Category Archives: wordpress

WordPress, Youtube (Lyte) and the GDPR

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So you (vaguely) know about the GDPR I’m sure. German netizens seem ahead of the curve, as I’ve been mainly getting questions about Autoptimize and WP YouTube Lyte from that part of Europe. It even looks like the German implementation of the GDPR is pretty strict, with people removing externally hosted resources (like Google Fonts and Facebook widgets) from their sites.

It’s in that context that user ekatarinal on the WordPress support forum for WP YouTube Lyte asked if the thumnails for the Lyte video’s could not be loaded locally. That way user information (IP-address -and if the user is logged in to Google a lot more- would not be available to Google/ YouTube unless and until the visitor clicked the play-button. Additional advantage; no extra dns-lookup, http connection or ssl/ tls negotiation, no short caching-headers, … so very likely to improve performance as well!

And that’s why WP YouTube Lyte 1.7.0 is in the works and it will have that option. In fact it’s already up on Github in a first incarnation (call it beta), so if you want to test you can download the zip-file here.

[edit a couple of hours later; and a lot of test and bugfixes were done and things seem to work as they should now. look at this video below to see it working]

Wildbirds & Peacedrums "There Is No Light" (official video)

Watch this video on YouTube.

 

Autoptimize 2.4 beta 2; hooking into page cache purges and better Google Fonts handling

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I just pushed out an update of the Autoptimize 2.4 beta branch on GitHub, with this in the changelog;

  • new: Autoptimize “listens” to page caches being cleared, upon which it purges it’s own cache as well. Support depends on known action hooks firing by the page cache, supported by Hyper Cache, WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, KeyCDN Cache Enabler, support confirmed coming in WP Fastest Cache and Comet Cache.
  • new: Google Fonts can now be “aggregated & preloaded”, this uses CSS which is loaded non render-blocking
  • improvement: “remove all Google Fonts” is now more careful (avoiding removing entire CSS

We’re still looking for beta-testers and some of these new features might convince you to jump on board? You can download the zip-file here, installing it a simple one-time process:

  1. Deactivate Autoptimize 2.3.x
  2. Go to Plugins -> New -> Upload
  3. Select the downloaded zipfile and upload
  4. Click activate
  5. Go to Settings -> Autoptimize to review some of the new settings

In case of any problem; we’re actively looking for feedback in the GitHub Issue queue :-)

 

Autoptimize 2.3.3 and beyond

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Autoptimize 2.3.3 was just released. It is a minor release with the following minor improvements & fixes:

  • improvement: updated to latest version of Filamentgroup’s loadCSS
  • improvement: by default exclude wp-content/cache and wp-content/uploads from CSS optimization (Divi, Avada & possibly others store page-specific CSS there)
  • bugfix: stop double try/catch-blocks
  • misc. bugfixes (see GitHub commit log)

This is (supposed to be) the last minor release of the 2.3 branch, 2.4 is a major change with some big under-the-hood and functional changes. That new version has been in the works for some months already and if you’re up for it you can install by simply downloading this zip-file from GitHub. The GitHub version will also auto-update thanks to the great Plugin Update Checker library.

Taking over Async JavaScript WordPress plugin

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David Clough, author of the Async JavaScript WordPress plugin contacted me on March 5th to ask me if I was interested to take over ownership of his project. Fast-forward to the present; I will release a new version of AsyncJS on March 13th on wordpress.org, which will:

  • integrate all “pro” features (that’s right, free for all)
  • include some rewritten code for easier maintenance
  • be fully i18n-ready (lots of strings to translate :-) )

I will provide support on the wordpress.org forum (be patient though, I don’t have a deep understanding of code, functionality & quirks yet). I also have some more fixes/ smaller changes/ micro-improvements in mind (well, a Trello-board really) for the next release, but I am not planning major changes or new functionality. But I vaguely remember I said something similar about Autoptimize a long time ago and look where that got me …

Anyway, kudo’s to David for a great plugin with a substantial user-base (over 30K active installations) and for doing “the right thing” (as in not putting it on the plugin-market in search for the highest bidder). I hope I’ll do you proud man!

Long overdue: WP YouTube Lyte update

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It took me way too long (Autoptimize and related stuff is great fun, but it is eating a lot of time), but I just pushed out an update to my first ever plugin; WP YouTube Lyte. From the changelog:

So there you have it; Lite YouTube Embeds 2018 style and an example Lyte embed of a 1930’s style Blue Monday …

Orkestra Obsolete play Blue Monday using 1930s instruments – BBC Arts

Watch this video on YouTube.

Preventing WP Super Cache from caching if no Slimstat in HTML

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I was struggling with an occasional loss of reported traffic by SlimStat, due to my pages being cached by WP Super Cache (which is not active for logged in users) but not having SlimStatParams & the slimstat JS-file in it. I tried changing different settings in Slimstat, but the problem still occurred. As I was not able to pinpoint the exact root cause, I ended up using this code snippet to prevent pages being cached by WP Super Cache;

add_filter('wp_cache_ob_callback_filter','slimstat_checker');
function slimstat_checker($bufferIn) {
  if ( strpos($bufferIn, "<html") && strpos($bufferIn, "SlimStatParams") === false ) {
	define("DONOTCACHEPAGE","no slimstat no cache");
	error_log("no slimstat = no cache");
  }
  return $bufferIn;
}

Changing the condition on line 3 allow one to stop caching based on whatever (not) being present in the HTML.

Want to test automated Critical CSS creation?

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Over 3 years ago Autoptimize added support for critical CSS and one and a half year ago the first “power-up” was released for Critical CSS rules creation.

But time flies and it’s time for a new evolution; automated creation of critical CSS, using a deep integration with https://criticalcss.com using their powerful API! A first version of the plugin is ready and the admin-page looks like this (look to the right of this paragraph);

The plan:

  1. beta-test (asap)
  2. release as separate plugin on wordpress.org (shooting for April)
  3. release as part of Autoptimize 2.5 (target mid 2018)

This new “criticalcss.com” power-up has been tested on a couple of sites already (including this little blog of mine) and we are now looking for a small group of to help beta-test for that first target.  Beta-testers will be able to use criticalcss.com for free during the test (i.e. for one month). If you’re interested; head on up to the contact form and tell me what kind or site you would test this on (main plugins + theme; I’m very interesting in advanced plugins like WooCommerce, BuddyPress and some of the major themes such as Avada, Divi, Astra, GeneratePress, … ) and I’ll get back to you with further instructions.