=== WP-Optimize – Cache, Compress images, Minify & Clean database to boost page speed & performance ===
Contributors: DavidAnderson, ruhanirabin, DNutbourne, aporter, snightingale, lumberhack, webulous
Donate link: https://david.dw-perspective.org.uk/donate
Tags: cache, caching, image cache, minify, performance cache, page speed, image optimizer, compress images, optimize database, clean database
Requires PHP: 5.6
Requires at least: 4.5
Tested up to: 6.7
Stable tag: 3.8.0
License: GPLv2+
License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
Get caching and more with this powerful cache plugin. Cache, optimize images, clean your database and minify for maximum performance.
== Description ==
MORE THAN A CACHING PLUGIN
WP-Optimize is trusted by more than 1 million WordPress website owners to boost performance and reduce page load times to improve your site's user experiences and SERP rankings in Google.
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/333705073]
It does this in four clever ways:
1. It caches your site
Caching is the process of storing a temporary HTML version of your site on the server so it can be retrieved more quickly for the user.
It's a sure-fire way to ensure web pages load at lightning-fast speed. Turn it on in just one click.
2. It compresses images
Large images can really impact page speed load times. WP-Optimize makes it easy to identify and compress images to your preferred lossy / lossless settings in a couple of clicks.
3. It cleans the database
Your WordPress database stores everything that you need, plus some things that you don't. WP-Optimize cleans and optimizes the database to speed up your site and save server resources.
4. It minifies
On top of its three main features, WP-Optimize Cache also has the more advanced minification feature.
Together with caching, minification dramatically improves performance and page speed load time.
== 1. CACHE YOUR SITE ==
Turn on caching in just one click:
WP-Optimize automatically and optimally configures itself for your WordPress site. Turn it on in one-click or refine its settings if you prefer.
More cache features:
* Cache preloading: This feature emulates a visit to your site, meaning cached files are served straight away, speeding up your site from the very first visit.
* GZIP Compression: When the server isn't configured to do so, WP-Optimize delivers HTML, CSS and JS files to the user's browser as smaller, compressed files, reducing the size of pages and style sheets by up to 90%!
* Preload key requests: Recommended by Google to improve page speed times. Critical resources (things like font files) get loaded first, so the page loads much faster [Premium].
Use cache settings to:
* Serve cached content to logged in users: Turn this on if content stays the same for logged in users (or turn on and exclude URLs where content does change e.g. my account areas).
* Exclude content from cache: Exclude by URL, conditional tags, browser agent strings or list cookies that should prevent caching when set (advanced user settings).
* Deliver device-specific cache: Serve separate cache files to desktop and mobile devices . This ensures that responsive features e.g. desktop and mobile menus are cached separately and served correctly.
* User per role cache: Useful if your website delivers different content to different user roles. e.g. an e-commerce site that displays different content to resellers or consumers [Premium].
* User specific cache: Serves separate cache files to individual users. Useful for websites with personalised content e.g. Learning management systems [Premium].
* Cache purging permissions: Select which user roles are allowed to purge the cache e.g. admin only or perhaps a 'teacher' role in an LMS setting only [Premium].
== 2. COMPRESS IMAGES ==
* Lossy or lossless compression options: Choose between maximum space saving, best image quality or somewhere in-between.
* WebP conversion: Recommended by Google, WebP can achieve up to 34% smaller file sizes compared to JPEG and up to 26% compared to PNG.
* Auto-compress: Check a box and every new image you upload will automatically be compressed to your preferred lossy / lossless settings.
* Bulk compression: Compress every existing image on your site with the press of a button.
* Restore original: Gone too far? Revert images back to their original in one click.
* Retain EXIF image data: Check a box to retain EXIF image data during compression.
* Lazy Load: Webpages load much faster by loading web parts gradually, when they're needed vs simultaneous loading of everything, all at once [Premium].
* Delete orphaned images: Identify and delete unused images from your Wordpress website, saving disk space [Premium].
* Delete unused image sizes: WordPress creates multiple sizes for every uploaded image causing the uploads folder to become bloated. Scan for image sizes not in use and remove them to save further disk space [Premium].
== 3. CLEAN AND OPTIMIZE THE DATABASE ==
Cleans-up database tables, post revisions, auto draft posts, trashed posts, spam, trashed comments and more. Choose what to optimize or it's one click to clean out the lot.
* Schedule clean-ups: So you can set and forget. Choose from daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly.
