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

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!

Under The Weather is a powerful yet simple plugin that displays location-specific weather forecasts on your WordPress site. Featuring a dedicated “Under The Weather Forecast” block to add and customize weather widgets directly in the WordPress editor for a seamless workflow. With performance in mind, Under The Weather uses a server-side caching system (WordPress Transients) to minimize API calls and ensure your site remains fast. Under The Weather is completely “vanilla” on the front-end, meaning it does not rely on jQuery or any other JavaScript frameworks. Built with modern security practices, including input validation, CSRF protection, and optional rate limiting to protect your site and API quota. This plugin is ideal for travel blogs, outdoor activity sites, or any website that needs to display weather conditions for specific locations without the bloat of heavy, multi-dependency plugins. Key Features: Easy Integration: Add weather widgets in the WordPress editor by using a dedicated weather block, an [under_the_weather] shortcode, or by placing a simple with data attributes anywhere on your site. Beautiful Display Options: Designed to look stunning on any site. Choose from 4 different visual options: The Default OpenWeather images A Crisp Weather Icons font 2 Animated SVG icon sets Styled to Match Your Site: Seamlessly fit the widget into any site design using the Light Mode for white and light backgrounds or toggle on the Dark Mode for nicely contrasted text on dark backgrounds. Apply custom hex colors to the “Weather Icons Font” with the Color Picker for a truly bespoke integration. Fully Customizable Layouts: Choose whether the widget’s main focal point highlights the live current conditions or today’s high and low temperatures. Build out the widget to meet your goals, from a compact day-of weather widget to a full weather hub, displaying: Extended forecasts (up to 6 days) “Feels like” temperatures Wind speeds and directions Active weather alerts Sunrise & Sunset Times Visual Performance Report: Monitor your site’s API usage with a bar chart that displays a 7-day history of cached requests versus new calls to the OpenWeather API – a clear look at how the caching system is working to keep your site fast and your API calls low. Smart Caching: All API calls are cached on your server, dramatically reducing calls to the OpenWeather API and speeding up page loads for all users. The plugin includes a configurable cache duration and automatically resets the forecast after midnight in the location’s timezone, ensuring your visitors always see the current day’s weather. Fast Weather Location Lookup: An easy-to-use Coordinate Finder tool located in the settings page and the Block Editor retrieves coordinates by location name worldwide. Generates ready-to-use widget code from the settings page. Automatically fill coordinates in the block editor. Imperial & Metric Units: Display weather in Fahrenheit/mph or Celsius/kph on a per-widget basis. Performance First: Built for Core Web Vitals Page Speed Optimized: Unlike other popular weather plugins that load hundreds of kilobytes of external libraries, Under The Weather is engineered specifically for speed and SEO, using native script deferral, smart font preloading, conditional asset enqueues, and optional async CSS loading. Zero Dependencies: While other weather plugins force your site to load heavy external libraries like jQuery, Vue.js, or Swiper.js just to show a simple forecast, Under The Weather requires exactly 1 script request, written in pure, vanilla JavaScript. This guarantees faster loading and zero risk of library conflicts. Ultra-Lightweight Footprint: At roughly 10 KB, the JavaScript payload is up to 25x smaller than many other weather widgets for WordPress, without sacrificing features. Zero Layout Shift (CLS): Using an intelligent, dynamic skeleton loading UI and modern CSS containment, the widget claims its vertical space immediately, preventing the page from “jumping” when the weather data arrives, and eliminating Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) issues that can negatively impact your Core Web Vitals. Smart Server-Side Caching: API requests to OpenWeather are handled safely by your server, not the visitor’s browser. Data is securely cached using WordPress transients to serve lightning-fast results to your visitors while drastically reducing API calls and protecting your OpenWeather quota. Usage The Under The Weather plugin offers three ways to add a weather forecast: using the block editor or manually placing a or shortcode. Using the Block Editor (Recommended) Open the post or page where you want to display the weather. Click the block inserter icon (+) to add a new block. Search for “Under The Weather Forecast” and add the block. Configure your location using either: Manual entry of coordinates in the block settings sidebar The built-in coordinate finder that searches by