Sometimes Divi will break and throw up errors. The Divi builder timeout warning might happen on your Divi site after you make theme or plugin updates or seemingly, whenever it likes. The good news is that to solve the problems, it is usually just a case of changing a few settings in your website hosting to make sure that Divi is able to get the resources it needs to run properly and without producing error warnings.
The Divi builder may timeout and give you a pop-up error warning
If you are seeing the builder timeout warning above asking you reload the builder, then you may need to edit some of the settings associated with your hosting. You can try each of the steps below to try and fix the Divi Builder timeout (and other Divi errors) and get back to producing great Divi websites again. If you are unsure about how to make these changes you should contact your website host tech support directly.
With Divi version 3.20 ( updated 03-07-2019 ) you can easily check your Support Center to see what issues there may be with your site. The System Status area will let you know if your PHP version and variables are set correctly and you can enable Safe Mode to check if your Builder Timeout issues are caused by a 3rd party plugin conflict.
If your System Status area is showing that your server settings are incorrect you can follow the steps below to fix the builder timeouts you are experiencing.
1. Update your PHP version to 7.2+
Elegant Themes recommend PHP version 7.2 or higher for the best Divi experience (and no builder timeout errors).
You may need to change your PHP version from that set as default in your hosting plan. I am currently running PHP version 7.2.14 on Divi Theme Examples and all seems to work correctly with no builder timeout errors. If you have access to your cPanel you will be able to edit the PHP version yourself by going to your PHP Version Manager. You may need to test different versions of 7+ as some have caused issues for me in the past.
If you do not have access to cPanel, or are afraid you will break something then just contact your host and ask them to edit the PHP version for you.
2. Increase your PHP limits
You can view your settings by going to the Divi Help & Support Center in your dashboard. Go to Divi > Support Center and your website settings will be shown in the System Status area, with a warning for any that are set too low.
Some hosts will allow you to edit the PHP limits via your cPanel. For Siteground users, we can go to cPanel and click on PHP Variables Manager, select which folders to edit and then change all associated PHP variables (as shown in the image above).
If you do not have access to cPanel, PHP Variables Manager, or are afraid you will break something you should contact your host directly and ask for the PHP limits to be increased. You should ask for the following settings.
- memory_limit – 128M or higher
- post_max_size – 64M or higher
- max_execution_time – 180 or higher
- upload_max_filesize – 64M or higher
- max_input_time – 180 or higher
- max_input_vars – 3000 higher
3. Increase your server Apache limits
Add the following code into your .htaccess file in your WordPress root directory to stop the builder hitting server limits.
<IfModule mod_substitute.c> SubstituteMaxLineLength 10M </IfModule>
General fixes when the Divi Builder is giving you error messages
Below are a few general maintenance tasks I always check if there are any errors or bugs when I am using Divi.
1. Make sure Divi is updated to the latest version
When Divi bugs are found with an update, Elegant Themes are usually very fast in releasing updates to fix the problems, so check you are up to date as the fix may already be available from Elegant Themes. You can view the Divi Changelog to know exactly what version of Divi is the most current.
2. Clear all your caches
A solution that has often fixed Divi builder problems for me after an update is to make sure Divi and all other caches have been cleared. Make sure you have cleared any plugin caches (WP Supercache etc), your CDN (such as activating developer mode in Cloudflare or purging cache), and then your browser cache. Sometimes I need to redo them all to get things working again.
3. Clear local storage using Chrome Dev Tools
You can also try this method which was posted in 1 of the Divi FB groups and seems to work for many
1. When on the page with the issue open Chrome Developer Tools (f12)
2. Select the Application tab > Clear storage > Click Clear site data button at the bottom (*this will log you out of your site)
3. Log back into the site and cross your fingers!
Which Divi builder timeout fix worked for you?
Let us know what worked and what didn’t. There are so many variables to consider when something goes wrong, but hopeful,ly these tips will help fix a few of your builder errors. Good luck!
