Tech News: New WordPress Performance Plugin Will Speed Up Your Website
What plugins do you use to increase your WordPress website performance? Several third party ones, right?
Luckily, the task of finding a good app is now much easier! Since the WordPress performance team has released its own plugin to improve the loading speed of WordPress-based sites. Meet Performance Lab.
What is Performance Lab?
Performance Lab is the official WordPress plugin for speeding up WordPress websites. This open source software will identify issues that might be slowing the website down and fix them.
The current plugin version is actually beta of new WordPress core features. The developers do not hide the fact that the main goal of the release is to get feedback from publishers and evaluate the feasibility of including modules in a future version of the WordPress core (which is a set of software required to run WordPress).
How Does Performance Lab Work?
Currently, the Performance Lab plugin consists of 4 modules, which are designed to positively influence the site loading speed and performance. Users can choose which of them will be used on their site - all four, or maybe only one. Here they are:
- WebP Uploads. Converts new JPG images to the more modern and faster WebP format.
- WebP Support. Checks if the server supports the WebP format and shows it in Site Health status.
- Persistent Object Cache Health Check. Checks the cache of objects on the site and shows the results in Site Health status.
- Audit Enqueued Assets (*experimental). Checks the site for unnecessary CSS and JS files and adds the results in Site Health status.
The WordPress team notes that the list of included modules may change in whole or in part over time.
How Does Performance Lab Differ From Other Plugins?
In fact, the Performance Lab plugin is “a collection of performance-related “feature projects” for WordPress core“. Thus, the main advantage is that the performance features it offers are clearly aimed at the WordPress core. In addition, the plugin replaces several similar plugins at once. It’s a comprehensive solution.
Still, the WordPress developers claim that Performance Lab “is not a full replacement for other WordPress performance plugins you may be using already”.
How to Install Performance Lab?
Now, the first version is already available for installation from the users' dashboard. In a couple of weeks, the plugin has received over 1,000 active installs and several rave reviews.
To join (at least the first group), visit the Plugins section > Add New, search for Performance Lab and then install and activate the plugin.
The other way to setup Performance Lab is to download it from the WordPress Plugin Directory. Once performed, upload the entire performance-lab folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory, visit Plugins and activate the Performance Lab plugin.
In both cases, after activation, you should visit the new Settings > Performance menu and enable the necessary modules.
By the way, did you know that you can receive instant notifications in popular messengers about events taking place in your WordPress (WooCommerce) store - new orders, order status changes, low stock?
The free Notify.Events plugin for WordPress and WooCommerce is designed exactly for these purposes. Choose a convenient way to receive notifications – 50+ tools, including Slack, MS Teams, Viber, SMS, etc. are available. Increase your work efficiency by distributing notifications among all the team members according to their work schedule. Process incoming orders at the speed of light and get more sales.
This is much more convenient and more efficient than the built-in e-mail notifications!
