Under the hood: how experiences work

Experiences are like an additional layer of information that is sent to your website visitors. The difference between the optimized web page and the original one is described by a delta (or a diff). Every time you adjust content through Unless, a new delta is created.

When someone visits your website, Unless sends out the delta and replaces the original content. So technically, an experience is just a group of content changes on top of your original page. It is not a separate, new page.

How Unless handles changes to the original page

In general, changing the original page will not "break" your experiences. In fact, updating texts or images will have no effect. However, if you delete elements your experiences might not apply.

For example; if you remove a paragraph in the original page, the delta describing a change for that paragraph will not apply anymore. The paragraph is gone - there is nowhere to "dock" for the delta.

This only applies when you change the structure of your original web page, not the content. So, updating text or images will have no effect on your experiences, however, deleting elements, will mean losing the experiences within those deleted elements.

Components

Overlays such as pop-ups and side-boxes are shown on top of a page so any changes to the original page should not have an impact on them.

Inline components are inserted within a page and where they are shown is in relation to another element on the page that you have selected. So either showing before or after the selected element or replacing it. And so, if this element is removed, it will have an impact on your experience. The same applies to popovers since they too are shown in relation to an existing element on the page.