* Flexible clean-up schedules: You may wish to optimize database tables more frequently than you remove unapproved comments (for example). Choose the specific time and day when tasks should run [Premium].
* Retain a set number of weeks' data during clean-ups: Just in case you need to retrieve something.
* Back up before clean-ups: If you delete something you shouldn't, restore it in a couple of clicks with UpdraftPlus.
* Power tweak - Turbo boost for WooCommerce: Unique to WP-Optimize, this power tweak boosts performance by replacing a slow query in WooCommerce with two much more efficient queries. E-commerce sites transacting high numbers of orders stand to gain here [Premium].
* Power tweak - Boost performance by indexing the postmeta table: This unique power tweak works by allowing the WordPress postmeta table to be indexed, improving performance [Premium].
== 4. MINIFY AND COMBINE HTML, CSS AND JAVASCRIPT ==
* Minify in just one click: Minifies HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Toggle on or off or customise each one under 'settings'.
* Customise minification: Minify only (removing unnecessary code e.g line breaks and white spacing) or minify and merge. Apply the same or different settings to HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
* Asynchronous loading: Choose non-critical CSS and JavaScript files to load in the background and independently of other resources e.g. analytics or pixel scripts. Loading asynchronously eliminates render blocking and improves page speed.
* Exclude files from being minified: Specify CSS and JavaScript files to exclude from minification.
* Optimize fonts: Optimize Font Awesome and Google Fonts. Inline the font files, inherit from CSS settings or load CSS / Javascript asynchronously instead.
* Preload assets: WP-Optimize visits each web page on your site so the code is minified and preloaded for real life users, right from their very first visit.
* Preload key requests: Recommended by Google to improve page speed times. Critical resources (things like font files) get loaded first, so the page loads much faster.
== WHY WP-OPTIMIZE? ==
* It's brought to you by UpdraftPlus, the team behind the world's most trusted backup, migration and restoration plugin.
* It's easy to use.
* It packs a punch for a free plugin.
WP-Optimize brings the best cache and optimization technology together into one single, seamless plugin to make your WordPress site fast, lean and efficient.
== PREMIUM FEATURES AT A GLANCE ==
Our free version of WP-Optimize Cache is great, but we also have an even more powerful Premium version with extra features that offer the ultimate in freedom and flexibility:
* Multisite Support: extends database optimisations so they function for multiple WordPress sites at a time. If you manage more than one website, you will need WP-Optimize Cache Premium.
* Flexibility and Control: gives you the power to optimize select individual tables or a particular combination of tables on one or more WordPress websites, rather than having to optimize all database tables.
* Deleting unused and unwanted images: removes orphaned images from your WordPress site, plus images of a certain, pre-defined size.
* Sophisticated Scheduling: offers a wide range of options for scheduling automatic optimization. Specify an exact time and run clean-ups daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly and perform any number of additional once off optimizations.
* Seamless Graphical User Interface: for superb clarity in scheduling and managing of multi-site optimizations.
* WP-CLI support: provides a way to manage optimizations from command-line interface if you have lots of sites
* Lazy Loading: load only the images and part of a web-page when it is visible to the user so they can see something very quickly.
* Optimization Preview: gives users the ability to preview, select and remove data and records available for optimization from the database.
* Preload key requests: preload assets such as web fonts and icon fonts, as recommended by Google PageSpeed Insights.
* Premium support - caching is one of the most complex things you can do for a website, so premium support offers you peace of mind there's someone to talk quickly to if you need any technical answers or help configuring the optimizations of cache settings for your website.
= Translations =
Translators are welcome to contribute to the plugin. Please use the [WordPress translation website](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/wp-optimize).
== Installation ==
There are 3 different ways to install WP-Optimize Cache, as with any other wordpress.org plugin.
= Using the WordPress dashboard =
1. Navigate to the 'Add New' in the plugins dashboard
2. Search for 'WP-Optimize'
3. Click 'Install Now'
4. Activate the plugin on the Plugin dashboard
= Uploading in WordPress Dashboard =
1. Download the latest version of this plugin from https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-optimize/
2. Navigate to the 'Add New' in the plugins dashboard
3. Navigate to the 'Upload' area
4. Select the zip file (from step 1.) from your computer
5. Click 'Install Now'
6. Activate the plugin in the Plugin dashboard
= Using FTP =
1. Download the latest version of this plugin from https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-optimize/
2. Unzip the zip file, which will extract the wp-optimize directory to your computer
3. Upload the wp-optimize directory to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory in your web space
4. Activate the plugin in the Plugin dashboard
== Frequently Asked Questions ==
= Isn't it better to use a dedicated caching plugin to cache my site? =
We've built WP-Optimize Cache around the most advanced and powerful caching technology. Our caching tests and feedback from real-world users show that the caching feature alone can make your site faster than any other cache plugin or optimization. See these speed test results.
