Upgrading from Divi 4 to Divi 5 is an exciting step, but it’s something you should approach carefully, especially if your website relies on customizations or third-party Divi extensions.

Before upgrading your live site to Divi 5, it’s best to test the migration process in a controlled environment. By following this guide you’ll get hands-on experience with Divi 5 migration without putting your existing projects at risk.

In this guide, we’ll install Divi 4 on a fresh WordPress installation, generate test content using Divi Quick Sites, and then upgrade the site to Divi 5. After running the Divi 5 compatibility check and migrating the content, we’ll review the results and demonstrate how to roll back to Divi 4 if needed.

Table of Contents

1. Start With a Fresh WordPress Install
2. Step 1. Install Divi 4
3. Step 2: Generate the Website Using Divi Quick Sites
4. Step 3: Backup Divi 4 Site
5. Step 4: Upgrade to Divi 5
6. Step 5: Migrate Divi 4 Site To Divi 5
7. Step 6: Edit Pages To Test Divi 5 Page Builder
8. Step 7: Roll Back to Divi 4
9. Wrapping Up

Start With a Fresh WordPress Install

Before testing the upgrade to Divi 5, make sure you’re working with a fresh WordPress installation, either locally or on a staging site.

For this tutorial, I’ll be working locally, but a staging site will work just as well.

If you don’t already have a fresh WordPress installation, set that up first. I won’t be covering the WordPress installation process here, as it’s outside the scope of this tutorial. If you need help you can follow this guide on learn.wordpress.org. Then return here to continue with the tutorial.

Step 1. Install Divi 4

Now that we have WordPress ready, let’s install Divi 4. First, download the latest version of Divi 4 from your Elegant Themes account.

Once you have the theme file, navigate to Appearance → Themes in your WordPress dashboard, click the Add Theme button, upload the theme ZIP file you just downloaded, and click Install Now to install it.

After the installation is complete, activate the theme, and you’ll be redirected to the Divi → Dashboard page. There you will be asked to log in to activate your license which you will need later for enabling Divi 5 updates path.

Click the Login To Activate Your License button and use your ET account credentials to activate your license.

After activating your license yow will see the Enable Divi 5 Updates button which you will need to click in order to opt in to Divi 5 updates.

Enabling Divi 5 updates will show that a newer version of Divi is available, which in our case is v5.0.1.

But we will not update to Divi 5 yet since we first need to create some Divi 4 content so that we can test the migration to Divi 5 later.

As you can see in the Divi Overview section, the site has no content yet.

So, let’s move on to the next step: setting up your test site using the Divi Quick Sites to generate content quickly and easily.

Step 2. Generate the Website Using Divi Quick Sites

To generate the site click the Generate A New Site button in the Divi Quick Sites section on the Divi → Dashboard page.

On the next screen you’ll be given two options:

1. Use Pre-Made Starter Site
2. Generate Your Site With AI

For our testing purposes, we’ll select the Use a Pre-Made Starter Site option. This option is much faster since it doesn’t require us to describe the site we want to generate, and it provides immediate content to work with. This allows us to start testing Divi 5 without any delays.

So, click the Select a Website Template button to pick a pre-made starter site.

This will redirect you to the page where you can customize your site and select the specific pages you’d like to include from the starter site, and also add more pages if you need.

I recommend selecting all the pages of our starter site to ensure we have plenty of content to work with.

However, you’re free to choose only the pages that interest you. Once you’ve made your selections, click the Generate & Publish My Website button to proceed.

The site will be generated in just in a few moments. All created pages and Theme Builder templates will be listed on the Your Site Is Ready screen.

Check the frontend

Once the site is generated click the View My Site button to visit the frontend of your site.

Check how everything looks, ensuring that all the pages and content are displayed correctly.

This step is important to confirm that everything is in order before we move on to the migration to Divi 5.

Step 3. Backup Divi 4 Site

Divi 5 automatically stores a backup of your Divi 4 site content during migration process, in case you need to roll back later. But I’d still recommend taking additional full site backups, just in case.

Since we’re testing a dummy site locally, we won’t be doing that before migrating to Divi 5 in this scenario.

So, for our purposes, you can skip the manual backup step for now.

However, when you will be migrating your live site(s) to Divi 5 later on, I highly recommend you to take a full site backup before starting the migration.

You can do this using backup plugins like Solid Backups or UpdraftPlus, or directly through your hosting account.

Here are some helpful guides for taking your site backups with hosting providers recommended by Elegant Themes:

1. Backups on Flywheel
2. How to Manually Backup Your Site in Pressable
3. How to Backup a Specific Application (Cloudways)
4. How to Back Up WordPress (SiteGround)

Now, let’s move on to the next step: upgrading to Divi 5.

Step 4. Upgrade to Divi 5

You can upgrade to Divi 5 in two ways: install the theme file manually or by updating it through the admin dashboard.

If you prefer the manual method, go to your Elegant Themes account, download the Divi 5 theme file, and install it the same way as before, replacing the currently active Divi 4 theme.