location name and fills in the coordinates for you Choose your preferred units (Imperial/Fahrenheit or Metric/Celsius) Publish or update your post – the weather will display automatically! Manual Placement (Classic Editor & Themes) To display the weather widget on a post, page, or in a template file, add a simple element with the class weather-widget and the required data attributes. data-lat: The latitude for the forecast. data-lon: The longitude for the forecast. data-location-name: The city or location name you want to display as the title of the widget. (Beyond its display purpose, the ‘data-location-name’ is also used to create the shared cache key). data-unit (optional): The unit system for temperature and wind speed. Accepts metric or imperial. The default unit is imperial if not provided. Examples: To show the weather for a location in Celsius, you would add data-unit="metric": The plugin’s JavaScript will automatically find this element and populate it with the forecast. Using the Shortcode (Classic Editor & Widgets) You can also display the weather by using the [under_the_weather] shortcode. This is ideal for the Classic Editor, text widgets, or other page builders. Available attributes: lat: (Required) The latitude for the forecast. lon: (Required) The longitude for the forecast. location_name: (Required) The name to display for the location. unit: (Optional) The unit system. Accepts metric or imperial. Defaults to imperial. Example: [under_the_weather lat="48.8566" lon="2.3522" location_name="Paris, France" unit="metric"] Configuration Before you begin, go to openweathermap.org and sign up for an API key and register for the One Call API 3.0 subscription. Paste your API key into the Under the Weather Settings Page. API & Cache Cache Expiration Time: Use the slider to set the maximum time weather data is stored before fetching a new forecast, from 30 minutes to 8 hours. The plugin also features a smart caching system that automatically ensures the cache expires after midnight in the location’s local timezone. This prevents showing a stale forecast from the previous day, regardless of your slider setting. For displaying live conditions (using the Primary Display or Extra Details options), a shorter cache time of 1 or 2 hours is recommended. For displaying only the daily high/low, a longer cache time of 3 or 8 hours effectively reduces API calls. Widget Display & Style Tailor the widget to perfectly match your website’s aesthetic and your users’ needs: Icon & Style Set: Pick the style that suits you best. Choose between four weather icon options: * Recognizable Default images (PNGs) provided by OpenWeather. * Sharp, modern Weather Icons fonts created by Erik Flowers. * Two Animated SVG icon sets (Fill and Outline) by Bas Milius. Note: Selecting the icon font will load an additional small CSS file. Icon Font Color: Use the color picker to customize the “Weather Icons Font” set to match your theme. This setting only has a visible effect when the “Weather Icons Font” style is selected (it does not impact PNGs or SVGs). If left at the default, the icons will use the gray color specified in the plugin’s stylesheet. Widget Mode: The weather widgets are designed to look good on light or dark backgrounds. Select Light Mode when displaying weather widgets on white and light backgrounds. Switch to Dark Mode to display weather widgets on black or dark backgrounds. Primary Display: Select whether the main display of the widget shows the Current live temperature or Today’s Forecast (the high and low for the day). Number of Forecast Days: Adjust the number of days shown in the extended forecast row, from 2 to 6 days. When set to 0 days, the widget’s forecast area disappears, leaving a compact widget showing the current day’s weather. Extra Details: Selecting this option will display ‘Feels Like’ and wind (direction and speed) information beneath the primary display. This setting adds nuance to the current weather conditions display. Sunrise & Sunset: This setting displays the local sunrise and sunset times for the location, useful for planning outdoor activities. Choose to show the times in a 12-hour (e.g., 6:30 AM) or 24-hour (e.g., 18:30) format. Weather Alerts: When enabled, the widget will display any active severe weather alerts (e.g., thunderstorm warnings, flood advisories) issued by official authorities for the specified location. This provides critical, at-a-glance information for your visitors. Display Timestamp: Indicates the time elapsed since the weather data was last updated from the source. This option helps readers see how recently the weather widget obtained its information. Display Unit Symbol: Adds the unit symbol (F or C) next to the main temperature. This option lets you choose whether the widget should include the temperature unit symbol in the primary temperature display. Advanced Settings Enable Cache: You can uncheck this box if you would like to use this plugin without the benefit of caching. Enable Rate Limiting: Check this box to protect your