PageSpeedPlus — Cache & Core Web Vitals Optimization

All-in-one speed optimization: page caching, delayed JavaScript, lazy loading, CSS/JS optimization and Core Web Vitals improvements.

Description

PageSpeedPlus makes your WordPress site dramatically faster and improves your Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP) — the metrics Google uses for ranking.

Caching

• Full page caching served before WordPress even loads (advanced-cache drop-in)
• Separate mobile cache, gzip pre-compression, smart purging on content changes
• Cache preloading from your sitemap so visitors always hit a warm cache
• Browser caching headers and GZIP compression rules

JavaScript

• Delay JavaScript until interaction — the single biggest Total Blocking Time win
• Defer JavaScript with sensible jQuery exclusions
• Minify and combine local scripts

CSS

• Minify and combine stylesheets
• Async CSS loading with critical CSS inlining (eliminate render-blocking CSS)

Media

• LCP-aware lazy loading: skips above-the-fold images, adds fetchpriority="high" and a preload hint for your LCP image
• Adds missing image dimensions to prevent layout shift (CLS)
• YouTube facades — replace 500KB+ embeds with a click-to-play thumbnail

More

• Google Fonts: self-host locally, display=swap, preconnect, custom font preloading
• HTML minification, emoji/embed/dashicons removal, Heartbeat control
• CDN URL rewriting
• WP-CLI support: wp pagespeedplus purge|preload|webp|critical-css|license|master|setting

Safe defaults are enabled on activation; aggressive optimizations are opt-in with per-feature exclusion lists.

Pair it with PageSpeedPlus monitoring to track your scores automatically after every change.

Installation

1. Upload and activate the plugin.
2. Page caching, lazy loading and HTML minification are enabled automatically.
3. Visit PageSpeedPlus → JavaScript and enable Defer and Delay for the biggest gains — test your site after enabling each one.
4. Re-test your site on PageSpeed Insights.

Frequently Asked Questions

My site looks broken after enabling an optimization

Disable the last optimization you enabled and re-test. For Delay/Defer JavaScript, add the offending script's name to the exclusion list. Appending ?psp_nooptimize=1 to any URL bypasses all optimizations for debugging.

Does it work with WooCommerce?

Yes. Cart, checkout and account pages are excluded from the cache automatically, as are visitors with items in their cart.

Does it work on Nginx?

Yes. Page caching and all optimizations work everywhere. Browser-cache/GZIP rules are Apache/LiteSpeed only — equivalent Nginx config is shown under Cache.

Is it compatible with other caching plugins?

Run only one page-caching plugin at a time. PageSpeedPlus will not overwrite another plugin's advanced-cache.php drop-in.

Changelog

1.14.0

• Self-host third-party scripts (e.g. Google Analytics/gtag): download listed external scripts locally + refresh every 12h.
• Lazy-load CSS background images (inline-style) via IntersectionObserver, with exclusions.
• LQIP: blurry low-quality placeholders behind lazy images (generated on upload).
• Script Manager: dequeue specific scripts/styles by handle, optionally per-URL.

1.13.4

• Self-update: the updater now authenticates with the API key as a Bearer token and checks app.pagespeedplus.com/api/plugin/update (consistent with the license/cache-warm calls).

1.13.3

• Cache tab: clarified that the plugin fires one-off warms, while recurring schedules and warm regions are managed in the PageSpeedPlus dashboard — added a deep-link (filter: psp_cache_warm_url).

1.13.2

• Brotli is now a toggle on the Cache tab (Brotli Compression for cached pages), with an availability indicator — defaults on when the PHP brotli extension is present, off/disabled when it isn't.

1.13.1

• Dashboard counter now includes the new toggles added in 1.12–1.13 (self-host fonts, auto DNS-prefetch, and the new Tweaks switches), so the total reflects every optimization.

1.13.0

• Tweaks: new toggles to disable jQuery Migrate, Gutenberg block CSS, conditional comment-reply.js, and remove feed/REST/RSD-WLW/shortlink/version cruft.
• Fonts: Auto DNS-Prefetch — adds dns-prefetch hints for every third-party host on the page.
• Page cache: Brotli pre-compression when the PHP brotli extension is available (drop-in serves .br, falling back to gzip).
• Media: decoding="async" now also applied to above-the-fold images.
• Dashboard: Import / Export settings as JSON.

1.12.0

• Fonts: new Self-Host Google Fonts option — downloads Google Fonts (CSS + woff2) to your server in the background and serves them locally, removing the render-blocking request to fonts.googleapis.com/gstatic.com (faster + GDPR-friendly). Opt-in; safe fallback to the original request until the local copy is ready.

1.11.5

• CSS tab: automatic Critical CSS generation is now gated behind a backend-availability flag (the cloud service isn't live yet) and shows "Coming soon" instead of a button that errors. Manual Critical CSS + Async CSS are unchanged. Flip the PSP_CCSS_BACKEND constant once the endpoint ships.

1.11.4

• Cache tab: moved the Purge and Preload buttons to the top of the page for quicker access.

1.11.3

• Header logo now sits directly on the masthead (removed the white plate).

1.11.2

• CSS tab: clarified that Manual Critical CSS takes raw CSS (no