This tutorial features the Feast Plugin, which contains theme enhancements.
After converting to the Modern Homepage, you can also apply a number of different homepage styles to better match your branding.
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southern-bytes.com
Kari saw the most dramatic improvements (from 3,300 DOM nodes to 600) because she migrated from a non-Feast theme to a Feast theme.
Homepage before
Homepage after
Pagespeed Insights Before
Pagespeed Insights After
Webaim Before
Webaim After
myculturedpalate.com
Our own test-site saw minor improvements in performance (hey, it was already optimized), but is now more compliant with accessibility standards and Google's guidelines.
Homepage before
Homepage after
DOM Before
DOM After
Webaim Before
Webaim After
sweetcayenne.com
Being tweaked per Whitney's preferences before converting.
Homepage before
Homepage after
Webaim Before
Webaim After
Pagespeed Insights Before
Pagespeed Insights After
sweetcsdesigns.com
Courtney saw some small improvements in pagespeed, but big gains in accessibility and customizability of the homepage.
Homepage before
Homepage after
Homepage structure before
Homepage structure after
Pagespeed Insights before
Pagespeed Insights after
lemontreedwelling.com
Homepage before
Homepage after
DOM before
DOM after
Webaim before
Webaim after
urbanfarmie.com
sweetteaandthyme.com
easygoodideas.com
totalfeasts.com
I'm loving how the themes work, especially the versatility of them. The modern homepage update really made me think hard about my site, for the better. Very happy I made the move.
Matt
afewshortcuts.com
becomingness.com
aline-made.com
vintagekitchen.com
eatwithclarity.com
anasbakingchronicles.com
Andréa Janssen says
I see the great results as well. I’ve improved the speed of my homepage from slow to fast. Thank you for that! But I’ve got another question. However this works with my homepage the blog pages (I’m using cravings) still got a high DOM score and therefor are slower. I see that also on the blogs above. How can we improve that and will there be an update for that. Thank you
Skylar says
Hey Andréa!
The increase in DOM nodes can be traced to the increase in posts being displayed on the homepage, as well as additional unique content, and author profile. Doing a direct 1-to-1 replacement of the traditional theme homepage (eg. showing around 10 most recent posts) will result in a SIGNIFICANT decrease due to how we cleaned it up.
However, people are opting to provide better navigation for their users by displaying more categories, and showing their content in different ways - by popularity, by recently updated, by categories their readers are interested in. That's what you're seeing in many of the above sites - customizations and ongoing improvements by the blogger.
This is overall a positive thing, and where the line lies between excessive DOMs and a better user experience (plus better internal linking) is up to you.
More DOM nodes doesn't automatically translate to slower pages or lower pagespeed scores, but you do want to keep it in mind. In general, we recommend aiming for about an 80 score on the Pagespeed Insights tool.