Hummingbird Performance – Cache & Page Speed Optimization for Core Web Vitals | Critical CSS | Minify CSS | Defer CSS Javascript | CDN vs Swift Performance Lite

Hummingbird makes your website faster and optimizes site performance by adding new ways to boost Google PageSpeed Insights with fine-tuned controls over file compression, deferring CSS and JavaScript styles and scripts, minify for CSS and JS, Lazy Load integration, and world-class caching. Hummingbird is brought to you by the WordPress speed specialists that created Smush image optimization, now active on more than +1 million websites. Get the complete speed boost with Hummingbird and Smush. Enjoy top-tier performance and PageSpeed optimization from the start with Hummingbird Pro. Level up immediately with exclusive Pro features like Delay JavaScript Execution, Critical CSS Generation, Brotli file compression, and 119-point global asset CDN with unlimited bandwidth. Learn more about Pro. If PageSpeed Insights is making these speed recommendations Hummingbird can help: Enable text compression – Use gzip to make your site fly (Brotli Compression via CDN included with Pro). Preconnect to required origins – Use Hummingbird to establish earlier connections. Preload key requests – Prioritize resources based on order. Avoid enormous network payloads – Consider Lazy Load for comments or breaking up smaller posts. Use efficient cache – The Hummingbird Cache suite offers effective browser cache for caching any site. Fix your JavaScript execution time – Deliver smaller JS payloads, preload JS, and defer JS. Minify CSS – Strip unused code from your CSS. Minify JavaScript – Speed up the time it takes to parse your JS files. Eliminate render-blocking resources – Move critical CSS and JS inline and defer all non-critical JS/CSS. Delay JavaScript execution (Pro only) – Increase performance by delaying the loading of non-critical JS files and scripts until user interaction. Automatically generate Critical CSS (Pro only) – Substantially boost page speed and UX by prioritizing above-the-fold content. Defer unused CSS – Defer the loading of CSS not used for above-the-fold content. Lazy Load offscreen images (Smush free integration). Hummingbird scans your site and provides one-click fixes to speed up WordPress in a flash. You’ll get faster loading pages, higher search rankings (SERP) and PageSpeed scores, and happier visitors with Hummingbird’s WordPress speed optimization. Optimizing the speed of your site has never been easier! Features Available in Hummingbird Include: Scan and Fix – Get a scan of your site, find out what’s slowing it down, and use one-click performance improvements to make critical speed improvements. World-class caching – A full caching suite to load pages faster with full-page, Gravatar, and browser cache tool. Performance Reports – Pro tips for running your site at super speed. Asset Optimization – Combine, compress and position Javascript, CSS, and Google Font files for top performance. Safe Mode — Test Hummingbird settings without affecting your visitors’ experience, only logged-in admins see the optimized version. Better Rankings – Improve scores on Google PageSpeed Insights (SEO ranking factor), YSlow, Pingdom, and GTmetrix. Increase Your Conversion Rate – Don’t keep visitors waiting: faster sites convert better. GZIP Compression – Blazing-fast HTML, JavaScript, and stylesheet (CSS) transfer. Configs – Set your preferred performance settings, save them as config, and instantly upload to any other site. Font Optimization – Improve site speed, Core Web Vitals, and visual stability by preloading critical fonts and enabling fallbacks. Uptime Monitoring & Alerts – Get instant notifications if your site ever goes down. Scheduled Performance Reports – Stay on top of site speed with regular insights. Learn The Ropes With These Hands-On Hummingbird Tutorials How To Optimize WordPress For Speed With Hummingbird How To Optimize Elementor for Free Using Smush and Hummingbird How To Optimize WPBakery Sites Using Smush And Hummingbird Speed Up and Optimize Avada for Free Using Smush and Hummingbird Optimize Divi for Free Using Smush and Hummingbird Hummingbird Features to Speed Up WordPress Scan and One-Click Fix Hummingbird is a WordPress speed optimization plugin. It will scan your site, find files that are slowing it down, and provide tips and fixes for making your site run at top speed. Hummingbird even has one-click improvements like a full cache suite, one-click minify for styles and scripts, and deferring CSS and JS for quickly optimizing performance. What could be easier! World-Class Caching You’ll get a world-class caching suite, including full-page, browser, and Gravatar cache. Make your site load even faster with Hummingbird’s complete set of cache tools that give your visitors a faster browsing experience. Including full-page, browser and Gravatar caching. Asset Optimization Did you know that loading too many files in your site’s header can slow it down? Hummingbird now gives you granular control with separate Combine and Compress optimization modes, so you can fine tune your Asset Optimization like a pro. Reorder, defer, compress and exclude CSS and JavaScript files with one-click. Transfer Data at Top Speed With GZIP Hummingbird has GZIP powers to make sharing your site more efficient. Sending zipped files is faster and can save you money on hosting. And don’t worry about setup, send Hummingbird instructions with the click