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

MUDRAVA

<p>MUDRAVA RUM captures real user performance data from your WordPress site visitors. Unlike synthetic testing tools, this plugin measures actual user experience including Time to First Byte (TTFB), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), server generation time, total page load time, and more.</p>
<p><strong>Features:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Collects TTFB, LCP, server generation time, total load, memory peak, device type, network type, country, and session ID</li>
<li>Live Monitor dashboard with real-time log viewing</li>
<li>Filterable by session ID, URL, device type, and network type</li>
<li>On-demand performance reports with averages and P75 LCP</li>
<li>Scheduled email summaries (daily or weekly via WP-Cron)</li>
<li>Critical TTFB alerts with configurable thresholds</li>
<li>Configurable sampling rate and URL blacklist</li>
<li>Role-based exclusion (skip tracking for specific user roles)</li>
<li>Automatic data retention management (max records and days)</li>
<li>Color-coded performance indicators (good/warning/poor)</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>How It Works:</strong></p>
<p>A lightweight JavaScript collector runs on your site’s frontend, gathering Core Web Vitals and performance metrics from each page view. Data is sent via the WordPress REST API and stored in a custom database table. The admin dashboard provides a Live Monitor view, filterable reports, and email summaries.</p>
<p><strong>Links:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://mudrava.com/en/projects/mudrava-rum-wordpress-plugin/" rel="nofollow ugc">Plugin page</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/Mudrava/Mudrava-RUM" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub repository</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Privacy</h3>
<p><strong>Data Collection:</strong></p>
<p>This plugin collects anonymized performance metrics (TTFB, LCP, load times, device type, network type) from site visitors. No personally identifiable information (PII) is collected or stored. Session IDs are randomly generated and not linked to user accounts.</p>
<p><strong>External Requests:</strong></p>
<p>This plugin does not send data to external third-party services. All collected data is stored locally in your WordPress database.</p>
<p><strong>Cookies:</strong></p>
<p>This plugin does not use cookies. Session IDs are stored in the browser’s sessionStorage.</p>
<p><strong>Data Retention:</strong></p>
<p>Collected data is automatically purged based on your configured retention settings (maximum records and retention days).</p>


MUDRAVA RUM

Real User Monitoring (RUM) plugin for WordPress that tracks TTFB, LCP, server generation time, and other performance metrics from real visitors.

Performance Tweaks vs MUDRAVA RUM