Rick Hoekman

<p>Simple but effective performance tweaks for WordPress—now with a polished, tabbed settings UI.</p>
<p>Features are grouped like your workflow: Scripts & Assets, Network, Security, Performance & Admin, and Database.</p>
<h4>Scripts & Assets</h4>
<ul>
<li>Contact Form 7 Smart Loader — Only loads CF7 assets on pages with a form.</li>
<li>CF7 reCAPTCHA Smart Loader — Dequeues reCAPTCHA when no CF7 form is present.</li>
<li>Disable Advanced Custom Fields on Frontend — Stops ACF assets from loading on the frontend.</li>
<li>Emoji Unloader — Removes Emoji CSS and JavaScript.</li>
<li>Defer JavaScript — Adds defer attribute to eligible scripts.</li>
<li>Async JavaScript — Adds async attribute to eligible scripts.</li>
<li>Async/Defer Exclude Handles — A textarea to exclude script handles from async/defer.</li>
<li>Remove Query Strings — Strips ?ver= from CSS/JS URLs to improve CDN caching.</li>
<li>Block CSS Smart Loader (classic themes) — Dequeues block CSS on singular pages without blocks.</li>
<li>Separate Core Block CSS (WP 5.8+) — Opt-in to load only the CSS for blocks used on the page.</li>
<li>Disable Dashicons for Visitors — Removes dashicons for non-logged-in users.</li>
<li>Disable jQuery Migrate (frontend) — Drops jquery-migrate from frontend dependencies.</li>
<li>Boost Hero Image (fetchpriority) — Adds fetchpriority=”high” to the first content image on singular pages.</li>
<li>Lazy‑load iframes in Content — Ensures iframes in post content use loading=”lazy”.</li>
<li>WooCommerce Smart Loader — Loads WC CSS/JS only on WooCommerce pages (shop, product, cart, checkout, account).</li>
</ul>
<h4>Network</h4>
<ul>
<li>DNS Single Post Prefetch — Prefetch homepage on singular pages to speed return navigation (HTTP/2).</li>
<li>Resource Hints Hosts — Add domains for dns-prefetch and preconnect (one per line).</li>
<li>Google Fonts Preconnect — Adds preconnect hints for fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Security</h4>
<ul>
<li>Disable XML-RPC — Blocks the XML-RPC endpoint unless you need it.</li>
<li>Disable WP Embeds / oEmbed — Removes discovery links and wp-embed script.</li>
<li>Head Cleanup — Removes RSD, WLW, generator, shortlink, and extra feed links.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Performance & Admin</h4>
<ul>
<li>Disable WordPress Heartbeat (Frontend) — Keep editor autosave, reduce frontend pings.</li>
<li>Heartbeat Interval — Set between 15–120 seconds.</li>
<li>WP‑Cron Guidance — Advisory copy to move cron to a real system cron.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Database</h4>
<ul>
<li>Limit Post Revisions — Define WP_POST_REVISIONS to 5.</li>
<li>Autosave Interval (advisory) — Suggest a wp-config constant.</li>
<li>Empty Trash Days (advisory) — Suggest a wp-config constant.</li>
</ul>
<h4>UI/UX</h4>
<ul>
<li>Tabbed settings with keyboard navigation and ARIA roles.</li>
<li>Card layout, helpful tooltips, and consistent spacing.</li>
<li>Sticky save bar with “unsaved changes” hint.</li>
<li>“Reset all settings” link (with nonce) to clear options without uninstalling.</li>
</ul>


Performance Tweaks

Gunjan Jaswal

<p>FetchPriority Featured Image is a lightweight plugin that automatically adds the <code>fetchpriority="high"</code> attribute to featured images on your WordPress site. This helps browsers prioritize the loading of these important images, improving your site’s performance and Core Web Vitals scores.</p>
<h4>Key Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Automatically adds <code>fetchpriority="high"</code> to the hero / featured image</li>
<li>Optional <code>fetchpriority="low"</code> for below-fold images — paired complement that tells the browser to defer non-critical loads</li>
<li><code><link rel="preload" as="image"></code> for the hero featured image on singular pages — strongest LCP signal</li>
<li>AVIF / WebP detection — when a sibling <code>.avif</code> / <code>.webp</code> file exists on disk, an extra <code><link rel="preload" type="image/avif|image/webp"></code> is emitted so the browser picks the supported modern format automatically (works with ShortPixel, Imagify, Optimole, and similar)</li>
<li>Theme presets — auto-detects Astra, GeneratePress, Kadence, Divi, and Hello Elementor and excludes their site-logo / header-image classes so the priority budget is spent on the real hero</li>
<li>Avatar / Gravatar exclusion — never tags images with class <code>avatar</code> / <code>gravatar</code> or hosted on gravatar.com</li>
<li>Settings page (Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> FetchPriority) for per-context toggles, first-N control, preload, and exclusions</li>
<li>Admin-bar debug badge showing how many images were tagged on the current page (total + how many got <code>high</code>)</li>
<li>Compatible with most WordPress themes including Divi, Elementor, Astra, GeneratePress, Kadence, and any theme using standard <code>the_post_thumbnail()</code> / <code>wp_get_attachment_image()</code></li>
</ul>
<h4>Why Use FetchPriority?</h4>
<p>The <code>fetchpriority</code> attribute is a modern web standard that tells browsers which images should be prioritized during page load. By marking featured images as high priority, you can improve:</p>
<ul>
<li>Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) scores</li>
<li>User experience with faster loading of important images</li>
<li>Overall page performance</li>
</ul>
<h4>Developer-Friendly</h4>
<p>The plugin uses WordPress’s native filters and doesn’t modify your database or image files.</p>


FetchPriority Featured Image

Automatically adds fetchpriority="high" attribute to featured images to improve page loading performance and Core Web Vitals.

Performance Tweaks vs FetchPriority Featured Image