I know I may be spoiling some of the great features Elegant Themes announced last week for Divi 2.4. If you noticed, they are integrating new options and settings into the WordPress Customizer (which was not announced in their previous Divi 2.4 sneak peek).

Well, that´s the direction I decided to aim months ago. I believe the Customizer is the right place to include custom settings, as it name implies. It gives you the chance to preview your changes at the same time you´re making them.

So, since Divi 2.4 will also spoil some of the features I´m introducing today, I finally decided to hold the release of the new generation of the Divi Children plugin until I see how different Divi 2.4 will be from the current version, but to release the Engined child theme nevertheless.

What is Engined?

As I said in my previous post, Engined is a Divi child theme that comes packed with options to make customizing your Divi site a breeze. In fact, on the title of that post I said that Engined is the most customizable Divi child theme because I really think it is, and I´m sure you´ll agree as soon as you start playing with its more than 500 different settings in the Customizer.

engined-divi-child-theme-panels

I did a lot of coding, so you don´t need to do any coding at all for all the included customization features. Engined includes a new generation of the Divi Children Engine that powers the child themes created by the Divi Children plugin, and this “customization engine” takes care of hundreds of options.

With Engined you won´t need to deal with a single line of code to customize a lot of things in your Divi site, like:

  • Want to hide your header on homepage load and make it appear when your visitor scrolls down? just tick a checkbox.
  • Want to change the size of your h1 titles? just set the desired font size size by means of a slider control.
  • Want to change the number of footer columns or even make them asymmetrical with different width ratios? just select the appropriate layout image with a click of your mouse.
  • Want to add social icons not included in Divi? just select the new social service and type the url in a textbox, and you can also tick on a checkbox it you want it to open in a new browser tab.
  • Want to change the height of (any of) your sliders?  just move the handle of a slider control to the desired value.
  • Want to customize your buttons? just choose which ones, and then start playing with a lot of easy settings while you see your buttons changing.
  • And so on, and so on.

engined-divi-child-theme-general_settings

Does all this sound like heaven to your ears? Well I´ve got even better news:

Engined is free

If you were to use a child theme packed with options to easily customize Divi client sites in minutes without having to care about coding, how much would you pay for it? Stop calculating and give your brain a break: you can have it for free.

Just download the theme package from the Engined page, install it in your Divi site, activate it, and start playing with it.

If you like it, I only ask you to share it and help spread the word.

And if you really like it, or if it helps you save time and make money because you use it successfully for client sites, I would appreciate a little donation. But it´s up to you, you don´t need to pay anything for it and you can use it as you wish, on any number of sites.

Engined has too many features to be explained here

I first thought about introducing and explaining many of the features included in Engined on this release post, but then I realized it would take too long.

So I´ve prepared a page with just some quick instructions on Getting started with Engined. You can read that, get your copy of Engined and start discovering all its features as you play with the child theme via the Customizer.

I´m also preparing a special Engine Demo sub-site. At the moment it just includes some pages to help you see what you can achieve with Engined regarding custom buttons, custom and main sidebars, custom sliders, single posts or the blog module. I´ll be adding more pages to this Engined Demo, but I didn´t feel like delaying the release of Engined any longer only because the demo was not complete yet.

I will also be publishing on this blog some tutorials on customizing different parts of your Divi site with Engined, so make sure you subscribe to the blog if you haven´t done it yet.

Engined is fast

If you think that having so many options in a theme can make your site slower, you´re right. And that was something that worried me a lot for some time. Until I devised a solution for it, the Engined Output Mode:

engined-divi-child-theme-output_mode

Once you´re done with the development of your site you can go to the Engined Output Mode section, set the mode to Production Mode and click on the checkbox to save all your current settings.

Your site will run much faster because from that moment on (until you eventually set the output mode back to Development Mode in order to costumize something else) the Engined code will stop querying the database to retrieve all your settings, and all your customized saved CSS will be sent to output at once instead.

That means that, no matter how many options I´ve included in Engined, or how many more I may add in the future, your site will always be working as fast as you expected it to work, with a very minimal impact over the default Divi speed.

Engined is easy to use

Although it includes so many features, everybody who´s tested Engined has found it very easy to use.

By the way, I want to take this opportunity to thank all the people who volunteered to take Engined for a test drive and who provided me with valuable feedback. Some bugs discovered by them have been fixed for the release version I´m making available today. But, given the amount of different settings and coding involved in Engined, there can still be some remaining minor issues which I would appreciate being reported back in case you find anything that is not behaving just fine.

All you need to begin enjoying Engined right now is:

  • Read the basic instructions on getting started with Engined.
  • Take a look at the Engined Demo to get an idea of the things you can achieve with Engined.
  • Download Engined.
  • Install and activate the child theme.
  • Open the WordPress Customizer and start having fun while you customize your site.

I´ll keep you informed on more details in future posts about Engined. Meanwhile, please let me know about your experience with Engined through the comments.

Luis Alejandre
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