WordPress has announced the release of a plugin called the Performance Lab plugin. It was developed by the WordPress performance team to help speed up WordPress sites. The plugin gives publishers the opportunity to use new improvements immediately before they are incorporated into the core of WordPress itself.
The WordPress Performance Team, which consists of WordPress core developers, developed the plugin to receive feedback on new features being developed for inclusion in future versions of WordPress core.
WordPress Performance Team
This WordPress Performance Team Created in November 2021 to coordinate performance improvements within WordPress core. The team consists of WordPress developers, some of whom are from Google and Yoast.
From their initial meeting, they developed a list of performance items, a plugin called the Performance Lab Plugin, one of the outcomes of the performance team.
Performance Lab Plugin
The Performance Lab plugin provides access to WordPress improvements designed to help publishers speed up their sites and diagnose issues that can slow down their sites.
The plugin itself is designed in a modular fashion, so publishers can choose which improvements they want to use.
The new features in this plugin are designed to eventually make it a future version of WordPress.
WordPress wants to release these new features early through plugins where they can receive feedback on any potential issues.
New features are usually released as separate plugins.
WordPress decided to combine all the new performance features into one plugin, which will allow publishers to choose which new features to enable from one central place in one plugin.
Performance Lab Plugin Module
The new Performance Lab plugin has four modules.
The four plugin modules are:
- WebP upload
Convert newly uploaded JPEG files to the faster WebP format. This functionality depends on the server’s support for WebP. - WebP support
This is a site health module that checks if the server supports WebP and displays a warning if it doesn’t. - Persistent Object Cache Health Check
It might be advisable to use the object cache’s site health check module. Object caching is a way to speed up website response time, helping to reduce database load and speed up your website for your website visitors. - Audit queued assets (experimental)
Provides auditing of CSS and JavaScript files queued on the home page. This helps identify unnecessary CSS and JavaScript files that can slow down your website.
Is the enqueued asset module experimental?
The Audit Enqueued Assets module is marked as experimental. The developers chose to mark it as experimental because the module itself will be improved.
The developer discussed the issue with a developer Note the discussion in the official Github page:
“To clarify, it’s not that the module is faulty, it’s more that it doesn’t feel quite there yet, so it’s marked as ‘experimental’ in the first release – it sees more improvements over time, We can then mark it as non-experimental.”
he later follow up For this reason it is marked as experimental:
“It’s true that this isn’t going to break anyone’s site, but IMO the main point of marking it as experimental is that it’s still in the early stages of development compared to other mods.
…for example, we haven’t fully defined what the threshold should be, and methods of collecting assets are known to be unreliable for some environments. “
An example where this module needs improvement is to make it more useful by identifying which plugins or themes are bloating the site with unnecessary CSS and JavaScript files.
Should you download plugins?
The plugin download page indicates that the plugin has been tested and should work on live production sites.
While there are at least three modules not marked as experimental, and they are all considered stable and likely not breaking the site, the main purpose of this plugin is to give publishers an opportunity to provide feedback on modules before they are directly integrated Enter WordPress core.
In terms of stability, the official plugin page notes:
“…unless a module is explicitly marked as ‘experimental’, it has been tested and built to the point that it can be used in production.”
In terms of guarantees, it also says:
“However, as with every plugin, you do so at your own risk.”
Best practice for WordPress sites is to add new plugins on a staging site first and test them there before updating the main site.
Another best practice is to save a backup of your website before installing the plugin. A backup will make it easy to roll back a website to its original version if a plugin accidentally conflicts with another plugin or theme.
The plugin offers obvious benefits that may help speed up your website. But it was provided by the WordPress performance team as a way to receive feedback on new improvements that will eventually become WordPress core.
WordPress provides a Performance Lab Plugin Support Forum with one GitHub repository A place to provide feedback to WordPress.
Citation
Read the official WordPress announcement
Performance Lab plugin released
