Yesterday evening I released Autoptimize 2.1 and the first Power-Up to manage critical CSS has been made available as a optional service over at criticalcss.com. This short video explains some of the logic behind the Autoptimize Critical CSS Power-Up:
But let’s not forget about Autoptimize 2.1! The new features include:
- Autoptimize now appears in the admin-toolbar with an easy view on cache size and the possibility to purge the cache (thanks to Pablo Custo)
- A “More Optimization”-tab is shown with info about optimization tools- and services.
- settings-screen now accepts protocol-relative URL for CDN base URL
- admin GUI updated and responsiveness added
- If cache size becomes too big, a mail will be sent to the site admin
- power-users can enable Autoptimize to pre-gzip the autoptimized files with a filter
- new (smarter) defaults for JS and CSS optimization
Although excluding jQuery from autoptimization by default might seem counter-intuitive, the “smarter” defaults should allow more Autoptimize installs to work out-of-the-box (including on sites run by people who might not be inclined to troubleshoot/ reconfigure Autoptimize in the first place).
And thanks to the release I now have a better idea of the number of active installs (which wordpress.org lists as +100000); 2.1 was downloaded 3239 times yesterday evening and it is listed as running on 1.8% sites. Simple math learns that Autoptimize is currently active on approx. 180000 WordPress websites. Let’s aim for 200K by the end of 2016! 🙂
Nice release, thank you – and thank you for an approach to this plugin that actually makes sense and moves forward one step at a time. I am really curious on the plugins (or “powerups”, as you call them).
One thing that I would like to leave as feedback here, concerns way, autoptimize intrudes into my WordPress. First, although I am sure some people will like it, please make that Autoptimize-button in the admin-toolbar optional. One tiny checkbox somewhere can make a great difference.
Second, that sidebar. If I look onto the autoptimize options-page, I have two thirds filled with settings that actually need more space (inline css, scripts to remove from autoptimize – these are things that need space). Instead of giving those fields more space, I have one third of my screen cluttered with
1. a slider (!) that runs through some more or less autoptimize related links.
2. a dropdown listing this blog’s categories.
3. a selection of entries from this blog.
4. a do not donate-button.
IMHO, it would be much better to eliminate those blog-links at all or put a single link to your blog somewhere else. The same is true for the links in the slider. Why not add a tab named “About optimizing WordPress” or something like that and put all those links there? This would give all the other options much more space (1/3 more!), it would not clutter my screen, and it would make that whole thing look much cleaner. (And there would be no #!*:+ slider!)
Concerning the do not donate-button, there is also a nice solution: let it come up with every update, but add an option to hide it, once I understood what it is about.
I hope this feedback helps and perhaps you could think about this one third of precious space on my screen.
Thanks for the feedback, I’ll give it some thought 🙂
Addendum: I just found out about add_filter(‘autoptimize_filter_toolbar_show’,__return_false). So this one point is devalidated.
Is it maybe an idea to add support for HTTP/2 Server Push?
It’s being looked into Ramy 🙂
Hi Frank, is there an option to disable the new wp-admin navigation menu link (the green circle) for Autoptimize 2.1?
not an option, but 1 line of code (in your child theme’s functions.php or using the code snippets plugin) does the trick;
add_filter('autoptimize_filter_toolbar_show',__return_false);
Great. Thanks!
Very nice. But I already have an account on critcalcss.com. How can I activate the powerup?
Existing criticalcss.com users can upgrade here; https://criticalcss.com/ao-powerup-upgrade Klaus 🙂