However, we’ll do it through the admin dashboard since we’ve already switched to the Divi 5 upgrade path and are now receiving Divi 5 updates.

So, go to Dashboard → Updates to check for Divi updates. You can also click the Check for Updates button on the Divi → Dashboard page, which will redirect you to the same WordPress Updates page.

Select Divi and click the Update Themes button to update to Divi 5.

After the update is complete, go to the Themes page and you’ll see that Divi 4 has been replaced with Divi 5. Now we can move forward with migrating the content from Divi 4 to Divi 5.

Step 5. Migrate Divi 4 Site To Divi 5

Although Divi 5 is installed and activated, your website’s content is still in Divi 4 format, which means it’s stored using WordPress shortcodes.

If admin bar is activated for your account you will see the orange Backwards Compatibility Mode Enabled button on frontend, which indicates that Divi 5 is currently running in compatibility mode.

Divi 4 relies on shortcodes, while Divi 5 uses a new storage format that is similar to the WordPress block format. To transition the site content and take advantage of Divi 5’s performance and new features we’ll need to run the migration.

Compatibility Check

You can initiate the migration on the Divi → Divi 5 Migrator page. When you visit this page, a Compatibility Check is automatically performed to determine whether your site can be migrated to Divi 5.

In our case, the compatibility check shows that the site is 100% compatible. This is because the pre-made website we used does not include any incompatible third-party modules, and all native Divi modules have already been updated to fully support Divi 5.

However, if you are using any third-party Divi extensions and want to test whether they are compatible with Divi 5, this is a good moment to do so.

Install those third-party Divi plugins and add some page layouts to your site that use their modules.

Then go back to Divi → Divi 5 Migrator and check whether any incompatible elements have been detected.

The incompatible elements will not be converted during migration. Instead, they will run in backward compatibility mode, allowing them to function using Divi 4’s shortcode system.

After reviewing the results, you can proceed with migrating the site to Divi 5, ensuring that all compatible content is converted to the new format.

Run the migration

To start the migration, click the Migrate This Site to Divi 5 button on the Divi 5 Migrator page. A confirmation prompt will appear – confirm it, and the migration process will begin, which may take a few moments.

Once the migration is complete, the Welcome to Divi 5 screen will appear with two buttons: Re-Run Divi 5 Compatibility Check and Restore Divi 4 Content. We’ll use the latter to restore Divi 4 content later in this tutorial.

Now, go to the frontend of your site and check if everything looks correct. Pay close attention to content display, styling, and functionality to make sure everything has been converted properly.

Step 6. Edit Pages To Test Divi 5 Page Builder

If everything looks good, you can start testing Divi 5 by opening any page or template and making edits.

For example, you can create a Divi 5 header. This is a great way to explore it’s new features and see how it handles different design tasks.

How to test Divi 5 UI and Features

For more detailed guidance on testing Divi 5 UI and features check out the Elegant Themes blog. I suggest you to start with this comprehensive getting started with Divi 5 guide.

Step 7. Roll Back to Divi 4

In our current test, we didn’t encounter any issues during migration.

That said, we’ll still roll back to Divi 4 to demonstrate how it’s done. Divi 5 makes this process simple, allowing you to return to Divi 4 without losing your site’s original content.

First, we need to restore Divi 4 content, and only after that install the Divi 4 theme file (the order matters).

Restore Divi 4 Content

To roll back content to Divi 4 go to Divi → Divi 5 Migrator in your WordPress dashboard and click the Restore Divi 4 Content button. This will restore your site’s content back to the Divi 4 format, it’s that easy.

Please note that any changes made while using Divi 5 will be lost. Your website’s content will be restored to the state it was in before it was converted to Divi 5.

Re-install Divi 4

Once the content has been restored, download Divi 4 ZIP file from your Elegant Themes account (we already did that at th beginning of this tutorial) and install it in Appearance → Themes.

WordPress will ask if you want to replace the currently active theme (Divi 5) with the uploaded one (Divi 4). Confirm the replacement, and that’s it, you’re back to working with Divi 4.

Check your site’s frontend again to verify that the content and styling have no issues.

Wrapping Up

In this tutorial, we walked through the complete process of testing Divi 5 on a fresh WordPress installation.

We started by installing Divi 4 and enabled the Divi 5 update path. Then generated sample content using Divi Quick Sites, which gave us a realistic site to work with. After that, we updated the theme to Divi 5, and used the Divi 5 Migrator to convert the existing Divi 4 content to the new Divi 5 format.

Once the migration was complete, we reviewed the site on the frontend to confirm that everything was converted correctly. Finally, we demonstrated how to safely roll back to Divi 4 by restoring the original Divi 4 content and reinstalling the Divi 4 theme.

Testing Divi 5 in a local or staging environment is the safest way to evaluate compatibility with your layouts, plugins, and workflows before using it on a production site. The migration and rollback tools provided by Divi 5 make this process straightforward and allow you to experiment without risking your live website.

If you’ve already started using Divi 5 or have any questions, I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to share your thoughts and experience, and ask questions in the comments section below.