Falcon – WordPress Optimizations & Tweaks

Falcon is lightweight WordPress plugin that provide a list of optimizations and tweaks that help you improve the performance and user experience for your WordPress sites.

FEATURES & MODULES

Falcon offers a comprehensive list of 49 FREE modules (and growing) for you to tweak and optimize your WordPress websites. These options are divided into the following categories:

General

• Disable Gutenberg (the block editor)
• Disable heartbeat
• Disable embeds, e.g. prevent others from embedding your site and vise-versa
• Disable comments
• Remove website field from comment form
• Disable revisions
• Disable self pings
• Disable privacy tools
• Disable cron
• Disable auto updates
• Block external requests
• Search only posts
• Disable replacing text with formatted entities like smart quotes, dashes, ellipses, etc.

Header cleanup

• Remove feed links
• Remove RSD link
• Remove wlwmanifest link
• Remove adjacent posts links
• Remove WordPress version number
• Remove shortlink
• Remove REST API link

Media

• Asynchronous load CSS to avoid blocking load of CSS files
• Remove query string for JavaScript and CSS files
• Remove jQuery Migrate
• Set scheme-less URLs for JavaScript and CSS files, e.g. remove http: and https: from URLs
• Remove styles for recent comments widget
• Cleanup nav menu item ID & classes
• Disable emojis
• Disable scaling down big images
• Disable automatic image rotation based on EXIF data
• Disable thumbnail generation
• Enable maintenance mode

Email

• Remove admin email confirmation
• Disable auto update email notification
• Disable admin email notification when a new user is registered
• Disable admin email notification when users reset passwords
• Change default WordPress from name and email
• SMTP configuration

Admin

• Show site icon on login page
• Remove update nags
• Remove footer text
• Remove default dashboard widgets
• Remove WordPress logo in the admin bar
• Remove application passwords

Security

• Disable REST API for unauthenticated requests
• Disable XML-RPC
• Restrict upload file types
• Disable detailed login errors
• Block AI bots from crawling/stealing your content, which also affect the performance
• Force login to view the website

You might also like

If you like this plugin, you might also like our other WordPress products:

• Meta Box – A powerful WordPress plugin for creating custom post types and custom fields.
• Slim SEO – A fast, lightweight and full-featured SEO plugin for WordPress with minimal configuration.
• GretaThemes – Free and premium WordPress themes that clean, simple and just work.
• Auto Listings – A car sale and dealership plugin for WordPress.

Go to Dashboard | Plugins | Add New and search for Falcon. Then install and activate the plugin.

2.8.6 – 2025-10-20

• Remove admin bar item when disable comments

2.8.5 – 2025-02-06

• Search posts only: exclude admin and rest API requests
• Do not enable “No Gutenberg” and “Search Posts Only” by default
• No Gutenberg: remove support for post types

2.8.4 – 2024-11-22

• Fix not showing site icon in the login page
• Fix security for sending test email

2.8.3 – 2024-05-17

• Disable XML-RPC methods
• Fix: activation error on ajax request
• Update fix word disable detailed login errors

2.8.2 – 2024-03-17

• Add a link to the settings page in the plugin meta row
• Auto redirect to the settings page after activation

2.8.1 – 2024-02-28

• Add options to change default email from name and address
• Add more AI bots to the block list

2.8.0 – 2024-02-20

• Add SMTP configuration
• Add maintenance mode
• Add block AI bots option
• Add force login option

2.7.2 – 2023-12-11

• Fix not loading email options
• Fix remove dashboard widgets not removing welcome panel

2.7.1 – 2023-12-07

• Add options for no emails when a new user is registered and users reset their passwords
• Fix error when disabling all features. Closes #17.

2.7.0 – 2023-12-07

• Update hook for disable core update email notification
• Fix removing update nag not working
• Add a new security tab with options to disable login errors and restrict upload file types

2.6.0 – 2023-12-03

• Update the plugin style

2.5.0 – 2023-09-18

• Add: Disable comments
• Add: Remove website field from comment form
• Add: Search only posts
• Add: Disable replacing text with formatted entities like smart quotes, dashes, ellipses, etc.
• Add: Disable scaling down big images
• Add: Disable automatic image rotation based on EXIF data
• Add: Disable thumbnail generation

2.4.1 – 2023-08-14

• Remove classic theme styles for button blocks
• Remove Jetpack widget

2.4.0 – 2023-08-02

• Add asynchronous load CSS

2.3.0 – 2023-07-11

• Disable cron
• Disable auto updates
• Block external requests
• Fix missing current ancestor class for menu

2.2.0 – 2023-01-18

• Cleanup nav menu item ID & classes
• Disable privacy tools
• Remove application passwords

2.1.0 – 2022-12-27

• Add disable XML-RPC
• Add disable Gutenberg
• Add disable REST API
• Add a set of admin tweaks
• Organize features in tabs and update styling

2.0.5

• Update compatibility tag

2.0.4

• Fix missing vendor folder

2.0.3

• Remove jQuery Migrate in the WordPress admin as well

2.0.2

• Fix PHP warning when blocking self-pings
• Fix textdomain

2.0.1

• Fix auto-deployment

2.0.0

• Re-add settings page
• Update disble embeds module

1.3.1

• Update compatibility with the latest version of WordPress
• Fix not working with WP-CLI

1.3.0

• Remove settings page
• Do not use jQuery from Google CDN for better compatibility
• Remove support for loading CSS async

1.2.4

• Add option to use latest version of jQuery
• Add option to exclude static resources from removing query string

1.2.3

• Downgrade jQuery to 2.2.4 for better compatibility

1.2.2

• Fix: File name case-sensitive

1.2.1

• Fix: Load PHP file using absolute path.

1.2

• New: Load CSS asynchronously (and selectively).
• Fix: No error in the login page.
• Requires PHP 5.4

1.1.1

• Fix not loading file for media.

1.1

• Remove Jetpack devicex script.
• Requires PHP 5.3.

1.0.3

• Update jQuery to 2.2.4

1.0.2

• Use jQuery from Google CDN

1.0.1

• Sets scheme-less URLs for JS and CSS files, e.g. removes ‘http:’ and ‘https:’ from URLs.

1.0.0

• Initial release