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As WordPress specialists who have spent countless hours helping digital publishers, media companies, and content-driven enterprises manage and scale their websites, we understand just how critical your content editor choice can be. For organizations pumping out dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of articles each month, efficiency, reliability, and editorial control are not just nice-to-haves, they’re mission-critical. In the world of WordPress, two of the most popular editors are Divi and Gutenberg. But which one is best suited for high-volume publishing websites? In this post, we dig deep, sharing real perspectives on their strengths, workflows, pain points, and how your choice can impact every part of your editorial operation.

Understanding the Contenders: Divi and Gutenberg

Divi and Gutenberg (now referred to as the WordPress Block Editor) are fundamentally different in purpose, philosophy, and ideal fit. Let’s clarify what they are:

• Divi: A premium visual page builder plugin (and theme) developed by Elegant Themes. It allows drag-and-drop construction of complex layouts, boasts a deep library of modules, and delivers visual editing for highly designed pages.
• Gutenberg (Block Editor): WordPress’s default content editor since version 5.0. It offers a modular, block-based experience directly inside the WordPress core, focusing on structured content, extensibility, and editorial simplicity.

What High-Volume Publishing Websites Really Need

Before picking sides, it’s important to get clear about what matters most for organizations with substantial publishing demands. Here’s what we see as most crucial for high-throughput publishers and content teams:

• Speed and Usability for Editors: Quick post creation, editing, and scheduling, sometimes by dozens of authors at once.
• Consistent Design across Content: Branding and layout should be locked-in by design systems, preventing off-brand pages.
• Performance and Scalability: No editor bloat, minimal front-end overhead, and seamless scaling with content growth.
• Extensibility: Ability to integrate custom fields, taxonomies, advanced workflows, and editorial plugins.
• SEO and Accessibility Compliance: Structured content, schema, and WCAG adherence out of the box.

Divi: Visual Power, But Is It Optimized for Editorial Scale?

Divi is beloved by many designers and small business owners for its powerful visual editing, enabling striking landing pages and unique project layouts. But for organizations publishing vast quantities of articles, does it hold up? Here’s our nuanced take, after helping several organizations migrate, scale, and manage Divi-powered sites.

Strengths of Divi

• Extremely Flexible Layouts: Build anything visually, drag-and-drop, with a huge library of modules (callouts, sliders, grids, etc.).
• Live Visual Editing: Editors see changes in real time, great for designing rich landing pages and marketing content without code.
• Reusable Layouts & Modules: Ideal when you need custom homepages or sophisticated magazine-style layouts, with template sharing across sites.

Pain Points for High-Volume Publishers

• Unnecessary Complexity: For standard articles or posts, Divi is often overkill. The visual interface adds friction when speed is essential.
• Lock-in and Portability: Content built with Divi modules can be difficult to migrate to other themes or editors later on, risking content lock-in.
• Performance Overhead: Divi adds a layer of CSS and JavaScript to every page. For highly trafficked publishing platforms, every bit of speed matters, Divi can slow you down compared to native WordPress output.
• Collaboration and User Roles: Divi can be too flexible, sometimes allowing writers to overwrite layout standards, especially on large teams.

Gutenberg (Block Editor): Streamlined, Fast, Editorial-First

Gutenberg, the block editor, was built for the future of WordPress content. Out of the gate, it feels much more like a blank canvas for writers and editors, letting you create structured content with blocks for headings, images, quotes, embeds, and more.

Why Gutenberg Shines for High-Volume Publishing

• Fast and Familiar: Resembles Google Docs or Medium, focusing attention on content, not styling. Editors can create, edit, and bulk-schedule quickly.
• Block System for Consistency: Design teams can build custom blocks (e.g., author boxes, callouts, related links) and lock them down for consistent branding.
• Minimal Bloat: Output is clean HTML, loading just what you need. With large volumes of articles, this keeps your site fast for both readers and Google.
• Excellent with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF): Flexible enough to tie into your custom editorial workflows, taxonomies, and meta fields.
• Easy Collaboration: Simple roles and permissions, and compatible with most editorial management plugins for workflow, revisions, and more.
• SEO and Accessibility: Structured data, native headings, alt tags on images, and semantic HTML all come standard.

