Wandering around the internet you will see – no coding required – the best page builder in the world – truly drag and drop design – no need for a developer – no need to worry about hosting and no need to worry about security. Well…
Yeah, you guessed it – its all sales spiel – and I am not talking divi here – Weebly, Google, WIX, Shopify, Square Space, Elementor and all the instant gratification web design and hosting companies in the world are guilty of exactly the same spiel – exactly the same claims and, exactly the same results – broken hearts, broken web sites and in a lot of cases broken wallets that are screaming for a refund because – ‘It wasn’t as easy as you said it would be and I want my money back and I want it back now!’
All of the choices facing us whether we are hardened developers, Diyers or graphic designers looking to get into web design, offer a fantastic opportunity to get our businesses into a revenue stream – be that selling our services, web design or simply products and learning resources. But, its always best to read the manual first if you can – it makes the lives of support people easier, and your life less stressful.
The simple truth of the matter is that the web is a complex thing- (is that an oxymoron?)
Web hosting – in ALL the Divi and WordPress groups this is probably the most asked question – it comes in a variety of phrasing but it all amounts to the same question – what is the best hosting – now, without wanting to be rude – HOW LONG IS THAT PIECE OF STRING AGAIN?
Hosting is a minefield – Cheap generally means bad, mid range generally means badish, top range – generally means – good enough – there is no BEST hosting – it simply does not exist – there is better hosting and that is why we recommend WP ENGINE – it is better than most and frankly – they are good people too. We are moving our hosting soon – it may go to them – it may not – but it will certainly mean that our site performs better than it does currently (Phew). If you’re serious about your business aims – then get serious about hosting and stop using cheap hosting – expect to pay for what you need rather than what you think you need. If you think that an investment of a few cents/pence a day is going to provide your business with a stable and secure hosting environment with fantastic 24/7 support – it probably won’t.
Premium Child themes and plugins
We sell the above and we sell them well, our support is pretty good too – it could do with tightening up slightly sometimes but when you get thousands of orders a month, a few support queries get delayed for a few hours and there are some very rare occasions of a few days whilst waiting on a developer to provide the answer. – this can be due to things like dev’s on holiday or a deluge of orders because we did an offer or simply too many support tickets that ask the same question – so, in the absence of a support FAQ (we’re building one for the new site).
Here are our most common support queries with answers.
Q: How do I install WordPress
A: Please go here to find out how to install WordPress thru Cpanel and here through FTP
Q: How do I install Divi?
A: Elegant Themes do a great tutorial on this so here it is
Q: How do I use The Child theme with Divi – I can’t see how to edit pages
A: Please read the Divi usage instructions here – there are extensive documents on all the pages, posts,modules and sections – if you would like a deeper dive – please consider signing up for our Deep Dive into Divi where we go through everything you will ever need to build a Divi Site with no coding and the reasoning behind using certain modules, installing layouts and even give you 17 free layouts to experiment on. we will be adding a lesson on the front end page builder as soon as 3 has settled down a bit.
Q: The theme/plugin did not install because I see no Style.css –
A: Please unzip the file marked unzip first and then upload the file called whateverthefilesis.zip within the extracted file
Q: I don’t know how to unzip a file:
A: Please go here for advice on PC and Mac zip files
Q: I don’t know how to install a plugin
A: Please go here to read about how to install a plugin in wordpress
Q: I am trying to install a layout but it keeps hanging
A: See hosting above and you will probably need to increase your Memory limit for WordPress uploads
Q: My site won’t let me import XML files
A: See hosting above – this is probably a permissions issue with your server – if you do not know what that means – please go here
For the moment, I will stop there – as these are the MOST asked questions – however, we do have the excellent Divi Theme Users Group a community that is fast approaching 18,000 members and many other Facebook Groups, as well as Elegant Themes Support Forum- so if you really get stuck, ask in any of the groups.
Finally, it is a great idea to learn the fundamentals before you build any website on any platform – Michelle Nunan and ourselves have courses that will help you get the most out of Divi because that is our favorite theme – you knew that though, didn’t you :). And of course, there is always YouTube to help you learn for free and at your own pace. Good luck and most importantly of all, enjoy your experience whether you are building your website for you or others – its a great business to be in.
