As a Divi user, I know you have an incredible amount of power at your fingertips. The Divi Builder is a visual design powerhouse, capable of creating breathtaking pages and layouts with ease. But a question often arises, especially for new bloggers: should I use the Divi Builder for my blog posts, or is the default WordPress editor, Gutenberg, a better choice?
Related Reading: See my article on the Difference between posts and pages
While I find Divi perfect for building visually stunning pages, the consensus among many performance-focused developers (and even Elegant Themes themselves) is that for the day-to-day writing of blog posts, a different approach might be best.
In this article, I’ll break down the key differences and provide a clear recommendation so you can make the right choice for your blog.
Divi Builder vs. Gutenberg
I’ve been using Divi for almost 7 years and what I have learned through this time is that there is no concrete “one way” to do things. That said, as Divi has released updates over the years there are some takeaways and habits that have been gained.
I have given it some thought and after looking into the benefits, performance, and compatibility factors that influence which tool would be best to write blog posts. Here’s a breakdown of my thoughts:
1 Customization and Flexibility
When it comes to design, the Divi Builder is in a league of its own. It offers a powerful drag-and-drop experience with over 200 design modules, giving you complete control over every element without needing to write code. This includes advanced features like hover effects, responsive design settings, and dynamic content.
Divi also provides access to over 2,300 pre-made layouts and hundreds of complete website packs, which can significantly speed up the design process for your pages.
Gutenberg, by contrast, is a block-based editor that provides a more simple, structured way to create content. While it’s great for basic layouts, it lacks Divi’s advanced customization and professional templates.
2 Performance Comparison
For a blogger, speed is king. And this is where Gutenberg truly shines. As the default WordPress editor, Gutenberg is built to be lightweight and fast. It produces clean, efficient code with a minimal amount of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This directly translates to faster load times for your blog posts, which improves user experience and can give you a small but important boost in search engine rankings.
While Elegant Themes has made impressive strides in improving Divi’s performance, its extensive features mean it still generates more code. This is a trade-off for its unmatched flexibility. So, if you’re writing a simple, text-heavy post without needing complex design, Gutenberg will almost always be the faster option.
3 SEO and Plugin Compatibility
When it comes to the technical side of your blog, you don’t have to worry about compatibility. Both Divi and Gutenberg work seamlessly with popular SEO plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math. In fact, Divi even allows for real-time SEO optimization within its visual builder, which is a great bonus.
Similarly, both editors support a wide range of third-party plugins, making them versatile for various functionalities you might need as your blog grows.
The Right Tool for the Right Job
Based on these factors, here’s my recommended approach that gives you the best of both worlds:
I recommend using the Divi Builder for your website’s pages and templates.
Divi is truly unmatched when it comes to creating your site’s foundation. I believe it is the perfect tool for designing your Homepage, About page, Services page, and any other crucial, static pages that require a unique, visually stunning layout.
With Divi’s Theme Builder, you can even design beautiful custom templates for your blog posts, headers, and footers, ensuring a consistent and professional look across your entire site.
I recommend using Gutenberg for writing your blog posts.
For the content itself (ie: your blog articles) I strongly suggest using the default Gutenberg editor. Since your posts will be viewed by a wide audience, performance and a simple reading experience are key.
Gutenberg’s lightweight nature ensures your posts load quickly, providing a better user experience and a small but significant boost for your SEO rankings. This choice is especially suitable if you’re not planning to create a completely different structure for each post.
This is the ultimate Divi blog strategy: you build a stunning website foundation using the power and flexibility of the Divi Builder, and then you use the simplicity and speed of Gutenberg for the daily task of creating your most important asset: your content.
Leveraging Divi’s Theme Builder for Your Blog Posts
This hybrid approach works so well because of Divi’s powerful Theme Builder. Instead of using the Divi Builder to design each individual post, you can use the Theme Builder to create a single, beautiful template that automatically applies to all your blog posts. This template defines the post’s entire structure, including the header, sidebar, featured image, and even the layout for the post title and metadata.
The best part?
You can create all this visual magic once with the Divi Builder, and then simply write your content in Gutenberg without ever having to think about the design again. This ensures a consistent, professional-looking layout across your entire blog, while still allowing you to benefit from Gutenberg’s speed and simplicity for your day-to-day writing.
If you’d like to see exactly how this is done, I’ve put together a video tutorial for you to follow along with.
Final Thoughts
When deciding between Divi and Gutenberg for your posts, there’s no single “right” answer for everyone. However, by using Divi for your foundational pages and templates and Gutenberg for your daily posts, you can take advantage of Divi’s incredible design power while ensuring your blog’s content remains lightweight and high-performing. This hybrid approach allows you to build a beautiful, professional-looking website without sacrificing speed and simplicity where it matters most. It’s a strategy that gives you the best of both worlds: stunning design and solid performance.