Real-World Editorial Workflows: Where Each Editor Fits

In our hands-on experience with clients including major media publishers and book distributors, high-volume publishing workflows break down along these lines:

• Newsrooms, Magazines, Digital Publications: Writers, editors, and contributors need to move fast, keep content uniform, and focus on words first, not design. The Gutenberg block editor excels here, fast to onboard, with minimal distractions, and easy template enforcement by administrators.
• Marketing Departments and Landing Pages: When you need creative freedom for bespoke landing pages, sales funnels, or interactive promotional sections, Divi’s visual editor is hard to beat.
• Hybrid Approaches: Some organizations use Gutenberg for core articles, then activate Divi as a page builder on a limited basis for special campaigns or main landing pages, carefully locking it down for regular posts.

Performance Considerations for Scaling Content

One of the most impactful differences we’ve seen between Divi and Gutenberg comes when a site scales to thousands of pages, high traffic, and complex editorial needs:

• Load Speed: Gutenberg outputs clean HTML with minimal style and scripting requirements, making your site lighter and less prone to slowdowns, even when hundreds of users are browsing or editing simultaneously.
• Server-Side Rendering: Divi’s graphical output adds markup and can require additional server resources to render complex layouts, especially when many modules are used.
• Content Portability: Gutenberg’s native approach means you’ll never have to worry about plugin lock-in or broken content if your business evolves, it’s future-proofed for upgrades or changes.

Editorial Control and Brand Consistency

For directors of digital marketing or publishing houses, editorial control is a top concern. The wrong editor can mean hundreds of off-brand posts or time-consuming manual fixes. Here’s how Divi and Gutenberg compare:

• Divi: Offers total freedom, sometimes too much. Without strict guardrails, user-created layouts can go off-brand or break consistency across the site.
• Gutenberg: Admins can predefine custom blocks, restrict styling options, or create reusable block patterns to preserve brand standards for every article published.

Integrations, SEO, and Accessibility

Modern publishing websites require seamless integration with SEO plugins, analytics, and third-party editorial tools. How do Divi and Gutenberg measure up?

• SEO Plugins (Yoast, Rank Math, etc.): Both editors fully support market-leading SEO solutions, but block-structured content from Gutenberg tends to map better to structured data and schema requirements.
• Accessibility & WCAG: Gutenberg is built into WordPress core with accessibility in mind. Divi, though improved in recent updates, sometimes produces layouts that require additional attention to meet strict accessibility standards. For organizations subject to WCAG/AODA (like many in Canada), this can be pivotal.
• Editorial Tools: Gutenberg is natively compatible with editorial calendars, revision management, and role-based permissions, making it ideal for large, multi-author teams.

Cost, Maintenance, and the Future

• Divi is proprietary and requires a paid license. You must also plan for theme/plugin updates from a third party, and test for compatibility with each WordPress update.
• Gutenberg is built into WordPress core, open source, and always up to date. Reduced cost, less risk of breakage with core upgrades, and a bigger support community.

Our Recommendation at VerticalWave Solutions

Here at VerticalWave, we’ve worked closely with some of Canada’s most recognized publishers and content organizations, including Blue Ant Media and Homeless Hub, to migrate, redesign, and optimize high-volume publishing platforms. Our clear advice for content-focused organizations is this:

• For everyday article publishing, editorial workflows, and large-scale content management, Gutenberg is the superior choice. It is built for collaboration, speed, and consistency, with virtually limitless extensibility through custom blocks.
• Use Divi (or another visual builder) as a supplement for special landing pages or campaign sites, not as your default post editor for all content.
• If you’re migrating from an old system (like Drupal), we can integrate custom blocks, advanced fields, and editorial workflows into Gutenberg to match exactly what your editors and contributors need, without adding unnecessary complexity or bloat.

