Remember the old song by the great Stevie Wonder Signed, Sealed, Delivered I´m Yours?

On my post Divi Children or Engined users: Wait before updating to Divi 2.4 I said yesterday that I would release an updated version of Divi Children, hopefully in just some hours.

Well here it is, less than 24 hours after the official Divi 2.4 release: Divi Children 2.0.8 is ready for download at the Divi Children plugin page.

As I mentioned yesterday, this Divi Children update will not only make newly created child themes work with Divi 2.4, but it will also let you update your previously created child themes to make them compatible with the new version of Divi.

What is new in Divi Children 2.0.8?

If you´re looking for new Divi Children customizing features, you´re going to be disappointed. This is just a compatibility update, forced by the facts I explained on my previous post.

If you follow this blog you know that there are a lot of features waiting to be included in Divi Children. The exact number of features waiting to be included will now be the following: most of the features included in the Engined child theme less the ones that no longer make sense because they have already been included by ET in the Divi 2.4 update. But, as I said yesterday, Engined is a complex child theme and it´s going to take me longer, so my priority was to provide a new Divi Children update for all those sites that are using child themes created by Divi Children.

That means that everything that´s new in Divi Children 2.0.8 is under-the-hood work.

CSS output

The way Customizer CSS from the child theme is sent to output has been changed, so now it takes precedence over the output from Divi 2.4 settings. This was needed because otherwise the new Divi code would override child theme settings and most of the customization done via the Customizer child theme sections would not work.

You should be aware of this change because some settings are now redundant, so in some cases you might think something is going wrong.

Let me give you an example: If you´ve customized your Footer Bottom text size to 15px (in the Divi Child – Footer Bottom section of the Customizer), you won´t be able to change it to 14px using the Font Size setting of the Divi 4.2 Bottom Bar Customizer section (inside the Footer panel).

General Settings

All the Customizer settings sections that deal with general parts of your site, like Main Footer, Footer Bottom, Footer Credits, Main Sidebar or Post Meta Data, have been updated to work with Divi 2.4.

Here you also need to be aware about the fact that some settings are going to be redundant with Divi 2.4 settings, so the same warning I made above applies.

Custom Modules

Divi modules that have been customized using the Divi Children Custom Code custom selectors will also work with Divi 2.4.

In general, the child theme settings will take precedence, providing you didn´t modify the new Divi 2.4 Advanced Settings of the customized module in the Divi Builder and left those settings with the default values.

Magic Codes

Divi Children Magic Codes were intended to modify not the styling but the functionality of Divi modules. However, the existing Magic Codes are not longer needed because the functionality provided by the ones for the Blog modules can now be handled by the Offset setting in the Divi Blog module, and the much needed option for the CTAs links to open in a new browser tab (that was provided via the cta_outbound_link Magic Code) has finally been added by ET to the CTA module in Divi 2.4.

Nevertheless, I wanted to make sure that any existing site running on a child theme created with an earlier version of Divi Children worked alright for you without the need to modify settings. So I´ve included extensions for the new OOP module classes to make sure your Magic Codes will still work in case you´ve used any of them in your site.

Sections with Custom Rows

Ok, this is the only thing I haven´t updated. You´ll notice I´ve kept the Divi Children Custom Code for custom sections and I´ve also left the corresponding output code, but this is a feature that is bound for extinction. Why? Because the functionalities provided by the new Divi 2.4 structure for sections and rows are far superior to anything you might accomplish with this Divi Children feature.

Also, I´d originally included it because Divi was missing something that was quite important in my opinion: rows couldn´t be customized in the previous versions of Divi, they  didn´t even have settings for it!

But now with Divi 2.4 you´ll find interesting settings to customize your rows. And not only backgrounds or paddings as I was trying to provide via Divi Children settings, but also some other things like the new gutter settings.

So, in case you´ve used any Section with Custom Rows Divi Children settings in your site, you´ll need to go and check whether they´re working as you expected or not, and you might need to edit some Divi section and/or row settings to make sure everything is looking fine. Sorry about it, but it just didn´t make any sense trying to keep any compatibility in this area.

Parent styles are now enqueued instead of imported in the child stylesheet

Apart from compatibility modifications, I also took this opportunity to include something that I had already done in Engined but wasn´t updated in Divi Children yet:

New child themes created by Divi Children 2.0.8 will no longer load the Divi parent stylesheet via the @import rule in the child stylesheet (a method that is no longer considered best practice) but enqueued via a new hooked function in the child theme functions.php file.

So this is something new but, like I said, also under-the-hood work.

Please be careful when you update

At any rate, please backup your site before you update. I´ve tried to check everything out but I didn´t have much time to do it because I wanted you to be able to update to Divi 2.4 as soon as possible.

Be also aware about the fact that even some CSS child theme modifications added by yourself could create problems or not work at all when you update Divi, it´s happening to some people.

Updating to Divi Children 2.0.8

The new 2.0.8 version is already available for download. Just follow the instructions for updating it if you have a previous version of the plugin installed in your site.

Updating your existing child themes

The Divi Children 2.0.8 plugin admin files have also been updated to allow automatic updating of existing child themes created by previous versions of Divi Children.

If you want to update your child theme, just follow this steps:

  • Update Divi Children to 2.0.8.
  • Go to Appearance > Divi Children to open the main plugin page.
  • Open the Install or Update Divi Children Engine tab.
  • Select the child theme you want to update and follow the instructions.

 

Luis Alejandre
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