I’ve tried all of these options and still no luck. I can’t edit any of my website pages. This is my first website using Divi and I thought things were going well until this problem came along. I was going to use for this theme for another client, but I’m having second thoughts about that after seeing all the others users having this same issue with no resolution. Is this problem fixable???
Hello to all.
Susan, here is what I do when I get this spinning issue. It is usually when I have first opened a page for editing and clicked a module to edit. What helps is I reload the page while the icon is spinning. Then, I update the page. Finally, I go into the module I want to edit.
I could be wrong but this seems to have worked every time. Hope this works for you.
It looks like the latest versions of Divi (currently 3.0.89) are kicking up some new builder timeout errors. The solution this time round seems to be to upgrade to PHP 7.
updating to php 7.1 worked for me too. thanks for all the great tips.
Upgrading to PHP 7 worked for me as well after trying all the other options.
Just a thought, but this might actually be a memory issue. If the builder timeout failed due to the WP memory limit being exceeded, then PHP 7 would fix it not because Divi requires PHP 7, but because PHP 7 uses less memory than PHP 5.x. If I’m right, then an alternative fix would be increasing the WP memory limit, which could help if you aren’t able to switch to PHP 7 for any reason.
These steps, including changing PHP version (to Php 7.), are not helping me to resolve issue(
Thanks to this article and the thread of discussion — I just contacted my website server and updated the PHP to 7.1 🙂
7.2+ is the current recommended version
Anyone found a solution? I have tried EVERYTHING and nothing works, just a white spinning wheel of divi death! Thought Divi was great until this and now completely useless to me and can’t edit my site at all! Anyone?
Hello everyone, I have the same problem, I have changed from the httacces, to wp-config and I have the version 7 of php, only when I deactivate the woocommerce if it works well, but being an ecommerce I can not deactivate it, I have already installed the new version. and I still have the same problems.
Unfortunately none of this has worked for me. Building a new, empty Divi site on my local machine. No plugins installed except for Divi builder. I’ve added the code to the htaccess file, I’ve adjusted memory limits in php.ini. All caches cleared, using latest version of Divi and Divi builder. Extremely frustrating. So far best way to get it to “reset” is to stop Apache on XAMPP (I’m building on localhost) and re-start. Then I seem to have another 30 minutes or so of Divi access before I get the warning again. Then rinse & repeat. What a pain though.… Read more »
i doubt this is the cause, but you should not be using Divi AND the Divi builder plugin…
If you are using Cloudflare, please put your site on development mode. Then refresh the page and done! Now start working!
I FINALLY FOUND THE ISSUE!!! In my case, I had first added the suggested Apache limit code to the htaccess file, which didn’t work, so I continued through all other suggestions, updates, removing plugins, changing PHP versions, purging caches & storage, etc. After all failed attempts, I went back and looked at my htaccess file and realized the code was getting overwritten by WordPress. The code MUST BE placed OUTSIDE of the # BEGIN WordPress and #END WordPress code. If it’s inside of those tags, it gets overwritten. I cannot believe that was the answer all along!! I wasted so… Read more »
Clear All cache may be working for error in divi building. and rest of also helpful but I focus on this to remove cache
I attempted the changed to the .htaccess file and I still received the error. I decided to manually deactivate all of the plug-ins for the site one-by-one. When I was all done I only had 3 running. Divi Builder, Business Directory and Divi Booster and the error was still popping up. I deactivated Divi Booster and the error went away. I am going to live without Booster for now but when I have more time I’ll try to deleting and re-installing. Maybe this will help others
Sorry, I typed in Business Directory above that is incorrect. It was Divi Builder, Events Calendar and Divi Booster. I had already deactivated Business Directory
I also tried ALL of the above and nothing worked! I downgraded my PHP version from 7.4 to 7.2 and the issue seems to be fixed.
I have found being a few versions back from the current seems to work too. I’m currently running 7.4 with no issues tho, so it could be server specific. But as long as you got it working all good!!