of a button and she’ll handle the rest. Built-in Cloudflare Integration Hummingbird can be used to control your Cloudflare browser cache and Automatic Platform Optimizations (APO) settings as well! Simply add your Cloudflare API key and configure away. Font Optimization Boost site speed, Core Web Vitals, and the visual stability of pages for users with Hummingbird’s one-click font optimization features: Preload Fonts, which instructs browsers to preload essential fonts, and Swap Web Fonts, which applies a temporary fallback font until the primary one loads. Fully Compatible With Smush Image Optimization You can complement Hummingbird’s WordPress speed optimization features with our award-winning sister-plugin Smush image optimization. Smush compresses your images, giving your site less to load – and thus a faster load time. Hummingbird + Smush integrate perfectly together, and are the perfect match to speed up WordPress. Compress, optimize (optimise), and fix PageSpeed performance with properly sized images, lazy load, next-gen WebP convert, image formatting, and more. Save time with Hummingbird Configs Configs allow you to save your preferred Hummingbird configuration settings and apply them to your other sites in a few clicks. You can create unlimited configs. Delay Javascript Resources (Pro Only) Boost site performance dramatically by delaying the loading of JS files and third-party scripts until direct user interaction (e.g. scroll or click). Enjoy faster loading pages, improve web vitals, and ace your PageSpeed scores. Activate in one click, includes user interaction timeout and the option to exclude critical files from being delayed. A paid WPMU DEV account (the developers of Hummingbird) is required to access this feature. You can check out our affordable plans here. Generate Critical CSS (Pro Only) Maximize site speed and user experience by prioritizing only the CSS that matters most. The Generate Critical CSS feature intelligently generates and embeds critical CSS in the head of each page, giving priority to above-the-fold content and significantly improving loading speed. Updates to your critical CSS are automated with every site design change, and you can enable/disable with a click. Faster Websites Rank Higher, Convert Better Every millisecond counts: your visitors expect an ever-faster website, with a page load time of under two seconds expected – and the norm. If visitors don’t get that on your site, they will leave. If you’re running a business website or eCommerce store, that means if your website does not load quickly, you will lose sales. Hummingbird is here to help you; it’s a one of a kind WordPress performance optimization plugin that can make your site run at superspeed, for free! You get our WordPress performance optimization suite, which includes minification and GZIP for small page sizes, full caching for faster loading, and integration with Cloudflare’s APO / browser cache, and our sister-plugin Smush image optimization. Hummingbird is built with ease-of-use in mind; it makes your WordPress site faster, but it’s also fast to set up. You can scan your site and implement recommended changes in one-click, getting a fast site in mere minutes. All the above is free and will speed up WordPress for you. If you need the very fastest WordPress site, you should get a WPMU DEV Membership. Our Membership gives you access to Hummingbird Pro – which features automated scanning, enhanced minify compression (with 2x the regular optimization), CDN hosted minification – alongside Smush Pro image optimization, all our premium WordPress plugins, and 24/7 WordPress support. It’s an incredible deal, and you can find out more here. What do People say About Hummingbird? ★★★★★ “Hummingbird is so easy to use. I thought it wouldn’t change my speed much because I already made improvements. I ran the scan, it gave me recommendations, I pushed a button to apply them and it made my site even faster!” – Camilo ★★★★★ “Hummingbird is getting smarter with each update. Today it’s become so good that it forced me to remove giant cache and optimization plugins like WP Super Cache and WP Sweep because now Hummingbird includes all those features – but in a more impressive way.” – swagatam1975 ★★★★★ “Hummingbird took me from 32 to 84 on Google page speed plus made my site 50% faster on GTmetrix!” – Nicolas ★★★★★ “I just built a real bloated sack of crap of a WP site, and after configuring Hummingbird and letting it do its thing, the site is actually fast — much faster than it has any right to be…I’m impressed.” – Cacarr A Note From Hummingbird Hey! This is Hummingbird, your trusted solution to speed up WordPress. I’m part of the WPMU DEV team, a superhero-suite of WordPress plugins, services, and support. Here are some of our other free plugins: Smush – Image Compression and Optimization Forminator – Form, Quiz, Poll and Survey Builder Hustle – Pop-ups, Slide-ins and Email Opt-ins And if you need ALL our Pro plugins AND 24/7 WordPress support, get WPMU DEV membership! My superhero friends run the WPMU DEV Blog, your source for the very best WordPress tutorials. If you need to be in the know about WordPress, check it out. Thanks for looking at Hummingbird, and I look forward to flying through your site to make it faster than ever. Enjoy, The Hummingbird About Us WPMU DEV is a premium supplier of quality WordPress plugins, services and support. Join us 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!