= Is optimizing my database safe? =
Yes; optimizing does not involve any "tricks" or poking around in dangerous ways. It involves running routine clean-up operations using well-defined, common MySQL commands. Nevertheless, we always recommend backups, which cover every possibility; not just database malfunctions, but hackers, human errors, etc. We recommend UpdraftPlus.
= What savings can I expect to make? =
This is a "how long is string?" sort of question. It depends completely on your site - how big it is, how many users interact on it, how long it has been running, and when you last optimised it. However, the savings and speed-ups can be substantial; it is always worth making sure that your database is optimised.
= How do I get support? =
In our support forum, here: https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wp-optimize/
= How do I use WP-Optimize Database Cleaning? =
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/339511213]
= WP-Optimize does not make large savings on my database =
This is rare; it's probably because you're with a shared web hosting company that doesn't allow scripts to run an optimize command via SQL statements (SQL "OPTIMIZE" instruction). Please consult your web hosting company on this matter.
= Is the plugin tried and tested? =
Yes - WP-Optimize Cache is WordPress's #1 most-installed optimisation plugin, with over 800,000 users and a pedigree going back over 8 years.
= Does WP-Optimize support InnoDB tables? =
WP-Optimize will disable some features if it detects InnoDB tables. Optimization of the database tables on-disk is not available, but other clean up features would work.
= Can you help me restore my database? =
Not unless you have an existing backup. Please ensure that you make a backup of your entire database before using WP-Optimize for the first time, and when you upgrade to a major new version of it. We recommend UpdraftPlus.
= Are there any bugs in this plugin? =
The plugin is an ongoing work; that means that it is impossible to rule out unforeseen situations and bugs. So I would recommend you to test it out on your local system or make a backup of your database (just to be extra careful).
= How do I stop transient options from coming back automatically each time I clear them? =
When WordPress uses a particular transient, that specific transient is re-created automatically. So, it's normally for ones which are in active use to gradually re-appear. The best way to keep things optimal is to clear the transient options on a scheduled basis. For example, WordPress may create 50 transient option in a week. If you schedule WP-Optimize Cache to clear these options on a weekly basis, you'll have far fewer building up.
= The table size shows wrong / Not optimizing =
Please check your database for corrupted tables. That can happen, usually your web hosting company can run the repair command on the db.
= Which WordPress and PHP versions are supported? =
To use all features in the plugin, a minimum of version WordPress 4 with PHP 5.3 are required. But we do recommend to use the latest version of WordPress. Using PHP 7+ is also highly recommended, as our caching feature will work even faster.
= Which optimisation will make the biggest difference? =
This depends on your setup (theme, number and quality of plugins used, etc...), but generally, caching will make the biggest visible difference to your website's performance. Indeed, the cache functionality bypasses most of WordPress code to serve your pre-optimised cached pages directly to your visitor, significantly increasing the speed.
= What is caching, or page caching? =
"Caching", from Wikipedia: "In computing, a cache is a hardware or software component that stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster; the data stored in a cache might be the result of an earlier computation or a copy of data stored elsewhere. A cache hit occurs when the requested data can be found in a cache, while a cache miss occurs when it cannot." — WP-Optimize cache does this by saving the page computed by WordPress on the disk. When a user visits a page, WP-Optimize will serve the cached page before WordPress is loaded. If the page wasn't cached before, it will be computed by WordPress, and WP-Optimize will then save the result to the cache.
= Why should I use a caching plugin on my website? =
You think your site is fast without caching? A caching plugin will make your website even faster. A faster cached website will increase SEO, it will improve your visitors experience. Caching will also save your server's resources.
= Is the WP-Optimize page cache compatible with Gutenberg and WordPress 5.0+? =
Yes, your Gutenberg pages will be cached, as well as those created with page builder plugins such as Elementor.
= How do I know my webpage is being cached (or why it isn't)? =
If cache is enabled, and in order to see if your page is cached, use the "View Source" function in your web browser to view the page source. To find caching information, scroll down to the bottom, and you should see a line added by the cache: `