Ultimately, the right choice is about empowering your editorial team to do their best work, at speed, at scale, while keeping your site lightning fast and perfectly on-brand.

Let’s Build Your Next-Gen Content Platform

If you’re considering a shift to Gutenberg, or need expert help upgrading your publishing workflows, from editorial design to SEO and accessibility compliance, we’d love to be part of your journey. Get in touch with us to talk through your specific needs and see how we can help you build (or migrate to) a WordPress platform designed for high-volume, scalable publishing with zero compromises.

Ready to take control of your publishing future? Let’s talk!

1. Project Background & Overview

For nearly a decade, the Homeless Hub team from York University operated its homelesshub.ca platform, the leading resource for homelessness research and studies website on Drupal 7. However, with evolving needs, the platform became less suitable. The primary issues were a slow-loading website, lack of design flexibility, and an outdated search system, as well as a heavy backend system.

The Homeless Hub wanted a more intuitive and flexible platform that could provide a simplified backend for editors, options to create pages and sections independently, improved SEO and advanced search, plus a new, modern design to match their branding, as homelesshub.ca is their flagship site. The goal was to migrate from Drupal to WordPress while addressing these challenges.

 

2. Challenges Faced

Migrating such a large-scale website, with over 30,000 resources and more than 10,000 contributor profiles, posed several challenges:

• Complex Content Types: The site hosted diverse resources such as books, reports, toolkits, factsheets, journals and more, all with connected taxonomies and custom fields.
• Taxonomy and Custom Field Remapping: The existing taxonomies and custom fields required reorganization to improve efficiency and ease of use for editors.
• Search Functionality: An advanced custom search was needed to handle the volume of resources while offering granular filtering options. The old search engine was slow and not pulling relevant results.
• Design Precision: A pixel-perfect design had to be implemented, ensuring a modern, user-friendly interface and interaction.
• URL Structure and SEO: Some URL structures needed to be maintained, while others had to be improved, requiring careful redirection to ensure no loss of traffic. SEO improvements were also essential.

 

3. Solution & Execution

Our approach to the migration was carefully planned to ensure seamless execution:

• Migration Process: We used a combination of third-party plugins and custom scripts to migrate all resources, contributor profiles, databases, and large amount of files from Drupal to WordPress.
• Taxonomy Remapping: Custom-coded taxonomies were created to match the new improved structure and existing and new fields added using Advanced Custom Fields (ACF). We combined and remapped taxonomies during the import process, reducing the number of fields and simplifying the backend for editors.
• Custom Search with Algolia: To address the need for advanced search, we integrated Algolia, creating a granular index with custom filters based on taxonomies and fields. This was seamlessly integrated into WordPress using a custom plugin to ensure fast and accurate search results.
• Design Implementation: We developed a design system in collaboration with the Homeless Hub team. Using the Divi theme, we redesigned the entire site, ensuring a modern, user-friendly interface. Rigorous testing was done across platforms (Mac, Windows) and devices (desktop, mobile) to ensure pixel-perfect design consistency.
• URL and SEO Enhancements: Resource URLs were kept intact, while new URLs were created for blogs and taxonomies. We implemented Yoast for SEO improvements and made careful redirections to ensure SEO optimization and traffic retention.
• Custom Plugins: We developed several custom plugins, including ones for fields ordering and taxonomy hierarchy management, and another for managing books with chapters and sub-chapters.

 

4. Unique Highlights

Several custom solutions added exceptional value to the project:

• Custom Plugins: We created custom plugins for managing content types like books with chapters and sub-chapters, as well as for taxonomy hierarchy and field ordering.
• Search Optimization: The granular Algolia search configuration resulted in an extremely fast and accurate search experience, greatly improving user engagement with the site.
• Successful Redirects: We ensured that all necessary URL redirects were in place, maintaining SEO rankings and avoiding any broken links.
• SEO Performance: Compared to the metrics before migration, the website traffic has drastically improved and the Google indexing as been extremely fast. According to GA, clicks and impressions spiked in number of days.

