SQLite Object Cache vs BlinkSpeed

Boost your WordPress site speed with advanced AI optimization techniques. Improve Core Web Vitals, achieve higher scores on Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix, and deliver a faster, smoother browsing experience for your visitors. Features CSS Optimization – Minification, combination, and critical CSS loading JavaScript Optimization – Minification, combination, and deferred loading HTML Caching – Page-level caching for improved performance Image Optimization – WebP conversion and lazy loading CDN Support – Content Delivery Network integration Lazy Loading – Images, iframes, and videos Asset Preloading – Preload critical assets like images and fonts for faster rendering Admin Bar Integration – Quick cache purge from admin bar Multisite Support – Network-wide and individual site management Web Vitals Monitoring – Core Web Vitals tracking and logging Change Logging – Track all settings changes Free vs Premium Features BlinkSpeed offers a powerful free version with essential performance optimizations. A premium license unlocks advanced AI-powered optimization features for the entire website. Free Version (Included with Plugin) The following features are available for free and work on all pages: HTML page caching CSS minification JavaScript minification JavaScript lazy loading Image lazy loading Browser caching GZIP compression Cache management tools Multisite compatibility Critical CSS generation (Home Page Only) Advanced image optimization and WebP conversion (Home Page Only) These optimizations help significantly improve page load speed and overall performance without requiring a license key. Premium Version (Requires License Key) The premium version unlocks advanced AI-powered optimization features for all pages: HTML page caching CSS minification JavaScript minification JavaScript lazy loading Image lazy loading Browser caching GZIP compression Cache management tools Multisite compatibility Critical CSS generation (All Pages) Advanced image optimization and WebP conversion (All Pages) Without a license key, critical CSS and advanced image optimization are available only for the homepage. Why Premium Features Require a License Some advanced optimizations rely on BlinkSpeed cloud services to process CSS, images, and performance data. These services require additional server resources, so a license key is required to enable them for the entire website. You can activate your license key from: BlinkSpeed → General Settings → License Key Requirements WordPress 5.0 or higher PHP 7.4 or higher PHP XML extension PHP GD extension Plugin Architecture The plugin follows WordPress coding standards and modular architecture. Main Files blinkspeed.php – Main plugin file with header and initialization includes/Plugin.php – Main plugin class orchestrating functionality includes/Core.php – Core functionality and settings management includes/Frontend.php – Frontend optimization handling includes/Database.php – Database operations and table management Admin Structure admin/Admin.php – Main admin class handling menu and settings admin/Admin_Bar.php – Admin bar cache purge functionality admin/admin-page.php – Admin page template Configuration General Settings Enable Optimization – Turn on/off optimization features License Key – Enter your BlinkSpeed license key CSS Optimization CSS Optimization – Enable CSS minification and combination Load Critical CSS – Inline critical CSS for above-the-fold content JavaScript Optimization JavaScript Optimization – Enable JS minification and combination Load Combined JS – Choose when to load combined JavaScript files HTML Caching HTML Caching – Enable page-level caching Cache Expiry Time – Set cache expiration time in seconds Image Optimization Convert JPG to WebP – Automatically convert JPG images to WebP Convert PNG to WebP – Automatically convert PNG images to WebP Lazy Loading – Enable lazy loading for images Usage Basic Setup Activate the plugin. Go to BlinkSpeed settings. Configure optimization preferences. Save settings. Cache Management Purge cache directly from the WordPress admin bar. CSS/JS cache can be purged globally or per page. HTML cache can be purged globally or per page. Critical CSS cache can be purged per page. Monitoring View Web Vitals logs for performance insights. Review change logs for settings updates. Monitor cache sizes and performance. Hooks Actions blinkspeed_init – Plugin initialization blinkspeed_settings_saved – Settings saved blinkspeed_cache_cleared – Cache cleared Filters blinkspeed_settings – Modify plugin settings blinkspeed_cache_path – Customize cache paths blinkspeed_exclude_urls – Exclude URLs from optimization Database Tables The plugin creates the following tables: wp_blinkspeed_core_web_vitals – Stores Web Vitals performance data wp_blinkspeed_change_logs – Stores settings change logs wp_blinkspeed_site_urls – Stores site URL management data Cache Structure wp-content/cache/ ├── critical-css/ └── bs-cache/ Performance Impact CSS/JS Optimization – Reduces file sizes by 20-40% HTML Caching – Improves page load times by 50-80% Image Optimization – Reduces image sizes by 25-50% Lazy Loading – Improves initial page load performance Common Issues Permission errors – Ensure cache directory permissions are correct. Cache not working – Verify optimization settings are enabled. Images not converting – Confirm the GD extension is installed. Admin bar missing – Check user capability settings. Security Input sanitization for all settings Nonce verification for forms Capability checks for admin actions