In this release we’ve added loads of new features and tweaks.
We’ve made some major improvements to image optimization. Premium users now have the ability to perform bulk image compression and restoration directly from the WordPress media library. In the past, this was only possible in the images tab. With this update, you can selectively restore multiple images or compress them in bulk, making it easier to manage your media files. We’ve also added a new filter in the media library that allows you to filter images by their compression status.
Free and premium users can also automatically delete old images when new scaled versions are created. WP-Optimize will use the scaled images instead of the original ones, saving disk space.
And you can now control how WebP images are served. Previously, the plugin automatically chose between .htaccess redirects and HTML alteration methods for WebP files based on your server type. With the new ‘wpo_force_webp_serve_using_altered_html’ filter hook, users can force WP-Optimize to use the HTML alteration method. This can help you avoid compatibility issues on certain hosting environments.
We’ve also made some general tweaks and updates. We will no longer minify CSS/JS files that are already minified by WordPress core or other plugins/themes to save on processing time. We also made sure that WP-Optimize is compatible with WordPress’s new script loading strategies.
Additionally, we updated the old codebase to use HeartBeat API instead of Ajax calls. HeartBeat API is built into WordPress and provides a more standard way for communication between the WordPress server and the browser. This change will help to reduce your server load and speed up your site. For sites that don’t use HeartBeat, we’ve included backups to keep things running smoothly.
New feature – Purge or clear the cache from the page or post edit screen
Purging single pages directly from the post or pages screen allows changes to be reflected in real time for visitors. It’s also more efficient, particularly for large websites where purging the entire cache can be resource intensive and time-consuming.
New feature – Preload single pages for visitors
Preloading involves populating the cache with data even before it is requested.
With this new feature, performance of specific high-traffic pages can also be optimized by preloading them into the cache, reducing load time and giving users a smoother experience.
Additional updates include
UI improvements and fixes to a bug which was causing the new WordPress Lightbox feature to function incorrectly with JavaScript minification enabled. This issue affected certain themes, and has now been resolved. URL slugs including non-Latin characters can also now be cached correctly.
The most recent update also includes a number of useful tweaks to enhance functionality and user experience, including better debugging and logging, and improvements to some cron job-related tasks.
For a full list of tweaks and fixes, please see the changelog below:
Changelog:
= 3.3.0 – 31/Jan/2024 =
* FEATURE: Premium – Ability to preload and purge caches from individual post/page
WooCommerce is a popular e-commerce platform for WordPress. It offers great functionality but also has its challenges. Our team found a problem with WooCommerce’s performance, and we created a ‘power tweak’ feature that fixes it. This feature is one of two power tweaks available in our plugin. It makes your website more efficient by optimizing a WooCommerce database query.
What is the issue with WooCommerce?
We’ve found that WooCommerce has a critical performance issue related to one of its database queries. The query lies within a function called ‘get_total_spent’, used to calculate the total amount of money spent by a customer. The query makes a calculation using several double left-joins on the post and post meta tables for lookups. This process is inefficient, as MySQL must scan a large number of rows with each new order. On a typical site, this could involve scanning over 80% of the rows in the post meta table. In one case study, MySQL had to scan over 13,000,000 rows, significantly impacting performance and user experience.
Our solution
As developers, we’ve learned that finding our own solution is often the best way to get things done. So, we engineered this feature to confront the WooCommerce query dilemma head-on. We suggested that WooCommerce use two simpler SQL queries instead of that one complicated query. However, in the absence of changes from WooCommerce, we’ve taken the initiative.
WP-Optimize has a feature called ‘power tweak’. It replaces the problematic double left-join query in WooCommerce with two shorter, more efficient queries. This enhancement is crucial for sites with high volumes of orders.
To learn more and stay updated, check out our Github thread where our lead developer and founder, David Anderson, discusses this issue.
The free version of WP-Optimize significantly enhances your site’s performance. It simplifies complex tasks like image compression, database cleanup, and caching, making them accessible – even to those who aren’t tech-savvy. This ensures that your e-commerce site runs smoothly, providing a better experience for your visitors.
