Divi Gallery Module and ACF

• KAirey

• February 18, 2020 at 6:49 am

It’s taken me a while but after many years of been more a web designer than coder, I decided it was time to move into custom fields and start the learning curve…

Hello ACF!

I have everything setup perfectly for inputting of data for a boat charter website, my issues revolve around building the output templates. I have all text based content in place but require some kind of image slider like you would see on a typical real estate website or in WooCommerce. Preferably a main image with a row of thumbnails and the main image changes when the thumbnail is clicked. Failing that a main image and a gallery beneath that opens in Lightbox.

I have used Divi for some time but seems like I have hit a brick wall with “simple” implementation of this element. I did find a post about having the Divi Gallery Module pull in the ACF gallery, but as others in the thread I couldn’t get it working. Divi also now has its own template builder, not sure if this is a plus or not in the case of ACF?

So any ideas on an idiots guide to this, I am in learning mode so its not an active project. I’d even dump Divi if that was everyones opinion, I also have a lifetime sub to Oxygen somewhere 🙂

If anyone has advice or could point me in the right direction it would be appreciated, I’ve exhausted myself today searching the internet and getting nowhere!

Regards
KEVIN

• prowebassist

• July 3, 2020 at 12:10 am

Hi Kevin,

Was searching for different stuff on the forum, but stumbled onto your post, so thought I’d give my 2c on the topic. Not even sure if you are still looking for input..

TLDR: definitely drop Divi & go with Oxygen. At the very least, it’s gonna make you a better web dev. Also, no matter what, you final website IS GUARANTEED be lighter, faster & more efficient with Oxygen than anything you can achieve with Divi. Oxygen also has integration with ACF and it’s handy (Divi has it too as you are aware), but it’s only useful for simple ACF field types. So I don’t use ACF integration features at all in Oxygen – I just use a raw PHP code block inside Oxygen (it’s a special core builder element) to define the EXACT HTML output I want, no matter what types of ACF fields I use: simple, dynamic/complex – it doesn’t matter, since I code how to retrieve & manipulate the data. Divi doesn’t let you do that. Oxygen does.

I’ve used Divi for years, so I know it inside and out. It’s a decent tool for marketers, who need to spit out quick landing pages without having to call their dev all the time. But it just doesn’t cut it for “real” websites, in my opinion. If you are gonna try to build anything remotely custom or tailored to your client, you are gonna end up jumping through so many hoops with Divi, that you might as well build the site from scratch.

With Oxygen, you are sort-of creating it from scratch to begin with, but it gives you complete creative freedom to build EXACTLY what you want. And, if you know what you are doing, it will result in a much cleaner, faster, more efficient website, that also feels bespoke to your client (combo of Oxygen + ACF + CPT UI/custom post types). You just can’t get that kind of quality out of Divi.

I also can’t believe how much faster my sites are now, when I’ve switched to Oxygen and away from Divi. It’s no joke. I couldn’t get these kinds of improvements with Divi, no matter what kind of server I had, optimisation I applied or caching plugin I’ve used. My bigger, more complex Oxygen sites run 10 times faster raw (i.e. un-optimised/un-cached), than my past small one-page Divi sites run with all compression/optimisation I could come up with. And that’s a really big deal. Google/SEO will reward you for that.

So, if you do it right with Oxygen, the resulting site will be just as good as a site that’s built completely from scratch using your own custom theme.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Alex

• KAirey

• July 3, 2020 at 1:16 am

Hi Alex!

Nice to get a reply after 5 months, not your fault but thanks for your comprehensive input!

You are totally correct in everything you say, I have been with Divi from the very beginning and it is time to learn a new tool/method. I have/had every intention of getting to grips with Oxygen but just don’t get the time.

I’m lucky to have worked throughout the COVID situation and did a test install of Oxygen and ACF and that’s as far as I got. Need to spend time on it as it is a different learning curve. Any links to good YouTube tutorials would be handy if you know of any….?

Thanks again!

KEVIN