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Overcoming page builder update headaches

Ben Scheribel

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Dec. 9, 2021

WordPress page builders are great for quick and easy website development. They are beneficial for those unfamiliar with HTML and CSS code. Page builders allow users with little knowledge of web development to create a website.

However, one problem with page builders is that issues can come up when they need to be updated. These issues can range from minor display problems to completely breaking the entire site or even making it impossible to update content.

Unfortunately, one of our clients was experiencing this problem. They had a site that used a page builder called Divi. In this case, the Divi theme had not been updated in over four years. This was causing incompatibility problems between the WordPress core version and the version of Divi. This mismatch in the two software pieces did not allow the Divi builder to load, and therefore the client was unable to update the content.

We performed the necessary updates onto a temporary copy of the website in order to safely test the updates. After this step was completed, even more headaches showed up. Ugh!

The new issues had to do with the custom code being added to the parent Divi theme instead of the child theme. For those unfamiliar, a parent theme is a master theme with all the files that a WordPress site needs. A child theme is used to write custom code and overwrite what the parent theme is doing. If you do not use a child theme for your custom code, you will lose all your changes once the parent theme is updated.

We created a new child theme to fix this issue and then copied the necessary custom code from the parent theme. Then our programmers made the necessary changes to get the site back up and running. After that the content was able to be updated.

If you are experiencing CSS issues, JavaScript errors, or other problems with your website, please contact us. We would be happy to help you fix whatever issues you are experiencing. To see more examples of how we have helped our clients, please check out our web development page.