Load Combined Core Block Assets
This is a workaround for sites experiencing any issues with the ability introduced in WordPress 6.9 to load block styles on demand in classic themes. The known issues have been fixed during the 7.0 release cycle with the following commits: r61076: Script Loader: Fall back to hoisting late-printed styles to end of HEAD if wp-block-library is not enqueued. r61122: Script Loader: Load block styles on demand in classic themes even when wp-block-styles support is absent. r61174: Script Loader: Improve hoisted stylesheet ordering (in classic themes) to preserve CSS cascade. r61554: Script Loader: Preserve original CSS cascade for classic themes when hoisting late-printed styles. r61945: Script Loader: Refine hoisted stylesheet ordering to preserve original CSS cascade in classic themes. If running a classic theme (i.e. not a block theme), this plugin filters should_load_separate_core_block_assets to be false. This has the effect of reverting a change introduced in 6.9 where classic themes now load separate core block assets on demand by default. Note that this plugin should be considered temporary until any issues are resolved in 7.0. At any time, you can test whether any issues remain by adding ?should_load_separate_core_block_assets=true to any frontend URL; this restores the default behavior in WP 6.9. This workaround should be temporary because there are performance benefits to loading separate core block assets. They can be loaded on demand just when they are used, as opposed to loading the large single combined wp-block-library stylesheet. Loading separate block styles on demand reduces the amount of CSS which should improve page load time. Nevertheless, as explained in the dev note, some sites may be built in a way that fundamentally does not work with loading separate block styles on demand. For these sites, this plugin is available to retain the old behavior.
Speculative Loading
This plugin adds support for the Speculation Rules API, which allows defining rules by which certain URLs are dynamically prefetched or prerendered. This core Speculative Loading functionality was merged into WordPress 6.8, but it only prefetches with conservative eagerness by default. In contrast, this plugin defaults to prerendering with moderate eagerness (i.e. when interacting with a link), and it provides a user interface to customize the mode and eagerness via the “Speculative Loading” section on the Settings > Reading admin screen. By default, speculative loading is only enabled for logged-out users, since unauthenticated pages are typically only eligible for caching and so more efficient to prefetch/prerender. This means that sites with frequent logged-in users on the frontend—such as e-commerce, forums, or membership sites—will not benefit from the feature. If your server can handle the additional load (for example, with persistent object caching), you can opt in to enable speculative loading for all logged-in users or for administrators only. This setting exclusively affects frontend pages; admin screens are always excluded. A filter can be used to exclude certain URL paths from being eligible for prefetching and prerendering (see FAQ section). Alternatively, you can add the no-prerender CSS class to any link ( tag) that should not be prerendered. See FAQ for more information. Browser support The Speculation Rules API is a new web API, and the functionality used by the plugin is supported in Chromium-based browsers such as Chrome, Edge, or Opera using version 121 or above. Other browsers such as Safari and Firefox will ignore the functionality with no ill effects; they will simply not benefit from the speculative loading. Note that certain browser extensions may disable preloading by default. Browser support for the Speculation Rules API in general Information on document rules syntax support used by the plugin This plugin was formerly known as Speculation Rules.
