[Upcoming Change] DOM structure changes for 7.1 standalone pages
Date: July 2026
What's Changing: We're changing the HTML structure of standalone pages for 7.1 websites in a way that may affect custom CSS. These changes are scheduled to begin rolling out to websites starting in mid-July.
What's a "standalone page"?
A standalone page is any page that isn't a collection page (i.e. not Stores, Blogs, Portfolios, or Events).
What's changing
Current legacy DOM structure
Code
New DOM structure
The new DOM structure wraps page sections in an additional <section> tag. On standalone pages, all user sections are grouped inside a single region:
Code
Custom code impact
The changes will apply to all standalone pages on all 7.1 sites. As shown in the examples above, page sections on standalone pages will be nested one level deeper in the DOM, so you may need to update custom CSS targeting the current page structure to ensure it works as expected.
The most likely selectors that will need updating are those that depend on the current section hierarchy, including:
- Direct child selectors like
.sections > .page-section,#sections > .page-section, andarticle > section - Pseudo-elements applied broadly to
section, likesection::beforeandsection::after - Selectors that rely on a section being the first, last, or nth child in the current structure. More details:
article > *:first-childwill breaksection:first-childwon't break but will also apply to the newsection.regionelement (likely unintended)section.page-section:first-childwill work as expected
What's next
If you manage sites with custom CSS on standalone pages, we recommend that you audit any custom CSS targeting page sections by DOM structure and update it. Keep in mind that only custom code that is written to our official spec should be considered stable and insulated from changes like the one described here.