Do you have to worry about the code Divi Builder leaves if you remove it, change themes, or uninstall it?
Ever since Chris Lema wrote the post If You Use Divi Theme with WordPress, It better be Forever, there’s been a lot of talk about messy code that the Divi Builder is purported to leave if you uninstall it within the WordPress community.
There’ve been a few others who wrote about this later (including Nick Roach’s response to Chris’s post above). Plus, there have also been comparisons between Divi and Elementor, Beaver Builder, and others.
Note: At the moment (2023), I am now using GeneratePress for the theme you are looking at (and not Divi). The short answer is this:
- Divi leaves code within your posts and pages that contain “divi specific” short codes. If you are changing themes, quickly go through your posts and pages to see if there’s any leftover code that’s ultra specific to Divi.
- Themes and plugins will stay in your hosting databases and file managers (unless you properly uninstall themes and plugins — this is the same for every WordPress theme and plugin).
- There’s no other code bloat or leftover code if you wish to uninstall Divi and use something else.
Most of the posts — the opinions and views — are all about how Divi leaves messy code behind if and when change your WordPress theme.
My view is going to be slightly different. It’s not even about Divi or how it leaves you with crappy code behind.
It’s something else.
The question is this: Why do you ever want to change the theme? Why do want to uninstall Divi builder plugin or the Divi theme? What are you going to achieve with that?
Let’s say you do want to change your theme. If yes, be prepared for some grunt work, housekeeping, and some cleaning up after.
Having said that, here’s a alternate look at what you should be thinking about instead:
Stop Wasting Time Comparing WordPress Builders
These comparisons you read and the investments you’d make, the experiments you do, and the sinful time you waste just trying out different WordPress page builders are not justified.
No one cares about your website (and mine). You’d certainly do well to worry about the hosting for your WordPress site.
Worry about design. Worry about hosting. Worry about how you’d make your design work for your business (as it getting leads and sales).
The effort should go into doing digital marketing. You have a lot to write. You have content to produce. You have continuous work laid out for you.
How will you justify spending all this time for these comparisons?
Divi is fantastic, comes with lifetime updates, and costs you money only once. Buy it for life.
The total cost of buying both Divi and Elementor is a fraction of all this time (and opportunity cost you’d otherwise waste).
Changing WordPress Themes: Don’t waste your time
I personally just happen to know the never-ending bucket of work that’s involved for a non-WordPress person (like me) to make any changes to our websites.
Changing themes happens to be the most useless endeavor you’d ever do as a business person. It just doesn’t make any sense to change themes (just because they are available).
Bobs Habbs of Elegant Marketplace clearly writes (from a WordPress Dev perspective), that you’d normally not change themes for your WordPress websites.
“Simply changing your website theme from one theme to another will naturally cause issues if your original theme is feature-rich and you’ve taken advantage of that.
But approaching a switch in theme with a little common sense and a clear head should enable you to easily identify those elements that can be copied and pasted to the redesigned site; and those elements that are embedded in the theme and cannot be ported. ”
From a marketing perspective, the only valid reason for changing themes is if and when your existing theme is complete trash.
The Divi theme might not be for everyone, but it doesn’t mean that it’s bad. With the Divi builder and Divi theme combo, you could start from basics and build absolutely any kind of a design you want.
Divi For eCommerce
Did you know that Divi offers infinite customizability, stability, security, and speeds for eCommerce stores as well? Divi is perfect for eCommerce
Starting from the flagship Divi theme — and going all the way through any of the WooCommerce-specific themes, Divi Layouts, and the Divi Marketplace — you get access to numerous possibilities on how you want your Divi-based eCommerce store foundation to look like.
Back it up some with excellent eCommerce hosting (such as Kinsta or WPEngine) and then bring in the Divi goodness regardless of the theme you use. Divi Visual builder works on any WooCommerce theme, including the default WooCommerce theme.
With Divi Builder, Customization is Infinite
For now, let’s assume that you are either using the Divi Theme with the Divi builder plugin or some other WordPress theme and the Divi builder plugin.
Let’s also assume that your website is completely built and you are already using it as such.
If so, there are lots of times when you’d need to add new pages, design your blog posts differently, create landing pages, create new pages, and make customizations to your existing WordPress website.
You could do all of that (and even more if you are blessed with skills) without ever changing the actual Divi theme itself. The Divi builder ( as on 2018) can do a lot.
With the Divi setup now, you get scores of ready-to-grab website templates (like for restaurants, coffee shops, businesses, technology, blogs, and more). The team at Divi has been rolling out update after update in the last few years, and Divi is currently the fastest when it comes to page load speeds.
You get speed. You can easily customize or design. You have regular updates coming in all the time, and you have everything you need.
All this time spent trying to compare WordPress themes, DIY WordPress page builders is not justified. This effort, research, and time is better spent doing marketing.
You know what I mean? Let me know how Divi is working out for you.
Tell me all about it on Twitter, LinkedIn, or my LinkedIn Brand page.
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