The need for Speed. Cache & Performance plugin for WordPress! You created it, we keep it fast! Did you know that…… You Have Just 3 Seconds To Impress Your Visitor. Don’t Lose It By Slow Loading. 95% of customer’s don´t wait if a website takes longer than 5-6 seconds to load! Yes, that´s a big number. People spend a lot of time and money on building websites and even more on marketing to get traffic… but what happens when those people come to your website and the website is slow to load? You lose sales. Slow loading websites lose visitors and sales. But we have a solution! Say goodbye to slow loading websites and say hello to Swift Performance Lite or Pro! Get a complete Cache & Performance plugin for free or as a pro. Swift Performance will increase the loading speed of any WordPress website and provides an intelligent, modern caching system. You can even cache AJAX request, dynamic pages, and you can add exceptions (URL, page or content based rules). Here are some of our most popular functions. Caching. Page caching is working out of the box. It is compatible with WooCommerce, bbPress, Cloudflare and Varnish as well. It will boost your performance, improve SEO scores, and create a better user experience. CSS and Javascript optimization. One of the most important thing for performance is optimize the delivery of static resources. Swift Performance not only combines and minifies the CSS files, but generates the Critical CSS for each page automatically. Also Javascripts (even inline scripts) can be combined, minified, and move to footer without any conflict. Huge combined javascript files may still be render blocking, however with our unique Async Execute solution, you can not only combine/minify the scripts, but you can run them individually as soon as a chunk has been downloaded – which provides incredibly fast JS execution, improves SEO scores and user experience. Database Optimization. Keeping your database clean is extremely important for speed. Swift Performance has a built in DB Optimizer to clean expired transients, orphans, duplicated metadata, and spammy comments. You can also schedule every tasks. It has never been easier to keep your WordPress database clean. Plugin Organizer. Plugins are a big part of WordPress, however sometimes not properly written plugins can cause performance issues. With Plugin Organizer you can disable plugins on certain pages, and let plugins run only where it is really necessary. You can set URL match, Frontend, Admin Pages, AJAX action rules and exceptions to get the best results. Why you should install Swift Performance Lite? After reading this exhaustive features, you can probably imagine why Swift Performance is the best Cache & Performance solution for WordPress. It is both easy and powerful. Optimizing WordPress performance is not rocket science anymore. Our unique Setup Wizard will help you to configure the basic settings and improve WordPress performance. We hear your voice! We are continuously improving the plugin, based on customer’s feedback & needs. This is one of the most important factors & mission. Give Swift Performance a try. Want to unlock more features? Upgrade to our Pro version. Why should you upgrade to Pro? We added our secret ingredients to make a product for our professional users, the result is Swift Performance Pro. Compute API. Compute API will speed up merging process and decrease CPU usage. Compute API also provides advanced JS minify, which should be used if default JS minification cause issues on your site. Compute API also provides Critical Font option, with that you can reduce font icon files’ size. This feature is essential for shared hosting users, as CPU usage is usually limited for shared hosting plans. Critical Icon Fonts. With Critical Fonts feature you can select icons that you are actually using on your site, and generate customized icon font set from them. There is also a feature to search used icons in your theme/plugins, posts, options, etc. Once you selected the icons that you need, you can enqueue them with one click. If critical icon fonts are enqueued, the plugin will block the original version of the font CSS/font files. Unlimited Image Optimizer. With Image Optimizer you can optimize every images on your site. It will scan the whole site, and pick up every image from themes, plugins and upload folder. Regarding that Image Optimizer is unlimited (no additional fees), you can save a considerable amount of money. You can select images individually, and run batch optimization. Default image quality can be specified in plugin settings, however you can overwrite it before starting the optimization on selected images. Schedule DB Optimizer. Both Pro and Lite versions comes with Database Optimizer. However in Pro you can set scheduled optimization, so you won’t need to do it manually. Whitelabel. With whitelabel option you can re-brand Swift Performance. You can change the plugin name, description, author, even the database prefix for