optimizing matters

Autoptimize 2.1 and first Power-Up released

by

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:

Watch this video on YouTube.

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! 🙂

Heads up: Autoptimize minor release

by

Autoptimize 2.0 was a pretty successful release, if only because there were no major defects that forced me to quickly follow up with a bugfix release. That, off course, does not mean there were no issues at all or that no further improvements were possible. Hence Autoptimize 2.0.1 will be released within the next 2 weeks (or so), with the following changes:

  • Autoptimize now also tries to purge WP Engine cache when AO’s cache is cleared
  • Bail for AMP pages (which are pretty optimized anyway) to avoid issues with “inline & defer” and with AO adding attributes to link-tags that are not allowed in AMP HTML
  • Better support for renamed wp-content directories
  • Improvements to the page cache purging mechanism
  • Multiple fixes for late-injected CSS/ JS (changes in those files not being picked up, fonts or background images not beind CDN’ed, …)
  • Re-enable functionality to move non-aggregated JS  if “also aggregate inline JS” is active
  • Misc. other fixes & improvements, go read the commit-log on GitHub if you’re that curious

If you want to test this release out, you can download the beta from wordpress.org. Do ping me here if you think you’ve stumbled across a bug or simply to confirm all works just fine (esp. the WP Engine cache purge is a hard one to test for me, as I’m not hosted there)  🙂

Autoptimize Power-Up sneak peek; Noptimize

by

In case you’re wondering if those Autoptimize Power-Ups are still coming and if so how they’ll look like and what they’ll do;
AO powerup sneak peak: noptimize
So some quick pointers;

  • Power-Ups will be installed as separate plugins and will obviously require some sort of registration, payment and license key activation (still to be developed, will either be EDD or Freemius-based)
  • Once installed, they will appear as tabs on Autoptimize’s settings page (no clutter in your menu’s!)
  • You can actually see 2 Power-Up-tabs in this screenshot;
    1. the active one is “Noptimize” and will allow you to configure which URL’s shouldn’t be optimized (either entirely or just CSS or JS).
    2. The inactive tab is for “SpeedUp” which … speeds up the creation of uncached autoptimized files immensely.
  • Other Power-Ups that are on the table are
    1. “Critical CSS” to enable you to define “above the fold CSS” for different types of pages (posts, pages, homepage, archives, …)
    2. “Whitelist” which lets you specify what JS or CSS to optimize (“known good”), making sure unknown code is never autoptimized
    3. “HTTP/2” which will have logic to take the most advantage of what HTTP/2 has to offer, although (part of) this might go into AO proper.

Next steps for me; register my “secondary activity as independent” (as I still have an official day-time job), get in touch with an accountant, decide on EDD vs Freemius, set up shop on optimizingmatters.com (probably including bbpress for support) and determine pricing (thinking a Euro/month actually for each PowerUp, what do you think?).
Exiting times ahead …