We want to improve the integration between Toolset and Divi

   Dario

Announcements

May 18, 2017
45

Recently, we asked you how it was going for you with our Divi Integration plugin. As a conclusion, we can say that we need to enhance the integration and solve some technical issues. We are actively working on it but we need you to tell us in the comments of this post if we are going in the right direction.

Toolset will not take over the full page of your site anymore. We propose to let you use Toolset only when you need it.

There will be no more parent layout. Toolset will cover only the ‘content area’ of the page. The envelope, including the header and the footer, will remain 100% controllable and manageable by the Divi builder:

Toolset and Divi integration
Design a page using the Divi Builder

We propose to create default Template Layouts for WooCommerce and some ‘empty’ Template Layouts designed to be populated with your own Custom Post Types. You will get Toolset benefits without disrupting your settings from Divi Theme Options and Divi Theme Customizer:

Use Toolset to build a layout for Custom Post Types Add this Custom Content to your Divi Page
Toolset and Divi integration

 

Note: We keep the custom row types and cells from the current integration so you can still design your own layouts if you need to. We know this may come handy for building a specific landing page without the menu for instance.

Beyond the basic (and trivial) integration

These first steps are intended to let you use Divi and Toolset in a reasonable way and not as a challenge. We know that the ideal integration includes custom Toolset cells inside the Divi builder.

We’d like to first implement a quick solution that removes the show-stopper problems. We aim to have this very quickly. Then, when Divi and Toolset are convenient to use together, we’ll be happy to talk with the folks from Elegant Themes about tighter integration.

 

Comments 45 Responses

  2. Sounds great for me too. I haven’t used Toolset for a while now, but we have an open project which will continue soon, so these plans sound good to me. My difficulties were always to get the same header and footer with all the divi-options. So this problem seems solved with your new solution.

    Thanks for your effort and work!

  4. The power of Divi is the use of modules to build layouts. The ability to create custom modules in views would be really helpful so that display blocks can be added via the page builder. It would allow us to overcome Divi’s limitation which is that the modules can never have all the variations you want. In fact I would say this would be key to making toolset indispensible for most Divi builders.

    The limiting to the content area is very important. Having to rebuild headers, sidebars and footers is really frustrating and prevents me from using Toolset with Divi currently.

    • Yes, it took us a while to get it, but now we see. We’ll get this update very soon.

      • COMPLETELY AGREE! If I could create custom modules that tapped into Custom Post types? I could do magic with WordPress unlike anything I’ve seen…

    • Yep, this is exactly what is needed, I don’t use WP Types for the same reason as Dan’s.

      I would like to keep the divi builder to build the page layout, and, wherever needed, embed a custom module made using WP Types. A bit like you embed a contact form 7 by placing a shortcode.

      If WPtype could produce a shotcode to embed any custom built content, that would be awesome

  5. Great News !! – Toolset for intelligent handling of customized Data Structure & DIVI for Layout and Design… Thanks for pushing things further…

  6. I think it would be nice to get Toolset benefits without disrupting our settings from Divi Theme Options and Divi Theme Customizer. However, does that mean that we won’t have the ability to create parent Layouts anymore?
    I hope there will still be an option for that. Otherwise, how will it work with our currents projects that include them?

    • Hi! Very good question. Don’t worry, nothing will change for your existing projects.
      What we plan to do in the next version is to actually give you the possibility to easily switch between the 2 modes:
      – Either you use the “content only” integration, as explained in this post
      – Either you keep the “full integration” mode

      It will be entirely up to you.

      • Thank you so much for your answer Marine. Awesome news! So if I understand correctly, you had already integrated the ability to include the content of a post or page into a layout and now you do some reverse engineering and you bring back the content of a layout to the content of the page or post! Am I right?

        • You will have the choice to manually switch between these two modes. We still keep the Divi cells and rows, in case of you want to create your own design with Layouts. I’m preparing a documentation about it, I’ll share it with everyone once the update (integrating Toolset custom content to the Divi Page) is made. Does this help?

  7. This sounds wonderful. I use Types & Views a lot with Divi but I’ve never really used Layouts as I’ve always found it frustrating. Can’t wait to play around with this!

