Easy Critical CSS
Easy Critical CSS is a lightweight WordPress plugin that lets you add Critical CSS to any page on your site to improve loading speed and performance. Features: – Easily add Critical CSS and Secondary CSS to any page – Secondary CSS removes unused CSS rules and stylesheets, ensuring only a single optimized CSS file loads – Supports posts, pages, archives, and taxonomy pages – Fully compatible with caching plugins (WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, etc.) – Customizable settings for individual pages – Stores Critical CSS in your choice of the database or as static files – Optional API service (API key required) for automated Critical and Secondary CSS generation via CriticalCSS.net – Background processing to generate CSS without blocking page loads or admin actions Why Use Critical CSS? Critical CSS ensures above-the-fold content loads first by reducing render-blocking CSS. This helps you boost Core Web Vitals, improve page speed scores, and deliver a better experience to your visitors. Want to try it out first? You can generate free one-off Critical CSS at CriticalCSS.net and manually apply it to your site using the plugin settings. External services This plugin interacts with external third-party services in order to provide its functionality. Below is a detailed breakdown of these interactions: Critical CSS API (api.criticalcss.net) This service generates critical and secondary CSS used to optimize your site’s CSS delivery and improve page load times. Data Sent: The URL, CSS generation preferences, generation status, and HTML content of pages from your website. When: Data is transmitted only if you have explicitly enabled the Auto generation mode, and occurs whenever Critical CSS or Secondary CSS needs to be generated or regenerated. Links: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy. Cloudflare API (api.cloudflare.com) This service is used to automatically clear your Cloudflare cache after new critical CSS is generated, ensuring your visitors see updated styles immediately. Data Sent: Authentication credentials (Cloudflare email, API key, and zone ID) and instructions for purging the cache. When: Data is sent only if CLOUDFLARE_EMAIL, CLOUDFLARE_API_KEY, and CLOUDFLARE_ZONE_ID are defined in your site’s configuration. Links: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy. Kinsta Cache Clear (localhost) If your site is hosted on Kinsta, this plugin can trigger a cache clear after generating new critical CSS, ensuring immediate availability of updated styles. Data Sent: A cache-clear request to your site’s local server endpoint provided by Kinsta. No sensitive or identifying information is transmitted beyond the local environment. When: Data is sent only when your site detects that it’s running on Kinsta infrastructure (KINSTA_CACHE_ZONE environment variable is present). Links: Kinsta Terms of Service, Kinsta Privacy Policy. Freemius API (api.freemius.com and wp.freemius.com) Used to manage licensing, validate API keys, and handle plugin updates and account management. Data Sent: Freemius sends and receives licensing information and plugin activation status, including your site’s URL, plugin version, API key, and licensing details. When: Data is transmitted only after explicitly opting in through the plugin’s settings page or upon activation of a purchased API key. By default, the plugin does not send any data to Freemius until you explicitly opt in. Links: Freemius Terms of Service, Freemius Privacy Policy.
Smush – Image Optimization, Compression, Lazy Load, WebP & CDN
Compress images, optimize images, and enable image lazy load automatically with the powerful Smush image optimizer to keep your WordPress site fast, without losing quality. Smush makes it easy to optimize images, compress images, and deliver images faster across your entire WordPress site. This all-in-one image optimizer automatically reduces image file sizes, enables image lazy load, and serves modern formats like WebP and AVIF, all without breaking image quality or adding extra work. Whether you’re running a blog, store, or portfolio, Smush helps you optimize images at scale and keep your site fast with a trusted WordPress image optimizer. Trusted by 1+ Million Sites | 4.8/5 Star Rating Get everything you need to optimize images and speed up your site. Smush works out of the box with no complicated setup – just install and let it handle the rest. Compress images without losing quality Reduce image file size automatically while keeping your images sharp and clear. Smush is an easy-to-use image optimizer which let’s you compress images using both lossless and lossy compression, giving you the best balance of quality and performance without extra work. You can also compress images outside the media library using Directory Smush, making it easy to optimize images stored in theme folders, plugins, or other directories on your server. Lazy load images for faster pages Enable image lazy load across your site so images load only when needed. This image optimizer improves initial page speed and creates a smoother experience for visitors without extra configuration. Serve WebP and AVIF images automatically (PRO) Convert images to WebP and AVIF and serve them automatically to supported browsers. Smush helps you optimize images using next-gen formats to reduce file size and improve load times across your WordPress site. Deliver images faster with an Image CDN (PRO) Serve images through a global image CDN to reduce latency and improve load times for visitors around the world. 119 global CDN servers Up to 500 GB of bandwidth Faster image delivery based on visitor location Improved performance for image-heavy and high-traffic sites Automatically resize and fix image dimensions (PRO) Eliminate common PageSpeed warnings and improve layout stability with automatic image sizing. Smush dynamically resizes images to perfectly fit their containers, regardless of original size, helping fix the “Properly size images” warning in Google PageSpeed Insights. It also automatically adds missing width and height attributes to your images, improving rendering speed and reducing layout shifts. This helps you meet the “Ensure images have explicit width and height” recommendation without any manual work. Optimize your entire site, automatically Smush works across your whole site as a powerful image optimizer to optimize images as you upload them and maintain performance over time without manual work. Optimize images automatically on upload Compress images in bulk or individually Works with your existing media library No need to re-upload images Enable image lazy load across your site Convert images to WebP and AVIF Deliver images with an integrated image CDN Automatically resize and serve correctly sized images Optimize images outside the media library with Directory Smush Built for performance Smush improves page speed and overall performance by reducing image weight and improving how images are delivered. Reduce page load times Improve user experience Better performance for image-heavy pages Supports image lazy load and preload images (PRO) for faster perceived performance Works with your existing setup Smush is built to work with your current WordPress setup, including popular themes, page builders, and plugins. Compatible with Gutenberg, Elementor, WPBakery, and more Works with WooCommerce stores No need to change your workflow Easy to enable and configure Designed to be simple You don’t need to be a performance expert to optimize images with Smush image optimizer. Works out of the box Simple settings when you need them No technical knowledge required Safe to use on any site Why choose Smush? There are plenty of image optimization plugins, but Smush focuses on making it easy to optimize images, compress images, and improve performance without complexity. As a leading WordPress image optimizer, Smush gives you powerful optimization tools without the technical hassle. Trusted by over 1 million WordPress users Built specifically for WordPress Regular updates and improvements Backed by the WPMU DEV team Get started in minutes Install Smush, activate it, and start to compress images, optimize images, and enable image lazy load right away. This easy-to-use image optimizer helps most sites see improvements immediately without changing how they upload or manage images. About Us WPMU DEV is a premium supplier of quality WordPress plugins, services and support. Learn more here: https://wpmudev.com/ Don’t forget to stay up to date on everything WordPress from the Internet’s number one resource: WPMU DEV Blog Hey, one more thing… we hope you enjoy our free offerings as much as we’ve loved making them for you! Contact and Credits Originally written by Alex Dunae at Dialect (dialect.ca, e-mail ‘alex’ at ‘dialect dot ca’), 2008-11.
