Okay, so you’ve decided to go with WordPress and Divi for your website (wise!). But now what? How do you actually put the Divi things on your website? It’s actually surprisingly easy! It’s a lot of steps, but none of the steps are difficult. So if you keep going and follow the instructions, you can do it. (Even if you’re not good at ‘tech’!)
Okay, here’s how to install Divi on your WordPress site:
Part 1: Download the theme.
1. Go to the Elegant Themes site. (Elegant themes is the developer that makes Divi.)
2. In the menu, go to Divi > find the blue button at the bottom that says ‘get Divi today.’

3. Choose yearly or lifetime access, and click ‘sign up today.’ (If you choose yearly, you can always upgrade later.)
4. Create your account and add your information. (If you change your mind or don’t like the theme, you have 30 days to get a refund.)
5. Once you have your account set up, go to the menu > account > product downloads.
6. Click ‘download the Divi theme.’

7. A zip file will download to your computer. This is the theme file that you will upload to your WordPress site.
8. Leave this tab open, because you’ll need it for part 4.
That’s it for this part, good job! Now you have the Divi theme downloaded and you’re ready for the next step.
Part 2: Use Divi Cake to make a child theme.
Sounds complicated, but in reality, just requires you to fill in a very easy form and then check your email. Promise.
But what even is a child theme, you ask? Amazing question. I also had no idea what a child theme was before I became a web developer. A child theme is like a mini version of the theme that you can edit and make changes to without changing the parent (main) theme. This is important because the Divi developers regularly update the theme, and you don’t want to lose all of your own changes when the theme is updates. So they update the parent theme, and you make your edits to the child theme, and everyone’s happy. So basically, you could skip this step, but please don’t.
- Go to Divi Cake’s Child Theme Generator. It’s going to do all the work for you.
- Fill out the form on that page. You can give it any name and description you like, it doesn’t matter. Make sure the parent theme is Divi and make sure to put in your email. The rest is optional.
- Click ‘build your child theme’ at the bottom of the form.
- Check your email (it might take a few minutes).
- When you get the email from Divi Cake, download the child theme zip file. You’ll need this one along with the Divi file from part 1 to upload to your WordPress site.
That’s it for this part, good job! Now you have the Divi theme & the child theme downloaded and you’re ready to go install & activate them.
Part 3: Upload, install, & activate Divi & the child theme.
Okay, this part is super easy and honestly, kind of fun.
1. Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard. If you don’t know how to do that, this article will help you.
2. Go to Appearance > Themes.
3. Click ‘add new.’
4. Click ‘upload theme.’
5. Click ‘choose file,’ and then choose the Divi zip file you downloaded in Part 1. You don’t have to open the zip file or anything, just upload it as is.

6. Click ‘install now.’
7. Click ‘activate.’
8. Great!! Now you have the Divi parent theme installed on your site! Go back and repeat steps 2 through 7 with the child theme that you downloaded from your email.
9. Leave this tab open for part 4.
That’s it!! Look at you, you installed a theme AND a child theme on your site! Amazing work.
NOTE: You may have other themes laying around that were automatically installed or that you had from before. If there’s a chance you might switch back to a theme you used previously, definitely keep that one. But, if there are just extra themes on that page (appearance > themes), I recommend deleting them. They could pose a security risk and the updates will just annoy you.
Part 4:Authenticate your Divi theme.
Oh, you thought you were done, but there’s one more tiny step! You need to put in a password so that Divi knows that you’re legit and you are supposed to have access to use the theme. Otherwise, anyone could just download it and use it for free and no one would be paying the developers to keep building and maintaining the theme.
- Go back to the tab you left open in part 1 – the Elegant Themes/ Divi page.
- In the menu, go to Account > User Name & API Key (API key is a fancy name for a password.)
- On the left, click ‘API Keys.’
- Click ‘generate new API key.’
- Copy the code.
- Go back over to the WordPress Admin dashboard that you were just using in part 3.
- Go to Divi > Theme Options.
- In the purple menu, click ‘updates.’
- Put in your Elegant Themes/ Divi user name. If you’re not sure what it is, go back to the Divi tab and check at the top of the API key page.
- Put in your API key code that you copied in step 5.
- Click ‘save changes.’
- You should get a green check mark telling you that your theme is validated. If you don’t see the green check, double check your user name and API key on that same Divi page, and try again.
That’s it!! You’ve installed Divi and a child theme and authenticated it and now you’re all set!
If you had exsiting pages on your website, they will still be there, but you’ll need to switch them over to the Divi builder eventually. When you open those pages to edit, you’ll see that option. If you want to create new pages, you can use the premade layouts or create your own from scratch. You could also import pages from another website, if you want. A tutorial will pop up the first time you open Divi, and that will help you get started!