  8. Sounds like a definite move forward. I ended up not using Divi at all because of some challenges I found. The main hurdle for me is the integration of Divi and Bootstrap with Toolset (for which for many of using Bootstrap is a great addition). However, Divi overrides Bootstrap by inserting its own layout and ends up pinching bootstrap (particularly bootstrap cards) on mobile to the point of is no longer of any use. I am hoping that during this period Bootstrap and Divi integration will be given as much thought as Toolset integration as you have taken a lot of time and effort to provide Bootstrap for us to use with Toolset. There is a thread with regards to this here:

    https://toolset.com/forums/topic/divi-squeezing-bootstrap-items-on-mobile/

  10. Now this sounds like a great plan 🙂

    Hopefully the CRED Form insert button will finally work in the Divi Editor too;-)

    • Yes, this got fixed in the development version and it will be released early next week.

  11. It would be more practical if divi wasn’t necessary to use.
    In toolset layouts you have all most the same possibility’s as with the divi builder. Only divi has some handy modules like an accordion, buttons etc. and handy page styling. Wouldn’t it be great if toolset could do that.

    • Divi ist easy to handle finetuned great Design/Layout and Toolset the perfect Engine for Input and Output. So this great news are the right way to combine both!

  13. Wonderful!!!!!!!!

    Seeing this just made my day 🙂

    This is soo great! I just finished a project using toolset and Divi, and it was a painful one. Thank you. With Divi being the most popular WP theme out there, tighter integration will be super beneficial!

  14. I didn’t have time to complete the survey but I’m glad to see some people had the same thoughts. I’ve started on only my second WP site so I’m already tackling a steep learning curve and the Divi integration really added unneeded complexity by attempting to control areas of the page outside of the content and introducing parent/child templates right off the bat. When I saw this, I didn’t know what settings would be handled by Divi vs Toolset and this scared me off so I did a complete reinstall of WP just to fully get rid of the Divi integration.

    I’m not sure if this is what you mean when you say you’ll talk to Elegant Themes in the future, but I would love to stay in Divi’s Backend Builder and Visual Builder as much as possible instead of using Layouts. My dream is for Divi to handle all the designing and layout for views and templates (with the help of custom sections and modules by Toolset WITHIN the Divi builders) and for Toolset to handle all the plumbing allowing custom fields, loops, search etc to be used within Divi pages and modules. Of course we still need to keep the ability to create Views and Templates etc out of pure HTML code as there are designs and layouts that Divi’s builders cannot create.

    I just may not be grasping the Divi integration as it currently stands, but I see very little Divi in the integration. Unless someone can help clarify how the current Divi integration is beneficial and where I can learn to take advantage of it, I’ll probably ignore both the Layouts and Divi Integration plugins until I see an actual integration within the Divi builder environment.

    But thanks, I think you’re now heading in the right direction. Keep it up!

    • Yes, that’s what we’d like to see too. We’re checking how to use Toolset for the backend and allow themes that have great page builders to handle all the design.

    • The Divi integration, in its updated form, is mostly intended to iron-out little glitches between Toolset and the Divi front-end editor. Have you seen such issues with Themify Builder?

      • My bad. I thought it was some sort of builder-based enhancement that other builders could benefit from. Aside from some occasional weird duplications in posts when using content templates, I haven’t noticed major incompatibilities.

  22. I was very put off by the initial release that took over the Divi page settings. That was right after I paid for lifetime license. I convinced myself that was yet another bad investment call… Then came this timely update! Good save!

    I just hope it will also let us build layouts using Divi’s page builder, I find it very hard to live without being able to build complex grids without writing a code.

    • This initial release will just separate between what Divi does and what Toolset does, so that you can use all the features in Divi without Toolset interfering. In the future, we want to allow designing templates with the Divi builder. This requires a much deeper integration with Divi and we will need the active involvement of Elegant Themes to do it. If you (and many more clients) tell ET that you want it, there’s a greater chance they would go into this project with us.

  23. This is great news. You’ve describes Divi-Toolset integration exactly as I’ve imagined it. Thanks for putting in the effort to listen and for your commitment to getting it right.

  26. Best news I’ve heard all year, keep up the great work!!! Looking forward to the future..