Secure file operations Multisite Support Network-wide settings management Individual site overrides Centralized cache control Site-specific optimization rules External Services This plugin connects to the BlinkSpeed API service: https://rest.blinkspeed.ai These services provide CSS optimization, image optimization, and license verification. Data Sent CSS file URLs and content for optimization Image URLs for WebP conversion License key for verification Service Information Service Provider: https://blinkspeed.ai Support Policy: https://blinkspeed.ai/support-policy/ Terms of Service: https://blinkspeed.ai/term-of-service/ All communication happens over secure HTTPS connections. Minified Assets Some JavaScript files are distributed in minified form for performance. Third-party libraries: assets/js/web-vitals.iife.js – https://github.com/GoogleChrome/web-vitals assets/js/diff.min.js – https://github.com/kpdecker/jsdiff Plugin-specific scripts: assets/js/img-lazyload.js – https://blinkspeed.ai/resources/js/img-lazyload.js assets/js/script-load.min.js – https://blinkspeed.ai/resources/js/script-load.js

A persistent object cache helps your site perform well. This one uses the widely available SQLite3 extension, and optionally the igbinary and APCu extensions to php. Many hosting services offer those extensions, and they are easy to install on a server you control. What is this about? It’s about making your site’s web server perform better. An object cache does that by reducing the workload on your MariaDB or MySQL database. This is not a page cache; these persistent objects go into a different kind of cache. These objects aren’t chunks of web pages ready for people to view in their browsers, they are data objects for use by the WordPress software. Caches are ubiquitous in computing, and WordPress has its own caching subsystem. Caches contain short-term copies of the results of expensive database lookups or computations, and allow software to use the copy rather than repeating the expensive operation. This plugin (like other object-caching plugins) extends WordPress’s caching subsystem to save those short-term copies from page view to page view. WordPress’s cache happens to be a memoization cache. Without a persistent object cache, every WordPress page view must use your MariaDB or MySQL database server to retrieve everything about your site. When a user requests a page, WordPress starts from scratch and loads everything it needs from your database server. Only then can it deliver content to your user. With a persistent object cache, WordPress immediately loads much of the information it needs. This lightens the load on your database server and delivers content to your users faster. Who should use this? If your site runs on a single web server machine, and that server provides the SQLite3 and igbinary extensions to php, this plugin will almost certainly make your site work faster. And if that server provides the APCu extension, this plugin uses it too. Some hosting providers offer redis cache servers. If your provider offers redis, it may be a good choice. You can use it via the Redis Object Cache plugin. Sites using redis have one SQL database and another non-SQL storage server: redis. Other hosting providers offer memcached, which has the Memcached Object Cache plugin. And some large multipurpose cache plugins, such as the LiteSpeed Cache, also offer object caching based on one of those cache server software packages. The cache-server approach to object caching comes into its own when you have multiple load-balanced web server machines handling your site. SQLite doesn’t work correctly in a multiple-web-server environment. But, for single-server site configurations, SQLite, possibly assisted by APCu, performs well. And the vast majority of sites are single-server. APCu APCu is an in-memory storage medium. It lets php programs, like WordPress, store data in shared memory so it’s very fast to retrieve when needed. If APCu is available on your host server, you can configure this plugin to use it. It reduces the typical cache lookup time to one-fifth or less of the SQLite lookup time, which is itself a few tens of microseconds. Performance counts, especially on busy web sites. Please look at Installation to learn how to configure this plugin to use APCu. The plugin works fast without it, and faster with it. WP-CLI: Even if APCu is in use, caching with SQLite is necessary when your web site uses WP-CLI, because WP-CLI programs do not have access to the APCu cache. This plugin writes all cached data both to APCu and to SQLite and makes sure the two are synchronized. WP-CLI You can control this plugin via WP-CLI once you activate it. Please type this command into your shell for details. wp help sqlite-object-cache Credits Thanks to Till Krüss. His Redis Object Cache plugin serves as a model for this one. And thanks to Ari Stathopoulos and Jonny Harris for reviewing this. Props to Matt Jones for finding and fixing a bug that appeared on a heavily loaded system. Thanks to Massimo Villa for testing help, and to nickchomey for a comprehensive code review. All defects are, of course, entirely the author’s responsibility. And thanks to Jetbrains for the use of their software development tools, especially PhpStorm. It’s hard to imagine how a plugin like this one could be developed without PhpStorm’s tools for exploring epic code bases like WordPress’s. How can I learn more about making my WordPress site more efficient? We offer several plugins to help with your site’s database efficiency. You can read about them here.