I understand your concern about website speed.
You’ve ever run your WordPress site through PageSpeed Insight. You might have come across the warning to “Avoid an Excessive DOM Size.” Now, you’re probably wondering, “What is DOM size in WordPress?”
Or you are just here to understand the concept of DOM.
Well, you’re in the right place. I’ll break down the concept of DOM. And explain why its size is crucial for your site’s speed in the simplest way possible. Let’s dive in!
What is DOM?🌿
Your website is made of HTML or XML documents. To help the browser understand these documents better, they are organized into a structure, much like a family tree. This structure is called the DOM (Document Object Model).
In other words, think of your webpage as a house. The DOM is like the floor plan of this house, detailing where everything is located, such as the walls, doors, and furniture.
The DOM (Tree) consists of several nodes (tree branches). Each node represents an <HTML> element. So the main tag is <HTML> and comes on the top so it’s named ‘root node’.
The remaining nodes come under the <HTML>, referred to as ‘children nodes’ (nested elements) and siblings (elements at the same level).
In this hierarchy structure, the nodes at the tails are known as ‘leaves’ and often include elements’ attributes, values, and events.
Now let’s break it down in technical terms.
- Document: The document is the web page itself. When you open a webpage, the browser reads its HTML code and organizes it into a tree-like structure that represents all the elements on the page.
- Object: Every element you see on a webpage, like headings, paragraphs, images, and buttons, is treated as an object within the DOM. These objects can be interacted with and changed using programming languages like JavaScript.
- Model: The DOM provides a structured model of the document, allowing developers to access, modify, add, or delete elements and content dynamically. This enables interactivity and dynamic behavior on web pages.
Now Let’s understand this with an example.
What is an example of a DOM?🕸️
Hmmmm, the most basic way to show this would be to take an HTML code and construct its DOM structure.
Here is our simple HTML code:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>My Web Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="container">
<h1>Hello, World!</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
<ul>
<li>Item 1</li>
<li>Item 2</li>
<li>Item 3</li>
</ul>
</div>
</body>
</html>DOM tree structure for this HTML:
Explanation:
- At the root of the DOM tree is the <html> element.
- It has two children: <head> and <body>.
- The <head> contains a <title> element.
- The <body> contains a <div> with an id of “container” and a <footer>.
- Inside the <div>, there’s an <h1>, a <p>, and a <ul> element.
- The <ul> contains three <li> elements.
I believe now you understand the DOM so it’s time to understand what is DOM size in WordPress and its impact on site speed.
What is DOM size in WordPress?🖥️
To understand the DOM size in WordPress, let’s first define what DOM size is. The definition is similar. So we’ll explore how the DOM size differs between a standard website and a WordPress site.
The DOM size indicates the overall count of elements and nodes within the Document Object Model (DOM) tree of a webpage.
In continuation with the above simple HTML website DOM example. It consists of the <html> element at the top, which has a <head> and a <body>. The <body> contains <div> element with its respective child elements. The structure is straightforward. Each element directly represents a part of your webpage’s content.
But let’s say you start adding more content to your webpage. Maybe you add more paragraphs, images, and nested elements like lists and tables.
As you add more elements to your HTML, the DOM tree grows bigger. Each new element becomes a part of the tree, with its own place and relationships among other elements.
So, simply put, the DOM size increases as you add more HTML elements and content to your webpage. It’s like adding more branches and leaves to a tree, making it larger and more complex.
And this leads us to understand the DOM size in WordPress.
In a WordPress site, things are a bit more complex due to the dynamic nature of content management systems (CMS). WordPress generates pages dynamically from a combination of templates, themes, and content stored in a database.
Here’s how the structure might look:
- HTML
- HEAD
- TITLE: "My WordPress Site"
- LINK: Stylesheet
- SCRIPTS: JavaScript files
- BODY
- HEADER (Generated by theme)
- NAVIGATION MENU (Generated by theme)
- MAIN CONTENT (Generated dynamically from database)
- POSTS AND PAGES (Content generated from the database)
- TITLE, CONTENT, COMMENTS, ETC.
- SIDEBAR (Generated by theme/widgets)
- WIDGETS (Recent posts, categories, etc.)
- FOOTER (Generated by theme)
- COPYRIGHT INFORMATION, ETC.
Key Differences in WordPress Site DOM:
Dynamic Content: In WordPress, content like posts, pages, and custom types are stored in a database and generated dynamically when needed.
Theme and Plugins: WordPress sites typically use themes and plugins to customize appearance and functionality. These add additional layers to the DOM structure, introducing more complexity.
Widgetized Areas: WordPress themes often include widget areas like sidebars and footers, which can contain various widgets that add further elements to the DOM.
Dynamic Templates: WordPress uses templates to generate different types of pages (e.g., single post, archive, etc.), resulting in varying DOM structures depending on the page being viewed.
Overall, both simple HTML websites and WordPress sites use the DOM to represent their content.
WordPress sites tend to have a more complex DOM structure and larger size due to the nature of content management systems and the additional layers introduced by themes, plugins, and dynamic content generation.
Why Does Dom Size Matter in WordPress Sites?🌐
Of course, because it impacts the site speed. To understand the ‘why’, let’s take a look at how a web page loads in the browser.
When a browser loads a web page, it goes through a series of steps to read the HTML document and create the Document Object Model (DOM).
Here’s a simplified look at the process:
Now, let’s understand how complexity and larger DOM sizes can make it difficult for the browser to read the DOM:
Imagine the DOM as a big, interactive map of a city (your web page). The browser is like a tourist. It’s navigating through this map to find all the places (elements) and understand their relationships.
So, when the DOM is complex or large:
- The browser takes longer to understand the map (DOM).
- The browser has to work harder to navigate through the map and find everything it needs.
- The browser needs more time to figure out how the elements are connected and relate to each other.
These can slow down the browser’s overall performance, making it take longer for your web page to load and display properly.
In WordPress sites, there’s a higher chance of having a complex and larger DOM as:
- The Pages are dynamically generated from templates, themes, plugins, and database content. There are many elements and complex structures to render.
- Poorly coded plugins or themes can make the DOM bloated by adding unnecessary elements or inefficiently manipulating it.
Now you may have a few questions.
Frequently Asked Questions ❓
Conclusion🕵️♂️
I hope you got the ‘What is DOM size in WordPress’. To keep the explanation easy to understand, I use analogies and images. I hope those were helpful to you.
And Of course! Maintaining a small DOM size is essential for WordPress sites, as it directly impacts speed, user experience, and SEO. By optimizing your DOM, you can ensure better performance and ultimately enhance your website’s visibility and rankings on search engines.
If you found this helpful, comment below and let me know. This will surely make me smile 🙂
If you have any further queries, comment below. Your feedback and insights are invaluable. Together, we can continue to deepen our understanding of DOM optimization.
Let’s keep the conversation going!
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