Optimizing WordPress Sites with Autoptimize

Autoptimize is a plugin installed over a million sites that does an excellent job optimizing the CSS, JS and HTML of your site.

I have installed the plugin several times and I could never fall in love with it because of the design and because I didn’t really need it .

The other reason I thought that using Autoptimize would be a good idea is because I am using full page caching all the time via CloudFlare or Ezoic Cloud Caching.

Autoptimize Results

I know there are better ways to test the benefits of autoptimize but I prefer to give a try in a site that it is already working to see if it is worth using it.

The post using for this test has five requests;

Post	HTML
Block Library Styles	CSS
Main CSS	GeneratePress
Menu Plus	GeneratePress
Main JS	GeneratePress

These were the results I got using nothing but CloudFlare Full Page Caching, PerfMatters and common sense speed optimization practices.

GTMetrix Results without Autoptimize

These are the results of each one of those requests using GTMetrix and not using Autoptimize

Post	HTML	9.1 KB	47 ms
Block Library Styles	CSS	8.2 KB	20.1 ms
Main CSS	GeneratePress	4.6 KB	17 ms
Menu Plus	GeneratePress	848 B	18.7 ms
Main JS	GeneratePress	1.9 KB	17.7 ms

This is the GTMetrix score with a few more details

• Time to first byte: 46 ms
• Onload time: 103 ms
• FCP: 168 ms
• LCP:168 ms
• TTI: 168 ms
• FLT: 168 ms

I tested this several time and I got different numbers, these are the most important ones

Requests	Onload Time	Fully Loaded Time
24.6 KB	115 ms	173 ms
24.6 KB	122 ms	135 ms
24.7 KB	98 ms	176 ms

As you see,I get different results every time I run a test . The HTML is 9.1 KB in each test.

GTMetrix Results with Autoptimize

I decided to inline all CSS from the and make sure the only JS file is not render blocking.

Post	HTML	20.2 KB	64.2 ms
Main JS	GeneratePress	1.9 KB	11.6 ms

• Time to first byte: 63 ms
• Onload time: 108 ms
• FCP: 125 ms
• LCP:125 ms
• TTI: 125 ms
• FLT: 125 ms

Now I am saving 2 KB but my HTML has grown in size but I knew that beforehand.

I am using CloudFlare Full Page Caching so everything is served from CloudFlare servers anyways.

Requests have been reduced to 2 and no render blocking messages in Google PageSpeed Insights.

I will keep learning more about Autoptimize and what it can do.