Our power tweak features are just two of the many features of premium. Other benefits include: even faster page loading speeds, tools to clean up your media library by removing unused images and image sizes, premium support, and so much more.
The latest version of WP-Optimize is now compatible with even more of your favorite plugins. For both the free and premium versions of WP-Optimize we’ve improved compatibility with:
All In One SEO We’ve added compatibility with WP-Optimize’s minify feature. This feature helps save space by reducing the size of your HTML, CSS and Javascript files.
Custom Permalinks is now compatible with our cache feature. With caching, users who visit your site are served local, static copies of your site’s files leading to huge improvements in page loading times for a faster, more efficient website.
The following improvements apply to WP-Optimize Premium:
WP-Optimize Premium now correctly detects banner images within Elementor and is able to optimize them effectively.
YITH Point of Sales is now also compatible with WP-Optimize Premium. Plugin point-of-sales pages are able to function correctly.
Lazy Loading can now be enabled with Smart Slider 3 without disrupting how images are displayed.
Finally, we’ve made a number of fixes that apply to both the free and premium versions of WP-Optimize:
Users were previously seeing a PHP warning or non-fatal error when converting to WebP where race conditions occurred. This was caused by the same script being executed twice, and has now been resolved.
Database responsiveness has been improved; exceptionally large databases can now be processed more effectively.
If WP Optimize is uninstalled, files and settings created by the plugin are automatically removed or reverted.
For a full list of tweaks and fixes, please see below:
Changelog
* FIX: HTML minify should not remove title tag added by AIOSEO
* FIX: Premium – Fetching unused images data is incorrect when previous task queue is not properly unlocked
* TWEAK: Premium – Prevent conflicts between the minify feature and the YITH Point of Sale for WooCommerce plugin
* TWEAK: Premium – Compatibility issue with Smart Slider 3
Fast, efficient website optimization
WP-Optimize helps you to boost the performance of your WordPress website. It will shrink your database size, compress large images, clean up spam and unapproved comments, report on database tables with overhead and wasted space, and cache your site. The result is a leaner, faster, more organized website. Our Premium version includes enhanced functionality such as multisite support, sophisticated scheduling options, and is compatible with campaign tracking queries like UTM tags. If you think WP-Optimize could be the right solution for your website, you can learn more
In February and March 2023, we released various features, fixes and tweaks, the most significant of which offers even more optimization opportunities for existing and new customers alike.
Compress image sizes by up to 34%
WP-Optimize 3.2.13 brought new features to users, specifically the ability to convert images in the media library to the WebP format.
This feature was first introduced in 2022 however only new or uncompressed images could previously be converted. Release 3.2.13 means already compressed images can be further compressed with the WebP image format.
It helps speed up your site by cleaning the database, compressing images and caching your site. Optimized websites means higher rankings in Google, a better user experience and therefore improved engagement with your website or business.
For added optimization you may wish to consider an upgrade to WP-Optimize Premium.
You can get a 10% discount for doing so right now, and up until 5 April so it’s a good time to consider giving your WordPress website a turbo boost.
Premium is loaded with added features like Lazy Load where images and videos load gradually as they become visible to the user. This allows a page to load much faster compared to the simultaneous loading of all web parts, without affecting the user experience.
Load webpages faster, identify orphaned images and get premium support.
Get more advanced options too, like the ability to optimize your site using the WP-CLI. Premium is compatible with WordPress multisite, WooCommerce and various other add-ons, including multilingual and multi-currency WordPress plugins.
Get 10% off Premium until 5 April with code ‘turboboost23’ at checkout.
In February and March we also brought you
Improved compatibility with WP Hide. WP Hide literally hides your WordPress plugins and themes so the code can’t be seen or exploited by malicious users (3.2.11 – Premium only).
