Divi Theme Options: focus on the General tab

This is the first time you have installed the Divi theme and you are wondering how to set it up? Perfect, you've come to the right place. In this article we will review all the options of the GENERAL tab of the Divi theme.

This way you will be able to understand what these options correspond to and how to choose them so that your site is in line with your project.

As the DIVI OPTIONS are detailed through many tabs, you will be able to navigate through the a series of articles dedicated to him.

But for now, let's look in detail at the General tab (the general settings).

Here is the program of this article:

1. The Divi theme options: how does it work?
2. What are the options of the General tab of the Divi theme?
3. The other options for setting up the theme

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1 - The Divi theme options: how does it work?

Once you have installed and enabled the Divi theme on your WordPress sitea new element will appear at the bottom of the left sidebar of your site administration, named "Divi".

When you move the mouse over this tab, sub-elements appear whose tab "theme options".

If you click on this tab, you will arrive on a screen with Divi's colors which will propose you many elements to configure.

We will start with the GENERAL tab:

Let's take a closer look....

2 - What are the options of the General tab of the Divi theme?

To keep the screenshots not too loaded, I cut the content of the options in the General tab into 3 parts.

Discover all you can do with the Divi theme

2.1 - General Tab - Part 1

1 - Logo

This is where you can download your website logo.

By clicking on "Put online"you will be able to access your library and choose your logo.

If your media library does not yet contain your logo, you can upload it from your computer (from the "send files" tab).

2 - Fixed navigation bar

By default, the fixed navigation bar is enabled, if you disable this option, your main menu - located at the top of the screen - will only appear when the visitor descends further down your page (to the scroll).

Follow this tutorial if you want to set your menu completely to scroll.

3 - Activate the Divi gallery

All WordPress sites can display an image gallery but the Divi theme suggests that you replace the default WordPress style with its own style. To do this, it will be sufficient to activate this option.

4 - Default color palette

When you work on a web project, you have color codes to respect and this option allows you to pre-define up to 8 colors.

This is very interesting since you will be able to use them easily throughout your site, each time the Divi Builder suggests you choose a color.

Be sure to enter the values of the colors you use when installing Divi, you will save a lot of time during the design of your web designs.

5 - Enter the first image of the article

Here is another important option.

If this option is enabled, the "featured image" of each item will be replaced by the first image contained in your item.

If you disable this option, the thumbnail of your article will match the "headline image" you are downloading via the "highlighted image" field located at the bottom right of each WordPress article.

If you wish to use several images of highlighting, follow this tutorial.

6 - Blog style mode

It's a funny translation, I'll give you that...

In fact, this option should not be enabled for SEO (natural referencing) questions.

Divi uses the excerpts from your articles but if you prefer to display the entire content of your articles (in the archives, the blog page etc.) then you will need to activate it (I insist, it's not SEO-Friendly).

7 - Sidebar Layout and shop template

From these two options, you can choose the location of your blog and shop sidebar.

You will then decide to make it appear on the right or left.

If you wish to get a fixed sidebar, follow this tutorial.

8 / 9 - API and Script key of Google Map

If you use a Google developer account for your maps (Google Map), you can enter your API key here and decide to queue the scripts for improve the performance of your site.

10 - Using Google fonts

This option is enabled by default. It allows you to use all Google Font directly from the Divi Builder.

If you don't want to use Google Fonts to improve performance and keep your players' privacy, you can disable it.

2.2 - General Tab - Part 2

11 - Social network icons

For each social network, you can decide to display its icon at the bottom of your site.

By default, only 5 icons are available: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and RSS Feed.

If you need more icons, you will need to code it manually in a child theme => read this article to add new icons in the footer.

12 - Social network URLs

Depending on the icons you have activated in the previous step, you will have to enter the corresponding URLs.

Concerning the RSS feed of your site, you can enter the following address: https://mon-site.com/feed

13 - The number of posts per archive

Archive pages are pages automatically generated by WordPress.

Whether it is the archives of your e-commerce products, the category archives, the search page or the label archives, Divi offers you to set page by page the number of items to display.

For a SEO question, it is advisable not to restrict this number too much.

Feel free to display 50, 100 or even 100 items per archive. This will prevent robots from indexing too many subpages.

It is one of the Tips to make Divi SEO-Friendly.

2.3 - General Tab - Part 3

14 - Date format

Here you can define the format of the date of your articles.

This date is displayed everywhere on your blog (in the metas the article, in the excerpt etc.).

The default format is M j,Y which gives us Jan 2, 2018. If you choose the format j F F Y Y it will give you January 2, 2018.

If you prefer other formats, I invite you to visit this page dedicated to date formats.

15 - Use of extracts

If you disable this option, your extracts will not be used.

To find out where you need to enter excerpts from your articles, be sure to enable a WordPress option when you are in the edition of an article.

At the top of your screen, on the right, there is a small tab called "screen options". Open it and check "extract".

From that moment on, all your articles will display a new field to enter the extract, watch this video instead...

16 - Reactive short codes

Enabling the "reactive shortcodes" option allows you to display shortcode elements in a responsive way, i.e. adaptable to all screens.

17 - Google Fonts subset

This feature enables Google fonts for languages other than English.

18 - Return to top of page

This is the option to activate or deactivate the small button located at the bottom right of your site and allowing you to easily and quickly move up to the top of the page.

19 - Fluid scrolling

I'm not sure if this option is important, it would allow a more fluid scrolling when scrolling with the mouse... To see!

20 - Disable translations

You can disable this option if you want to use the theme interface in English because you find that Divi is mistranslated.

21 - Responsive Image

This option adds a srcset attribute to your images when importing. This attribute is recommended by CSS3 to make your images adaptable to all screen sizes.

Without this active option, your images should still be responsible.

22 - Minimize JavaScript and CSS

These options allow you to minimize and combine some JavaScript and CSS files to improve the performance of your site.

This is the kind of option offered by a cache plugin like WP Rocket for example.

For your information: MINIFICATION removes all spaces and line breaks contained in a file, whether it is a CSS or JS file.

It has been recognized that minification improves the loading time of a site by a few seconds, so it improves performance.

If you are using a cache plugin, do not check this option.

23 - Customizing CSS

This field is nothing more or less than a reflection of the WordPress option available from the tab Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS.

To customize your Divi theme, you will need it regularly. Sometimes, if the changes you want to make to Divi are simple, you won't need to create a child theme and this option will be sufficient.

24 - Save

Once you have set up this first tab, don't forget to save your changes.

If a small PopUp appears from your browser, asking you to update your password, select "do not save". This will avoid password conflicts.

3 - The other options for setting up the theme

Nothing was very complicated in this tab and anyway, there is no good or bad settingsall this is subjective.

Why then, I wanted to write this series of articles dedicated to the options available in the Divi theme?

Simply because there is a beginning to everything and we do not all have the same knowledge of websites and jargon.

So I hope these articles can be useful to the most novice of us!

Go to the other articles in the series to continue the configuration of your site with Divi:

• How to set the General tab of the Divi theme? (you are on this article)
• How to set up the parameters the Navigation tab of the Divi theme ? 
• How to set up the parameters the Creator tab of the Divi theme
• How to set up the parameters the Layout tab of the Divi theme ?
• How to set up the parameters the Advertising tab of the Divi theme ?
• How to set up the parameters the SEO tab of the Divi theme ?
• How to set up the parameters the Integration tab and Updates tab of the Divi theme ?

Need more resources on Divi? Visit ElegantThemes' blog full of ideas and tutorials!