Description
Optimize Scripts & Styles optimizes your sites JavaScript and CSS files by combining, minifying and caching them. This will help your sites overall performance and user experience by reducing the number of files served up and the overall size of these files.
For developers, this allows you to maintain uncompressed versions for development themes or plugins, while compressing them for a production environment.
For you SEO buffs, it cleans up the number of scripts that get included and downloaded to your site visitors, helping your overall PageSpeed score.
Header and footer script locations are maintained as well as any localized data used for the scripts and the minified files are stored in the /cache folder, making it friendly for plugins like WP Super Cache. Media attributes are also maintained for print stylesheets.
Features
- Combine & minify all JavaScript & CSS that is enqueued
- Stores the optimized files in the cache folder for faster page loads
- Compatible with caching plugins like WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache
- Enable for logged in users (not recommended)
- Available options to remove or ignore enqueued scripts and styles
- Optional button in the admin bar to clear scripts and styles
- Includes an option to remove script type attributes for HTML5 validation
Screenshots
Installation
- Upload the plugin files to the /plugins/ directory, or install the plugin through the WordPress plugins screen directly.
- Activate the plugin through the Plugins screen in WordPress
- Configure the plugin through Settings > Optimization
FAQ
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This plugin was born out of a frustration with the method of combining scripts in W3 Total Cache. Simply disable the minification portion of W3 and use this plugin to manage it instead. Clearing the cache will also clear these scripts for you.
It has also been tested with WP Super Cache. When you clear the cache in WP Super Cache, the contents of the optimized scripts and styles folders are also removed, triggering the creation of new versions.
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All local scripts and styles registered via wp_register_script, wp_enqueue_script, wp_register_style, wp_enqueue_style will be included in the optimized and versions. Plugins or themes that add scripts directly will not have their scripts or styles included.
This plugin ignores off-site scripts and styles. Those will load as they normally would.
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Certain custom implementations of scripts or styles that do not use the WordPress standard methods may not be included. The administrative interface provides you a quick way of tracking down exactly what is in each file so that you can make tweaks if needed.
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Yes! You can provide a comma separated list of script or style handles to ignore them. View the Cached files section to get the handles you need. jQuery is always ignored as many components rely on jQuery being available.
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Each file that is generated has a matching .txt file in the cache folder which gives details about what was included. The content of these files is listed in the admin area as well.
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Theme and plugin developers can include their styles in multiple ways, some correct, some a bit hacky. You may need to use the Ignore Settings to ignore certain stylesheets if they are not cascading correctly. Use the Cached files section to discover which styles are included and add the handles in the Ignore styles area, separated by commas. Ignored stylesheets will load after the compressed version used by this plugin. This can be helpful if you want one file with some overrides in it.
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The plugin checks for .css and .js file extensions before including them in the optimized files. If you have a theme that uses php files that masquerade as JavaScript or CSS, those PHP files will be ignored and load after the compressed scripts or styles used in the plugin. If you have a CSS file that needs to override the styles from the PHP generated styles, you may need to add that stylesheet to the ignore list so that it can load in the correct order.
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No.
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Optimization may be disabled for logged in users. Check your plugin settings. It is recommended to leave this option off.
