking. Once a site is set up, it's not terrible to maintain - if you don't mind waiting three times as long for the Divi editor to load as with the default WordPress one. And Elegant Themes' tech support is usually helpful and quick.

Plus, Moses did eventually get the Israelites to the promised land. It took 40 years, but he got them there.

Nonetheless, I only use Divi if I already have sites made in it. I don't recommend using it for anything new. Block themes are the future of WordPress, and Divi is not a block theme.

Just my humble opinion as someone who's been working extensively in WordPress for over 17 years.

Gee, that's thoughtful of you. You're swell.

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