Better Resource Hints vs Lightweight Accordion

Better Resource Hints will make your WordPress site or application faster and generally more performant by intelligently leveraging resource hints like prefetch, preload, preconnect, and server push. As it stands, WordPress isn’t that bad about providing a base level of these hints. In fact, a basic, dedicated API has been shipped since version 4.6.. However, this functionality only scratches the service, providing only dns-prefetch tags out of the box, and there’s growing opportunity to take advantage of different hints as they are introduced and gain more browser support. Specifically, this plugin focuses on the following types of hints for your styles and JavaScript assets: Preconnecting – This hint is similar to “dns-prefetch,” but a beefier version. Instead of just resolving the DNS, the preconnect hint handles TLS negotiations and TCP handshakes, resulting in reduced page latency. Preloading – Preloading occurs when the browser is told it can start downloading an asset in the background early during page load, instead of waiting until the asset is explicitly called to start the process. This hint is most beneficial for assets loaded later on in the page, but are nonetheless essential to the page’s functionality. More often than not, this is a JavaScript file. Enabling this results in an overall faster load time, and quicker time to interactive. Prefetching – Prefetching assets is similar to preloading, but the assets are downloaded in low priority for the purpose of caching them for later use. For example, if a user hits your home page and is likely to go to a page that uses a heavy JavaScript file, it’s wise to prefetch that asset on the home page, so it’s cached and ready to go on the next. Again, the result is a quicker subsequent page load, quicker time to interactive, and an improved overall user experience. This is different from DNS prefetching, which will only resolve the DNS of a resource’s host, and not actually download the resource itself. Server Push – If enabled, server push will tell your server to start delivering an asset before the browser even asks for it. This results in a much faster delivery of key assets, and be toggled on for both preloaded, prefetched, and preconnected assets. Note: This feature requires a server that supports server push, and is the most experimental strategy this plugin provides. As with any sort of performance-enhancing technique, just be aware that they should be used judiciously, and that the results you see will depend on the size the of resources your site loads, as well as how your server is configured. For additional reading, see some of the resources below: Preload, Prefetch, & Priorities in Chrome Preloading Key Requests Preload: What’s It Good For? Resource Hints – What is Preload, Prefetch, and Preconnect? What Makes This Plugin Stand Apart? There’s no shortage of plugins out there that aim to leverage resource hints for boosting performance. However, I’ve seen that several of them make the following mistakes: Inflexible Hint Management Many similar plugins only provide very limited flexibility in their options, and only allow setting hints globally for every page, regardless of whether the resources are actually needed on the page. This can often result in unecessarily bloaging your bandwidth, since hints on several pages are effectively useless. In some cases, this could actually lead to a less performant site. This plugin attempts to provide options to manage hints more flexibily and intelligently, meaning you won’t be unecessarily preloading assets in the background when they’re not even needed on the page. Misunderstanding What Different Hints Do I’ve come across some plugins that fail to understand and leverage different hints like they were designed. For example, promising that assets are being preloaded, when they’re actually being prefetched. These and other hints have very different purposes, and should not be interchangably used if you want them to impact your site in the most effective way. This plugin attempts to leverage these hints in way to maximize their effectiveness. For example, BHR won’t prefetch any assets that are enqueued on the page, because that’s just not how the prefetch hint is designed to be used. Is Better Resource Hints perfect? Absolutely not. That’s why I encourage any constructive feedback or bug reports to be sent my way immediately, so that I can’t improve this plugin as quickly as possible. A Note About Preloading CSS Because of their high placement on a page, if the option is enabled, your CSS files will be asyncronously preloaded, and then turned into a stylesheet once they’ve completely loaded. The advantage to doing this is that while the files are downloading, they won’t block the rest of the page from rendering, resulting an overall faster page load. However, this also means that there may be a flash of unstyled content on the page for a brief moment as the files download. To prevent this, it’s recommended to only preload CSS files that are not critical to the initial view of the page. This will allow you to gain some performance points without sacrificing use experience as the page loads. Filters The following filters are exposed for your use. /** * Modify the HTML link generated for preconnecting hosts. * * @param string $link (HTML tag) * @param string $url (URL of the host) * @return string */ add_filter('better_resource_hints_preconnect_tag', function ($link, $url) { return $url; }, 10, 2); /** * Modify the HTML link generated for prefetching hosts. * * @param string $link (HTML tag) * @param string $handle (WP handle of the resource * @param string $type (script or style) * @return string */ add_filter('better_resource_hints_prefetch_tag', function ($link, $handle, $type) { return $url; }, 10, 3); /** * Modify the HTML link generated for preloading hosts. * * @param string $link (HTML tag) * @param string $handle (WP handle of the resource * @param string $type (script or style) * @return string */ add_filter('better_resource_hints_preload_tag', function ($link, $handle, $type) { return $url; }, 10, 3); What Happens Out of the Box? Upon activation, Better Resource Hints will optimize your resource hints in a conservative, low-risk way by only doing two things out of the box: Preloading JavaScript assets enqueued in the footer. Setting preconnect hints for all third party hosts that already have dns-preconnect hints. Using the Plugin After activation, you are able to adjust settings to tweak optimization as seen fit. As a means of testing your optimizations, use a tool like Google Lighthouse to measure the impact of these changes on your site’s performance. As mentioned, the techniques used here are largely supported by modern browsers, but your results may vary depending on the amount of assets being loaded on your site, as well as your server configuration. Feedback You like it? Email or tweet me. You hate it? Email or tweet me. Regardless of how you feel, your review would be greatly appreciated!