 

5. Results & Impact

The website migration resulted in significant improvements:

• Smoother Performance: The new site runs much more efficiently, with faster load times and enhanced usability.
• Simplified Backend: The backend is now intuitive, allowing editors to easily create and edit content, as well as create custom pages independently.
• Search Efficiency: Integrating Algolia greatly enhanced the search experience. The new search is now faster, more accurate, and provides users with real-time results from the vast 30,000-resource library. Users can easily filter results by various criteria, making it far easier to find relevant information quickly. This upgrade has improved accessibility and usability for researchers, policymakers, and the public.
• SEO Boost: By utilizing Yoast SEO, the website saw a significant rise in organic traffic and search rankings. Optimized content, proper URL redirects, and better site structure all contributed to this improvement. The site’s faster loading times have also positively impacted user retention, as visitors are more likely to stay and engage with the content.
• Enhanced User Experience (UX): The site is now faster, mobile-friendly, and easier to navigate. The updated design ensures a seamless experience across devices, while the simplified backend allows the Homeless Hub team to manage content more efficiently. The new platform provides a smoother, more responsive browsing experience, supporting the organization’s mission of making homelessness research more accessible.

 

Homeless Hub WP Website Launch

6. Conclusion

The Homeless Hub website migration from Drupal 7 to WordPress was a resounding success, achieving all of the client’s key objectives. The transition to a more flexible, user-friendly platform has empowered the Homeless Hub team to independently manage and update their site, while users enjoy a smoother, faster experience with enhanced search functionality. The project highlights the importance of meticulous planning, custom solutions, and collaboration to overcome the challenges of large-scale website migration.

With an improved design, better performance, and significantly increased traffic thanks to enhanced SEO, the new Homeless Hub website is well-positioned to continue providing vital resources and information for years to come. This project demonstrates the transformative power of a well-executed migration, where technology, design, and functionality come together to create a more efficient and user-focused platform.

We’re proud to present our latest project, the interactive Fast TV Channels Website Series for Blue Ant Media. Headquartered in Toronto, Blue Ant Media is a privately held global media company, with offices in five other countries besides Canada.

The Blue Ant team needed a platform to promote some of the newest shows streaming on popular platforms like Roku, LG Channels, Xumo, Vizio, Samsung TV Plus and others, while targeting content for specific countries worldwide and turned to Vertical team for design and development. The Blue Ant and Vertical teams have an outstanding relationship, as we’re providing ongoing maintenance and support for their other projects, like CottageLife, MobileSyrup, BeMakeful, TheBabyShows and other successful websites over the past year.

The challenge was to create a platform that delivers a similar design template across all websites, but promotes specific content for each individual site at the same time. The platform is engineered using our in-house design and a backend structure based on WordPress and Divi, plus additional custom built plugins. At the same time, each website displays country specific shows and streaming channels using a geolocation functionality identifying visitor IP. A default page is displayed if no shows are available in a particular country; otherwise the users are redirected towards Canada, US or Europe specific pages depending on their location.

Another advanced functionality allows administrators make bulk plugin and core updates and content edits across all websites using a single master admin system. The master-slave backend system is designed to reduce operation times and simplify maintenance. At the same time, each website can be updated individually as needed and can act as an independent app.

Here’s a quick overview of the of the Fast TV Channels top features:

• Unified layout design
• Simplified administration interface using both frontend and backend access
• One site controls all
• Geolocated content display based on user IP
• Custom 3D shows carousel
• Fully responsive

The Fast TV Channels include HauntTV, CrimetimeTV, LovePetsTV, HomefulTV, DragRaceUniverseTV, TotalCrimeTV and HistoryTimeTV. The series of channels does not stop here. Several new channels will be added in the near future to complete the list, offering info on the newest and most exciting shows available on popular streaming platforms worldwide.