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

eatzeni

<p>Track core web vitals data and save history, powers a dashboard with 24h and one month of historic data, shows worsts pages.<br />
Send also into Google Analytics (both gtag and ga supported) and can be extended to send also to Google Tag Manager and third parties</p>
<p>NOTE: This plugin does not send data to Google Tag Manager events, it only adds them to the dataLayer object but requires additional configuration on the Tag manager dashboard.</p>
<h3>What is Core Web Vitals?</h3>
<p>From the official page (https://web.dev/vitals/) Web Vitals is:<br />
    […] an initiative by Google to provide […] quality signals that are essential to delivering a great user experience on the web.<br />
    […]<br />
    Core Web Vitals are the subset of Web Vitals that apply to all web pages, should be measured by all site owners, and will be surfaced across all Google tools.<br />
    Each of the Core Web Vitals represents a distinct facet of the user experience, is measurable in the field, and reflects the real-world experience of a critical user-centric outcome.</p>
<h3>Why are them important?</h3>
<p>They are important not only to improve user experience on websites but also because since 2021 Core Web Vitals will become official ranking signals for Google (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience.html).</p>
<h3>HOW TO track into Google Tag Manager</h3>
<p>This plugin adds following data to the dataLayer object:<br />
    dataLayer.push({<br />
        event: “web-vitals”,<br />
        event_category: “Web Vitals”,<br />
        event_action: ,<br />
        event_value: ,<br />
        event_label: ,<br />
    });</p>
<p>You only need to create a custom event trigger in your Google Tag Manager (see https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/7679219?hl=en#), create Data Layer Variables and track those as Google Analytics Events on Tag Manager.</p>
<h3>HOW TO track into third party tools or custom Google Tag Manager syntax</h3>
<p>This plugins allows developers to listen for data captured and track them as their prefer. You only need to create a global Javascript function named<br />
    window.wpWebVitalTrack<br />
and you’re done!<br />
E.g.:<br />
    window.wpWebVitalTrack = function(event_id, event_name, event_value, event_delta) {<br />
        console.log(“Ready to do something amazing!”, event_id, event_name, event_value, event_delta);<br />
        // do something amazing!<br />
    }</p>
<p>NOTE: create this method as early as possible to avoid missing some event!</p>


Web Vitals Tracking

Track core web vitals data and save history, powers a dashboard with 24h and one month of historic data, shows worsts pages.

Performance Tweaks vs Web Vitals Tracking