Turning Your Blog Module into an Advanced Draggable/Swipe Carousel with Divi & Slick

For many websites, blogging has become an important part of their SEO strategy. But besides creating high-quality content, it’s also important to simplify the post navigation process for your visitors. That way, they can hop from one post to another and spend more time on your website reading the content you put out there. Within Divi, there’s a Blog Module you can use to dynamically display your blog posts and style them as well. If you’re looking for a way to take the post search experience to the next level, you’re going to love this post. We’ll show you how to turn the built-in Divi Blog Module into an advanced draggable/swipe carousel with Divi’s built-in elements and the free slick js library. You’ll be able to download the JSON file for free as well!

Let’s get to it.

Preview

Before we dive into the tutorial, let’s take a quick look at the outcome across different screen sizes.

Desktop

Mobile

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1. Create Blog Page

Add New Page

Start by adding a new page to the website you’re working on. Give your page a title, publish the page and switch over to Visual Builder.

Upload Interior Design Company Blog Page Layout

In this use case tutorial, we’ll use the Interior Design Company blog layout but you’re free to use any other layout of your choice.

2. Create Previous & Next Arrow Designs Using Blurb Modules

Add New Row to Top of Section

Column Structure

Once we’re inside the blog page, we can start building the advanced draggable swipe carousel. The first part is dedicated to designing the arrows we need to allow visitors to go back and forth between posts. The arrows won’t be the only option visitors have to navigate through the carousel. They’ll be able to drag the carousel on desktop and swipe on mobile as well. To design the arrows, we’ll use Divi’s built-in Blurb Module but you’re free to use any other module of your choice. Add a new row to the top of your blog section using the following column structure:

Sizing

Without adding any modules yet, open the row settings and allow the row to touch the left and right side of the section by changing the sizing settings as follows:

• Width: 100%
• Max Width: 100%

Add Blurb Module

Add Title

Then, add a Blurb Module and insert a title.

Select Icon

Select an icon next.

Icon Settings

Move on to the design tab and change the icon settings as follows:

• Icon Color: #000000
• Circle Icon: Yes
• Circle Color: #f2f2f2
• Image/Icon Placement: Top
• Image/Icon Alignment: Center

Title Text Settings

Then, modify the title text settings.

• Title Font: Muli
• Title Font Weight: Semi Bold
• Title Text Alignment: Center
• Title Text Color: #000000

Sizing

We’re changing the module’s sizing settings across different screen sizes next.

• Width: 10% (Desktop), 20% (Tablet), 30% (Phone)
• Module Alignment: Right

CSS Class

And we’ll also add a CSS class. This CSS class will help us trigger the carousel action on click later on the tutorial.

• CSS Class: back-button

Main Element CSS

Last but not least, we’ll also add one line of CSS code to the module’s main element to change the cursor into a pointer.

cursor: pointer;

Clone Row & Place at Bottom of Section

Once you’ve completed the first arrow, you can clone the entire row container and place the duplicate row at the end of the blog section.

Change Title

Open the Blurb Module in the duplicate row and change the title.

Change Icon

Along with the icon.

Change CSS Class

And modify the CSS class as well.

• CSS Class: next-button

3. Prepare the Blog Module

Open Row Containing Blog Module

Sizing

Once the arrows are in place, it’s time to start tweaking the Blog Module, starting with the row it’s placed in. Open the row settings and modify the sizing settings accordingly:

• Width: 100%
• Max Width: 100%

Visibility

Then, place the row’s overflows to hidden. This will help ensure that the carousel doesn’t cause any horizontal scroll bar to appear within our page.

• Horizontal Overflow: Hidden
• Vertical Overflow: Hidden

Modify Blog Module

Hide Pagination

Once the row settings are in place, open the Blog Module settings. Make sure the pagination is disabled in the elements settings.

• Show Pagination: No

Layout

Then, move on to the design tab and change the layout to fullwidth.

• Layout: Fullwidth

Overlay

We’re adding an overlay too.

• Featured Image Overlay: On
• Overlay Icon Color: #ffffff
• Overlay Background Color: rgba(1,0,66,0.33)

CSS Class

Next, we’ll add a CSS class to our blog, which will help us enable the carousel later on the tutorial.

• CSS Class: blog-module

Post Meta CSS

And we’ll generate some space between the post meta and excerpt by adding some bottom margin to the post meta CSS element in the advanced tab.

margin-bottom: 50px;

4. Add Slick JS Functionality

Add Code Module Below Blog Module

Once all the Divi settings are in place, it’s time to add the slick js functionality! Add a Code Module right below the Blog Module (or anywhere else on the page).

Add Slick JS Script Tags

Then, add the slick js library within script tags (as you can see in the print screen below). You’re free to add these to the head of your website in the Divi theme settings as well.

src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/slick-carousel/1.6.0/slick.js

Add Slide CSS Code

We’ll slightly modify each blog post on an individual level using some CSS code. Make sure you place the code between style tags as seen in the print screen below.

.slick-slide {
float: left;
margin: 2vw;
}

Add JQuery Code

And last but not least, we’ll add some JQuery code to allow the advanced draggable swipe carousel to take its form. Within the code below, we’re also adding the buttons we’ve designed to the carousel’s functionality. Make sure you place the code within script tags as you can see in the print screen below.

jQuery(function($){
  
var backButton = $('.back-button');
var nextButton = $('.next-button');
var postContainer = $('.blog-module .et_pb_ajax_pagination_container');
  
postContainer.addClass('slider'); 
postContainer.addClass('blog-carousel'); 

$('.blog-carousel').slick({
    infinite: true,
    slidesToShow: 3,
    slidesToScroll: 1,
    centerMode: true,
    centerPadding: '10%',
    swipe: true,
    prevArrow: backButton,
    nextArrow: nextButton,
  
    responsive: [{
    breakpoint: 1079, settings: {
    slidesToShow: 1
    }
    }]

});
});

5. Save Page & Exit Visual Builder to View Outcome

Within the Visual Builder, you won’t see the outcome. So, as soon as you’re done, save your page, exit the Visual Builder and view the outcome on your website!

Preview

Now that we’ve gone through all the steps, let’s take a final look at the outcome across different screen sizes.

Desktop

Mobile

Final Thoughts

In this post, we’ve shown you how to take your Blog Module design to the next level. More specifically, we’ve shown you how to turn Divi’s built-in Blog Module into an advanced draggable swipe carousel using the free slick js library. We’ve provided the JSON file for free as well! If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section below.

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