A fix was applied to ensure nonces are checked correctly. The fix avoids any risk of attackers tricking admin users into changing the configuration of WP-Optimize (3.2.12)
A security issue encountered in SimpleHTMLDOM, a third-party library was resolved (3.2.13)
Improved compatibility with the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) WordPress plugin (3.2.13)
WebP images used in posts or pages were incorrectly being marked as unused which was corrected. WP-Optimize also now recognises where images are used in Yoast SEO, marking these as used (3.2.13)
Compatibility with WordPress 6.2 affecting some customers with PHP 8.x was resolved (3.2.14)
On Friday 26 August, Gilo Varghese, founder of Flying Proxy, a CDN, tweeted the following allegation about WP Optimize: https://twitter.com/GijoVarghese_/status/1563097754322501632 . We were not contacted directly but learned of it a few days later when we were asked by a WordPress news site to comment.
In short, the allegation is that WP-Optimize are deliberately deceiving its users by appearing to use page speed tools like GTMetrix to be faster than sites actually are, and are doing this secretly for the purpose of making WP-Optimize look better.
Varghese then proceeded to respond to users who responded to his Tweet to ‘plug’ his company, Flying Press, which is a competitor to WP-Optimize, with a competing plugin product:
The tweet was widely circulated, and resulted in a WP Tavern article yesterday on the allegations. This was a UK public holiday, when many of our team were away and we didn’t have time to fully investigate the allegations. We were given a few hours before publication to respond, but at that time our main WP Optimize developer was already, in his time zone, asleep.
The team at UpdraftPlus (owners of WP-Optimize) investigated today and found the allegations to be completely false. The truth is actually the reverse – it is the allegations which have been presented deceptively, missing out obvious and key facts.
The most fundamental is that feature used to construct the claim clearly says in the user interface “…if you would like to exclude scripts from page speed tests”. The allegation by contrast implies this is hidden only in the code.
Secondly, the advanced setting used in the allegation is a valid feature, useful to find out whether the essential JS/CSS files are actually slowing down the web page or not. i.e. It has a proper use. This feature is by default, turned ‘off’ and only enabled by advanced users who know what they’re doing.
Joe Miles, a manager at UpdraftPlus said “the claim is the plugin is being deceptive, but it’s actually an explained setting in advanced settings which a site owner would have to decide to use, which have been used to falsely claim that WP-Optimize is manipulating things. The setting is a valid tool for testing. So UpdraftPlus will not be removing it and we’ve asked for the false accusations to be deleted.”
Peter Wilkinson from Divi Engine who developed Divi Nitro, (a speed performance plugin which is not affiliated with WP-Optimize, but actually a competitor), investigated the claims and said “Initially I was shocked at the news and as a competitor, thought it was bad practice to be deceiving customers.”
“Upon further investigation, I found out that it was actually far from the truth. In reality (from my research) WP-Optimize do not “cheat” pagespeed tools when you install or minify your Javascript.
“To “cheat” the tools, you need to manually add the JS files you want to asynchronous load to a setting that clearly has the label “Use this if you have a completely independent script or would like to exclude scripts from page speed tests (PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix…)”
Wilkinson made this very clear video to show how the untrue allegations have been unfairly presented in a way that misleads people:
“It just goes to show that you should not believe everything you read or hear. Test everything to make sure it is the truth.” Wilkinson added.
“In my view, Gijo Varghese has used deception to promote Flying Pages and Flying Press.”
Adam Lowe, President of PeakPerformanceDigital.com who was initially quoted in WP-Tavern as asking UpdraftPlus “how are we supposed to continue trusting your company with my clients’ backups when you use these deceptive and fraudulent practices?” replied today in support of WP-Optimize. He said:
Meanwhile, Andrew Palmer of WP Plugins Plus, tweeted that he believed the original claims to be false:
Summary: Gijo achieved the result that he did by using a clearly labelled expert feature with explained possible use cases to do something else. He then presented this as the normal but dishonestly hidden result of using WP-Optimize. This should never have been made a news story. We do not encourage anyone to try to “game” PageSpeed scores, and Gijo’s allegations that this is our secret intention that people would do so is unworthy, and we hope he will do the honourable thing and retract it. If any other users are puzzled by anything else in WP-Optimize, we hope that instead of stirring outrage on Twitter, they will ask us about it in a support channel.
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