Autoptimize Pro is coming, 10 beta-testers needed!

It has been long overdue, but I’m finally almost ready to release Autoptimize Pro. The first version of AO Pro (an add-on to be installed on top off Autoptimize) will have Image optimization, CDN, fully automated critical CSS and a number of “boosters” to improve performance even more, with more features are in the backlog. … Read more

Autoptimize troubleshooting howto

Autoptimize can help improve your site’s performance, but in some cases after installing and activating you might encounter issues with your site. Although frustrating and maybe even scary, these problems can generally be easily resolved by re-configuring Autoptimize and I’ll be happy to share how you can do that. First off: if the problem is … Read more

Contact Form 7 alternatives

Given the major change in Contact Form 7‘s frontend JavaScript and the problems having to optimize the JS or cache the page after the update, the question I get asked frequently is what alternatives there are to CF7. So here is a very quick rundown of 3 such alternatives: Gravity Forms: premium-only, visual form builder, … Read more

Google PageSpeed Insights updated, new metrics and recommendations!

If you tested your blog’s performance on Google PageSpeed Insights yesterday and do so again today, you might be in for a surprise with a lower score even if not one byte (letter) got changed on your site. The reason: Google updated PageSpeed Insights to Lighthouse 6, which changes the KPI’s (the lab data metrics) … Read more

Autoptimize closing in on W3 Total Cache

Fun fact; As per wordpress.org “popular plugins” ranking , Autoptimize is slowly but surely closing in on what used to be the go-to solution for Web Performance Optimization W3 Total Cache based on the “active installs” metric. Who would have thought? What a crazy ride …

Developers: don’t make Gutenberg go Badass-enberg on my frontend!

Over the past couple of months, since the release of WordPress 5.0 which includes Gutenberg, the new JavaScript-based block editor, I have seen many sites loading a significant amount of extra JavaScript from wp-includes/js/dist on the frontend due to plugins doing it wrong. So dear plugin-developer-friends; when adding Gutenberg blocks please differentiate between editor access … Read more

WordPress, Youtube (Lyte) and the GDPR

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 … Read more