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Back in October of 2021, WordPress announced the formation of a new WordPress Performance Team–including contributors from Google, Yoast, and hundreds of community members–all aimed at increasing the performance (speed) of the WordPress core. Improved website performance can provide a better user experience and increased engagement, while also benefitting SEO and being more economically and ecologically friendly.
The Performance Team is tasked with evaluating and optimizing the platform’s performance in 19 categories, most notably:
- Images
- JavaScript
- CSS
- Web Fonts
- Caching
- Overall Site Health
They will also help plugin developers to create better-performing software so that adding plugins won’t slow down your website as much.
This month, the team announced the release of a new plugin called Performance Lab, which is a collection of “beta” modules that address some of these key performance issues. The idea is to make these features available to the general public, allowing website owners to test them and provide feedback, so that they can be further improved before they’re rolled out as part of a future core update.
The plugin currently includes the following features:
- WebP Uploads – creating optimized WebP images from your JPEG uploads, if supported by the server. (It also adds a WebP support check, so you can see whether your server supports WebP images in your Site Health Check.)
- Persistent Object Cache Health Check – while Page Caching stores previously generated code for easy recall, Object Caching stores the results of previous database queries, reducing repeated requests.
- Enqueued Assets Audit – Adds a resource check for JS and CSS assets in your Site Health Check.
You can download and test drive these modules today by installing the plugin and then enabling the features under a new Settings -> Performance menu in your WordPress dashboard. But note that the Performance Team is making the plugin available for testing purposes, more than as a permanent fix for performance issues at this time. Using “beta” features always comes with the risk of unexpected results.
It’s also worth noting that improvements to the WordPress core won’t compensate for poorly optimized themes or plugins that are already installed on your site, so it’s important to keep your theme and plugin overhead low. Implementing custom themes and features is still the best way to prevent code bloat and maintain a fast-loading experience for your end-users.
If you have questions about this new plugin, or would like to discuss ways to improve your WordPress website’s performance, reach out to PixelPeople today. We’d love to help you do more with your online presence.
