Heartbeat Manager – Optimize CPU Performance, Fix admin-ajax & Speed Up WordPress vs Really Simple Security – Simple and Performant Security (formerly Really Simple SSL)

Is your WordPress admin dashboard lagging? Are you getting High CPU usage warnings from your hosting provider due to constant admin-ajax.php requests? By default, the native WordPress Heartbeat API constantly pulses in the background (every 15 to 60 seconds) to handle autosaves and notifications. On high-traffic sites, multi-author blogs, or busy WooCommerce stores, this silent stream of background requests can completely saturate your server resources, slowing down your site for both visitors and administrators. Heartbeat Manager is the ultimate lightweight performance solution designed to put an end to server resource waste. It gives you total control over background polling frequencies, allowing you to save hosting costs, boost backend speed, and eliminate server crashes. Unlike aggressive optimization methods that completely disable the heartbeat and break essential features, this plugin allows you to granularly optimize your site’s heartbeat frequency zone by zone. Key Benefits & Features: Stop Admin Dashboard Lag (Backend Control): Easily slow down the background poll interval when you are idling in general admin screens (Bacheca, Media Library, Plugins list) to save immense server memory. Isolate Post & Page Editors: Keep a faster interval (30s or 60s) exclusively while editing posts, pages, or WooCommerce products. This ensures your Autosaves and Post Locking features work safely without overloading your CPU. Boost Frontend Loading Times: Completely disable or dilate frontend heartbeat loops. Turning off the heartbeat on public pages eliminates unnecessary AJAX queries for your visitors, making mobile and desktop navigation significantly smoother. Page Builder Friendly: Fully compatible and optimized for sites built with Elementor, Divi, Gutenberg, and premium WooCommerce setups. Integrated Step-by-Step Vademecum: Includes a built-in testing guide directly in your admin sidebar so you can visually verify your CPU savings via the browser Developer Tools. Ultra-Lightweight & Clean Code: Built following the highest WordPress.org security standards with 100% unique prefixing to avoid any plugin conflicts. Fully translation-ready.

Easily improve site security with WordPress Hardening, Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), Login Protection, Vulnerability Detection and SSL certificate. Really simple, Effective and Performant WordPress Security Really Simple Security is the most lightweight and easy-to-use security plugin for WordPress. It secures your WordPress website with SSL certificate generation, including proper 301 https redirection and SSL enforcement, scanning for possible vulnerabilities, Login Protection and implementing essential WordPress hardening features. We believe that security should have the absolute minimum effect on website performance, user experience and maintainability. Therefore, Really Simple Security is: Lightweight: Every security feature is developed with a modular approach and with performance in mind. Disabled features won’t load any redundant code. Easy-to-use: 1-minute configuration with short onboarding setup. Security Features Easy SSL Migration Migrates your website to HTTPS and enforces SSL in just one click. 301 redirect via PHP or .htaccess Secure cookies Let’s Encrypt: Install an SSL Certificate if your hosting provider supports manual installation. Server Health Check: Your server configuration is every bit as important for your website security. WordPress Hardening Tweak your configuration and keep WordPress fortified and safe by tackling potential weaknesses. Prevent code execution in the uploads folder Prevent login feedback and disable user enumeration Disable XML-RPC Disable directory browsing Username restrictions (block ‘admin’ and public names) and much more.. Vulnerability Detection Get notified when plugins, themes or WP core contain vulnerabilities and need appropriate action. Login Protection Allow or enforce Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for specific user roles. Users receive a two-factor code via Email. Improve Security with Really Simple Security Pro Protect your site with all essential security features by upgrading to Really Simple Security Pro. Advanced SSL enforcement Mixed Content Scan & Fixer. Detect files that are requested over HTTP and fix them to HTTPS, both Front- and Back-end. Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security and configure your site for the HSTS Preload list. Firewall Really Simple Security Pro includes a performant and efficient WordPress firewall, to stop bots, crawlers and bad actors with IP and username blocks. 404 blocking – Blocks crawlers as they trigger unusual numbers of 404 errors. Region blocking – Only allow/block access to your site from specific regions. Automated and customisable Firewall rules. IP blocklist and allowlist. Security Headers Security headers protect your site visitors against the risk of clickjacking, cross-site-forgery attacks, stealing login credentials and malware. Independent of your Server Configuration, works on Apache, LiteSpeed, NGINX, etc. Protect your website visitors with X-XSS Protection, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, a Referrer Policy and CORS headers. Automatically generate your WordPress-tailored Content Security Policy. Vulnerability Measures When a vulnerability is detected in a plugin, theme or WordPress core you will get notified accordingly. With Vulnerability Measures, you can configure simple but effective measures to make sure that a critical vulnerability won’t remain unattended. Force update: An update process will be tried multiple times until it can be assumed development of a theme or plugin is abandoned. You will be notified during these steps. Quarantine: When a plugin or theme can’t be updated to solve a vulnerability, Really Simple Security can quarantine the plugin. Advanced Site Hardening Choose a custom login URL Automated File Permissions check and fixer Rename and randomize your database prefix Change the debug.log file location to a non-public folder Disable application passwords Control admin creation Disable HTTP methods, reducing HTTP requests Login Protection Secure your website’s login process and user accounts with powerful security measures. Two-Step verification (Email login) 2FA (two factor authentication) with TOTP Passwordless login with passkey login Enforce strong passwords and frequent password change Limit Login Attempts With Limit Login Attempts you can configure a threshold to temporarily or permanently block IP addresses or (non-existing) usernames. You can also throw a CAPTCHA after a failed login (hCaptcha or Google reCaptcha) Access Control Restrict access to your site for specific regions. Add specific IP addresses or IP ranges to the Blocklist or Allowlist. Useful Links Documentation Security Definitions Translate Really Simple Security Issues & pull requests Feature requests Love Really Simple Security? If you want to support the continuing development of this plugin, please consider buying Really Simple Security Pro, which includes some excellent security features and premium support. About Really Simple Plugins Our mission is to make complex WordPress requirements really easy. Really Simple Security is developed by Really Simple Plugins. For generating SSL certificates, Really Simple Security uses the le acme2 PHP Let’s Encrypt client library, thanks to ‘fbett’ for providing it. Vulnerability Detection uses WP Vulnerability, an open-source initiative by Javier Casares. Want to join as a collaborator? We’re on GitHub as well!