Lightweight Accordion plugin for WordPress allows you to add collapse elements to posts using a Gutenberg block or a shortcode (via classic editor). By using the details HTML tag and a few lines of CSS this allows for a javascript-free accordion for minimum page load. Extremely Lightweight (<1kb): Without using Javascript the plugin uses the native details HTML tag and a few lines of code for almost no impact on front-end. Customizable: Options include customizing the HTML tag used for the accordion title, open by default, borders, colors, and accordion grouping (auto-close others when one opens). Shortcode Usage examples Here are a few examples of using the accordion plugin with shortcodes. [lightweight-accordion title="My Accordion"]My Content[/lightweight-accordion] Additionally you can display the accordion open on load with the accordion_open option. [lightweight-accordion title="My Accordion" accordion_open=true]My Content[/lightweight-accordion] You can also change the html tag wrapping the title of the accordion using the title_tag option. [lightweight-accordion title="My Accordion" title_tag="h3"]My Content[/lightweight-accordion] If you want to include FAQ schema you can add the schema option and set it to faq. [lightweight-accordion title="What is your return policy?" schema="faq"]You have 1 week to return your items[/lightweight-accordion] If you’d like put a border around the content of the accordion you can use the “bordered” attribute. [lightweight-accordion title="Bordered Content" bordered=true]My Content[/lightweight-accordion] If you want accordions to auto-close when another opens (exclusive accordion), use the “group” attribute with the same value on each accordion. [lightweight-accordion title="Question 1" group="faq"]Answer 1[/lightweight-accordion] [lightweight-accordion title="Question 2" group="faq"]Answer 2[/lightweight-accordion] [lightweight-accordion title="Question 3" group="faq"]Answer 3[/lightweight-accordion] If you’d like to swap the default triangle marker for a chevron or plus/minus icon (optionally on the right side of the title) use the “icon” and “icon_position” attributes. [lightweight-accordion title="My Accordion" icon="chevron" icon_position="right"]My Content[/lightweight-accordion] Shortcode Options Here is the full listing of shortcode options. Additionally all of these options are accessible when using the Gutenberg block. title (Required Default: null) The title of your accordion will be displayed at the top for users to click. A good example would be to include a user’s question so they could click it for more details. content (Required Default: null) Content that will go into your accordion element. title_tag (Default: “span”) This sets the html tag that wraps the title in the accordion summary. Useful if you want to make it a heading tag for SEO purposes. accordion_open (Default: false) Set this to true if you want your accordion to be open by default. bordered (Default: false) Set this to true if you want a border around the accordion content. title_text_color (Default: false) Set this to a hex value or CSS color to change the color of the accordion title text. title_background_color (Default: false) Set this to a hex value or CSS color to change the color of the accordion title text. schema (Default: false) Set this to faq if you’d like FAQ schema to be included. class (Default: false) Used to add a custom class to the parent container of the accordion. anchor (Default: null) Adds the value as an ID to the accordion div as an anchor. autop (Default: true) By default the shortcode will wrap text in a ‘p’ tag. Set this to false if you’d like this disabled for the specific accordion. group (Default: false) Set this to a group name to make accordions with the same group auto-close when another opens. Uses the native HTML details name attribute for zero JavaScript overhead. icon (Default: false) Set this to “chevron”, “plus”, or “none” to replace the default triangle marker. The chevron rotates and the plus becomes a minus when the accordion opens. icon_position (Default: false) Set this to “right” to display the chevron or plus icon on the right side of the accordion title. Additional Details If you’d like to remove the “lightweight-accordion.css” from being enqueued on your site use the filter below. It’s recommend you style the accordion yourself if you use this filter. add_filter('lightweight_accordion_include_frontend_stylesheet', '__return_false' ); If you’d like to remove the “lightweight-accordion/editor-styles.css” from being enqueued in the admin area of your site you can use the filter below. add_filter('lightweight_accordion_include_admin_stylesheet', '__return_false' ); If you’d like to remove processing of shortcodes in accordion content you can use this filter. add_filter('lightweight_accordion_process_shortcodes', '__return_false' ); If you’d like to use inline Microdata for FAQ schema you can use this filter. (Not recommended) add_filter('lightweight_accordion_output_microdata', '__return_true' ); If you’d like to force “lightweight-accordion.css” to load on all of your site you can use this filter. By default the plugin will detect if the block or shortcode is used and enqueue the CSS. add_filter('lightweight_accordion_always_include_frontend_stylesheet', '__return_true' ); When a page contains an accordion a tiny inline script is added to the footer that automatically opens accordions targeted by a URL hash (for example a link to an accordion’s anchor). If you’d like to disable this you can use the filter below. add_filter('lightweight_accordion_anchor_script', '__return_false' );