Structure drift monitoring — know when a button disappears.
Relvato fingerprints the structure of your key pages and flags DOM drift — a vanished add-to-cart button, a dropped form field, a removed section, renamed classes that quietly break your CSS — without caring about pixels. It re-checks automatically when your code changes on GitHub or a WordPress plugin, theme or core update lands.
- ✓Key sections, buttons, forms and fields are still in the page (DOM drift)
- ✓Elements that appeared or disappeared since the approved baseline, down to the exact selector
- ✓Renamed or removed classes and ids — the markup side of a CSS regression
- ✓Landmarks that vanished: main navigation, search, cart link, add-to-cart button, price, footer
- ✓Sharp drops in links, buttons, form fields or forms (e.g. 48 links → 6)
- ✓Re-checks after a GitHub push or a WordPress plugin, theme, core or WooCommerce update
The most expensive breakages are missing elements and renamed markup: a ‘Buy’ button an update removed, a checkout field that vanished, a theme update that renamed .btn-primary so your custom CSS, tracking tags and automated tests stop matching. Visual diffs can be noisy about styling; structure drift is the calm signal that the page’s building blocks changed.
Structure drift and visual regression overlap but catch different things. Our guide compares them — what each detects, and when a diff is real vs noise.
- Relvato loads each key page in a real browser and records its structure: every section, button, link target, form and field, with their stable classes and ids. Hashed class names, text and styling are left out, so content edits and colour tweaks stay quiet.
- Each run is compared with the structure you approved. Anything that appeared or disappeared, a landmark that’s gone (like the add-to-cart button) or a sharp drop in links or fields is flagged with the exact selector, plus a plain-language summary.
- It runs when things actually change: minutes after a push to your GitHub repository, and when the Relvato plugin reports a WordPress plugin, theme, core or WooCommerce update — plus a weekly check. Accept an intended change as the new baseline, or ignore a section that’s meant to change.
How is this different from visual regression?
Visual regression compares pixels (how the page looks); structure drift compares elements (what’s in the page). A restyled button trips visual regression, a vanished or renamed button trips structure drift. Use both — they catch different failures.
Does it catch CSS regressions?
It catches the markup side: when an update renames or removes the classes and ids your stylesheet, tracking tags or tests depend on, you see exactly which selectors went away and what replaced them. For how the page ends up looking, pair it with visual regression monitoring.
When does Relvato re-check the structure?
Automatically after the changes that cause drift: a push to a connected GitHub repository, and a plugin, theme, WordPress core or WooCommerce update reported by the Relvato plugin. It also runs on a weekly schedule, and you can run it any time.
Do I need a plugin?
No — structure drift works on any site with a verified domain. The plugin adds re-checks right after WordPress updates; the GitHub App adds re-checks right after a code push.
Put this monitor on autopilot.
Free forever on one site — 100 runs a month, started by you or weekly, no card. Pro re-runs your monitors by itself after every update.