Offline Pages vs ReqLock

Offline Pages plugin allows you to cache your entire WordPress site locally on iPad, iPhone, or Mac, then browse it while working offline, e.g. in Airplane Mode or when there is no network connection available. The plugin works in tandem with Offline Pages Pro or similar app. Together they efficiently synchronize your WordPress articles with on-device cache to provide a complete offline browsing experience for the entire site. The plugin itself does not offer any useful functionality without the app. All it does is output a element pointing to a special URL which serves XML document with rules for synchronizing your site, e.g. /blog/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=opwp_rules. The URL is ignored by any browser except Offline Pages app which uses it as a guide to crawl the site and cache the resources according to rules contained in a document. Rules Document Unlike HTML5 cache manifest, Offline Pages rules documents don’t require listing every individual resource used by the website. Instead, they provide high-level instructions only. Examples of instructions are: block or allow certain URL patterns, customize caching policy, set update frequency, or add resource dependencies not recognizable automatically by crawler (e.g. when URLs are computed by non-trivial JavaScript expressions). You can find rules document DTD here. Supported WordPress Features Page layouts of any complexity Custom themes Caching of videos (plain HTML5 or YouTube/Vimeo embeds) Caching of AJAX requests Most public facing plugins Offline forms or surveys (setup required.) Note that the plugin does NOT allow or support any admin functions, post editing or commenting while offline. Supported Apps The plugin works with following apps: Offline Pages Pro for iOS or Mac Offline Kiosk Offline Forms custom enterprise apps built on same platform (http://codiumlabs.com/enterprise/) More information available can be found at plugin website (http://codiumlabs.com/offline-wordpress/).

ReqLock — also written RequestLock or Request Lock — is an outbound (egress) firewall for WordPress. It controls every call your site makes out to the internet, on both sides of the request: the server (PHP / WP HTTP API) and the browser (the HTML your pages render). One master switch puts your site fully in control of its own outbound traffic. Modern WordPress sites are noisy: update checks, license pings, analytics, tag managers, external fonts, embedded widgets, AI APIs, and assorted “phone-home” calls all reach out to servers you don’t control. When those servers are slow, blocked, or down, your pages and your dashboard pay the price — and every one of them is a place your visitors’ data leaks out. ReqLock lets you shut that traffic off at will, instantly and reversibly, without editing theme files or hunting down plugins. One switch, four jobs: Resilience — keep the site working when the external internet is cut or restricted (outages, regional shutdowns, upstream failures). Pages serve from local assets and wp-admin stops hanging on dead requests. Performance — slow or unreachable third-party calls fail instantly instead of stalling front-end and back-end page loads on long timeouts. Privacy — strip analytics, trackers, external fonts, and phone-home requests so nothing about your visitors leaves the server. Development — turn any install into a self-contained, offline-capable environment: no external calls, no tracking from a staging copy, no waiting on remote APIs while you work. Use cases Outage / shutdown resilience. When upstream connectivity is throttled or blocked, a normal WordPress site stalls on every external call. Flip ReqLock on and the site keeps serving from local resources — admin included. Speeding up a sluggish site. A single slow analytics or font host can add seconds to every page load. ReqLock makes those calls fail fast instead of blocking the render. Privacy / no-tracking deployments. Run a site that provably makes no third-party requests — useful for privacy-first projects, internal tools, and compliance-sensitive setups. Local & staging development. Clone production to a laptop or staging box and ReqLock keeps it from phoning home: no analytics fired from a test copy, no license pings, no WordPress.org update checks slowing down wp-admin while you build. The site behaves the same with the network unplugged — ideal for offline coding, demos, and air-gapped boxes. Auditing what a site talks to. The Detected-hosts panel logs every external host the site reaches, so you can see exactly who your themes and plugins contact — then decide what to allow and what to cut. What it blocks Server-side (PHP / WP HTTP API) Outbound wp_remote_* requests to external hosts: WordPress.org update/version checks, analytics, AI APIs (OpenAI, Gemini), remote fonts, license/phone-home pings, etc. They fail instantly instead of timing out. Browser-side (rendered HTML) External and external (e.g. Google Fonts) Resource hints: preconnect / dns-prefetch / preload / prefetch External (replaced with a clean local placeholder) Inline analytics snippets: Google Analytics / Tag Manager, Microsoft Clarity, Ahrefs, Meta Pixel, Hotjar, Yandex, TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Snap, Segment, Plausible Optional: external (transparent placeholder) Key behavior Your own domain and all its subdomains are always allowed. Allow-list for any other hosts that must stay reachable. Detected-hosts panel logs every external host seen, so you can build the allow-list fast. Per-category toggles — turn each blocking layer on/off independently. wp-config conflict control — detects a hard-coded WP_HTTP_BLOCK_EXTERNAL constant and lets you disarm it (comment it out) or re-arm it (restore it) in one click, so ReqLock is the single switch for external blocking. Edits are reversible, integrity-checked, and atomic. Inert when OFF — with the master switch off, the plugin does nothing, so it is safe to keep installed and flip on only when needed. Works over full-page caches — the output filter runs as the outermost buffer, so it covers cached page views too. Credits Developed and maintained by the Rackset DevOps Team — https://rackset.com