the plugin. Remote Cron. Pro version provides a Remote Cron option. If you set the remote cron, our API server will call wp-cron.php and run WP cronjobs as real cronjobs. Extended WooCommerce Features. With Pro version you can’t just cache, but totally disable cart fragments AJAX calls. Pro also provide session cache, with that you can cache and preload dynamic pages like cart and checkout page for WooCommerce. Continuous Plugin Updates. While Swift Performance Lite is maintained as well, these updates are only compatibility updates, however Pro version comes with regular updates which contains new features. Also Pro version has a Beta tester option, if you enable it, you will get updates more frequently. FAQ Installation instructions Upload the plugin files to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory, or install the plugin through the WordPress plugins screen directly. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ screen in WordPress Run the Setup wizard, or use the Tools->Swift Performance screen to configure the plugin Why should I use Swift Performance plugin? Swift Performance is an all-in-one WordPress performance booster plugin. It provides everything that you need to speed up your WordPress site (replacing several optimization plugins), and improve user’s website experience. Swift Performance is already running on 2.000+ websites and based on our customers’ feedback it is the fastest performance plugin on the market. With the Setup Wizard you can easily configure the plugin and in the same time you have power of setup & control of all settings manually. Strange redirects If you have strange URLs in your analytics or you can see that the site redirects to an URL like this: https://www.yoursite.com/wp-content/cache/yoursite.com/desktop/unauthenticated/index.html This is caused by an improper order of htaccess rules. Probably you are using a force SSL or force www/non-www rule in htaccess. Please remove these rules from .htaccess, and insert them in Settings > General > Tweaks > Custom htaccess. My website broke It is possible that one or multiple files generate conflicts when those are merged and/or minified. If you notice that you website doesn´t show correctly, you might disable merge scripts and styles. High CPU Usage While Swift is generating the cache, the CPU usage can be higher than usual. Swift is using more aggressive optimization than any other plugin on the market and it needs some CPU. Usually it isn’t an issue and CPU usage can be increased temporarily, but if it goes back to normal after prebuild finished, you don’t need to worry about it. However, for large sites on relatively small server it can cause too high CPU usage temporarily. Actually, when the server is using CPU it is always using 100%. High usage means the CPU was used for a longer period. If CPU usage is constantly higher you may need check the configuration. It is recommended to: Enable Compute API: Settings > General > Compute API Enable Optimize Prebuild Only: Settings > Optimization > General > Optimize Prebuild Only If you are not satisfied with Optimize Prebuild Only option, enable Optimize in background instead: Settings > Optimization > General > Optimize in Background. Setting a low number of threads as maximum: Settings > Optimization > General > Maximum threads: set this to 2 or 1. 1 will make the pre-build a bit slow, so try 2 first. Exclude third party CSS: Settings > Optimization > Styles> Exclude 3rd Party CSS. Disable Generate Critical CSS as generating Critical CSS is the most CPU intensive process: Settings > Optimization > Styles> Generate Critical CSS. Exclude third party JS: Settings > Optimization > Scripts > Exclude 3rd Party Scripts. Set Cache Expiry Mode to Action based, if you are not using nonce or anything that can expire on frontend: Settings > Caching > General > Cache Expiry Mode: Action based. Enable Prebuild Cache Automatically: Settings > Caching > Warmup > Prebuild Cache Automatically. Setup lower Limit prebuild speed (recommended to use on limited shared hosting): Settings > Caching > Warmup > Prebuild Speed: Moderate (or Slow). Exclude post types that you wouldn’t like to cache. Autoconfig should find most and exclude them automatically but you can can add them manually: Settings > Caching > Exceptions> Exclude Post Types. Key Features Quick Setup, Page Cache, Cache Preloading, Gzip Compression, Browser Caching, Remove Query Strings, Lazyload, Minify CSS, Minify JS, Combine JS/CSS, Async Execute Combined JS, Defer JS, CDN Support, Cloudflare Support, Varnish Support, Mobile Detection, Multisite Compatibility, Woocommerce Friendly, WPML Support, Cache For Logged In Users, Database Optimizer, Import/Export, DNS Prefetch, Critical CSS On The Fly, Plugin Organizer, Appcache, AJAX Cache, Proxy 3rd Party JS, Inline Small Images, Google Analytics Bypass, Heartbeat Control Reviews Swift Performance Review by WPMediaMastery Swift Performance Comparison by Alentejo Webdesign Easy Setup