Hummingbird Pro – WordPress Speed Optimization Plugin

WPMU DEV membership comes with 11 pro plugins. Hummingbird Pro is one of them. To see the benefits of this plugin, a free 7 day trial is available for all users and plans.

Also Read – 10 Elusive Features of Ad Inserter Pro – Best WordPress Advertising Plugin

Google PageSpeed Score is one of the common metrics to test the page loading speed of a website. The current version also gives the Core Web Vitals of the PAGE. This is useful to know that the plugin has fully optimized your site speed or not!

The most worthy assets are your JS, CSS and HTML files for a static site. Images and content do not change on publication. Most of the same content can be delivered to visitors in different locations.

Also Read – [Review] #1 Best AMP Plugin in 2020 – Ideal Settings

Hummingbird Pro – Benefits

• Dashboard
• Performance Test
• Caching
• GZIP Compression
• Asset Optimization
• Advanced Tools
• Uptime
• Settings

The above features are explained in detail.

Also Read – #1 WordPress Image Compression Plugin for High PageSpeed Score

Dashboard

This will show the latest stats of optimization done to your site. You can activate several modules of the plugin from this page itself. For example, my mobile score is 65 using this speed optimization plugin.

The score metrics can be seen. You can run a pagespeed test from here. This is useful to test the SEO changes you have made to your site. GZIP compression is enabled or not is visible. So many things in summary can be understood from this main interface.

Performance Test

Once you have run the test, the following modules are available here.

1. Score Metrics
2. Audits
3. Historic Field Data
4. Reporting
5. Settings

You can run a new test from here. The Score metrics will show the latest Core Web Vitals along with other parameters.

• Speed Index
• First Contentful Paint
• First Meaningful Paint
• Time to Interactive
• First CPU Idle

Audits tab will show the opportunities, diagnostics and passed audits.

Chrome User Experience Report is used to give historic field data. The Chrome User Experience Report does not have sufficient real-world speed data for this page. Note: This report can take months to populate and is aimed at well established websites.

Enable scheduled performance tests and get the customized results emailed directly to your inbox.

Choose from daily, weekly or monthly email reports.

Caching

There are different types of caching under this tab.

Page Caching

Hummingbird stores static HTML copies of your pages and posts to decrease page load time.

Page Types

Select which page types you wish to cache. Select which page types you wish to cache.

By default, Hummingbird waits until someone visits your page before generating a cached version. Enable this feature to automatically create cached versions of your homepage or any page or post.

Enable this feature to automatically clear cache at regular intervals only if you are required to do so. Frequent cache clearing can create significant server issues.

Browser Caching

Store temporary data on your visitors’ devices so that they don’t have to download assets twice if they don’t have to. This results in a much faster second time round page load speed.

Gravatar Caching

Gravatar Caching stores local copies of avatars used in comments and in your theme. You can control how often you want the cache purged depending on how your website is set up.

RSS Caching

By default, WordPress will cache your RSS feeds to reduce the load on your server – which is a great feature. Hummingbird gives you control over the expiry time, or you can disable it all together.

Integrations

Redis is an open source tool for storing data in memory which is used as a database, cache and message broker. It supports many data structures such as strings, hashes and lists and can be easily enabled.

GZIP compression

Gzip compresses your web pages and style sheets before sending them over to the browser. This drastically reduces transfer time since the files are much smaller.

• HTML
• JavaScript
• CSS

Asset Optimization

Optimizing your assets will compress and organize them in a way that improves page load times. You can choose to use our automated options, or manually configure each file yourself.

• Automatic, Manual
• Speedy option can be selected under Automatic.
• Automatically optimize and compress all files.
• CSS above the fold – Drastically reduce your page load time by moving all of your stylesheets to the footer to force them to load after your content.

This will result in the content loading quickly, with the styling followed shortly after.

1. Add critical layout and styling CSS here. We will insert into <style> tags in your <head> section of each page.
2. Next, switch to the advanced area of asset optimization and move all of your CSS files to the footer area.

CSS to insert into your <head> area

Settings

File Location – Choose where Hummingbird should store your modified assets.

Super-compress my files – Compress your files up to 2x more with our enhanced optimization engine.

Enable WPMU DEV CDN –Host your files on WPMU DEV’s secure and hyper fast CDN

Debug – Turn on the debug log to get insight into any issues you’re having.

Advanced Tools

URL Query Strings

Some proxy caching servers and even some CDNs cannot cache static assets with query strings, resulting in a large missed opportunity for increased speeds.

WooCommerce Cart Fragments

WooCommerce uses ajax calls to update cart totals without refreshing the page. These ajax calls run on every page and can drastically increase page load times. We recommend disabling cart fragments on all non-WooCommerce pages.

Emojis

WordPress adds Javascript and CSS files to convert common symbols like “:)” to visual emojis. If you don’t need emojis this will remove two unnecessary assets.

Prefetch DNS Requests

Speeds up web pages by pre-resolving DNS. In essence it tells a browser it should resolve the DNS of a specific domain prior to it being explicitly called – very useful if you use third party services.

Database cleanup

Cleanup your database of unnecessary data you probably don’t need that’s slowing down your server. You can schedule daily, weekly or monthly automatic cleanups.

Lazy Load

Lazy loading delays loading specific content to speed up the overall pagespeed. In particular, sites with lots of comments, iframes and images can slow down over time.

System Information – Use this info if you are having issues with Hummingbird and your server setup. It will give you the most up to date information about your stack.

Site Health – Site Health provides plugin information and advanced database usage information to fix critical site issues, right inside the plugin.

Uptime

Uptime monitors your server response time and lets you know when your website is down or too slow for your visitors. Activate Uptime and make sure your website is always online.

Settings

Translations

By default, Hummingbird will use the language you’d set in your WordPress Admin Settings if a matching translation is available.

Usage Tracking

Help make Hummingbird better by letting our designers learn how you’re using the plugin.

Import

Use this tool to import the Hummingbird configuration from another site.

Export

Export your Hummingbird configuration as a JSON file to use on other sites.

Uninstallation

When you uninstall this plugin, what do you want to do with your settings and stored data?

Reset Settings

Needing to start fresh? Use this button to roll back to the default settings.

Accessibility

Color Accessibility – Increase the visibility and accessibility of elements and components to meet WCAG AAA requirements.

Enable support for any accessibility enhancements available in the plugin interface.

Source – Hummingbird Performance Plugin Usage Documentation | WPMU DEV