site against excessive API requests from a single IP address. You can set the maximum number of requests per hour (default is 100). This helps prevent malicious traffic from exhausting your API quota. Asset Loading: For the plugin to function correctly, the Load Plugin CSS and Load Plugin JavaScript boxes should normally remain checked. However, you can uncheck them if you prefer to include the plugin’s CSS and JS files as part of your theme’s own optimized assets. If you uncheck Load Plugin JavaScript, you can load the Under The Weather scripts manually on select pages by adding the following template tag to your theme files (e.g., footer.php): For most users, simply leaving these boxes checked is the best way to use the weather widget. Async CSS Loading: Enable this option to reduce render-blocking resources for faster initial page loading. * It is recommended to leave this unchecked if your weather widget is located “above the fold” (near the top of the page) to prevent layout shifting or a flash of unstyled content. * If you enable async loading, please consider adding a “min-height” rule for “.weather-widget” to your theme’s custom CSS to reserve the widget’s vertical space while the stylesheet loads. Example: .weather-widget{min-height:300px} Shimmer While Loading: Enabled by default, this visual placeholder provides layout stability before the weather data arrives. Uncheck this box to instead display a clear, transparent widget area before the weather data arrives. Coordinate Finder Don’t know the latitude and longitude for your desired location? No problem. The Under The Weather plugin will find coordinates for you. In the WordPress Block Editor Add an “Under The Weather Forecast” block to your post or page. Open the Block Settings Click the “Find Coordinates by Name” button. Type in the name of your location. Press “Search.” When search results appear, click on your desired location. The location’s coordinates will be automatically entered into the latitude and longitude settings for the weather forecast. In the Plugin Settings Page Navigate to Settings > Under The Weather and click on the Coordinate Finder tab. Type a location name into the search box (e.g., “Los Angeles, CA”). Click the “Find Coordinates” button. The tool will display the generated with the correct coordinates and location name. Use the “Copy Code” button to copy the ready-to-use widget HTML and paste it into a post, page, or widget. The tool automatically saves a history of your last 5 searches, which persists between sessions. You can easily copy code from previous searches without having to look them up again. Performance Report The Under The Weather plugin includes a Performance Report tab on the settings page (Settings > Under The Weather > Performance Report) to provide clear insight into the plugin’s efficiency and API usage. Average Daily Usage: A daily average pie chart provides a snapshot of how frequently weather data is served from the cache versus making new calls to the OpenWeatherMap One Call API 3.0 (which offers a free tier of 1,000 API calls per day). Last 7 Days of Activity: A 7-day bar chart that displays a more detailed comparison of cached hits versus new calls to the OpenWeather API. This chart includes the current day’s usage, which is not calculated into the daily average. The performance report demonstrates how the caching system reduces external requests and keeps your site fast. Use this report to fine-tune your Cache Expiration Time and observe the impact on your API call rate. The report also includes a status indicator that shows whether the optional Rate Limiting feature is currently active. If rate limiting is enabled and requests are being blocked, the raw data table at the bottom of the report will log these events. This can help you identify unusual traffic patterns or potential misuse of your API key. Credits Weather Data: OpenWeather Weather Icon Font: Weather Icons by Erik Flowers Animated Weather Icons: Meteocons by Bas Milius Geocoding & Map Data: Data © OpenStreetMap contributors Block Icons: Phosphor External Services OpenWeatherMap API: This plugin connects to the OpenWeatherMap API to retrieve weather forecast data. To provide weather information, the following data is sent to the service: Location Coordinates: The latitude and longitude provided in the widget settings are sent to fetch the weather for that specific location. API Key: Your OpenWeatherMap API key is sent to authenticate the request. Here are the links to their terms of service and privacy policy: * Terms of Service: https://openweather.co.uk/storage/app/media/Terms/Openweather_terms_and_conditions_of_sale.pdf * Privacy Policy: https://openweather.co.uk/privacy-policy Nominatim (OpenStreetMap) API: The Coordinate Finder tool sends the location name entered by the administrator to the Nominatim geocoding service to retrieve latitude and longitude coordinates. Here is the link to their privacy policy: * Privacy Policy: https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy