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June 2, 2026
May 27, 2026
Most caching plugins ship with hundreds of options, dashboards full of charts, and constant upsell prompts. xSpeed takes the opposite approach: a single-page admin UI, a master toggle, and the optimizations that move the needle. Activate, flip the switch, done.
xSpeed delivers full-page caching, HTML/CSS/JS minification, and GZIP compression in a clean React-powered admin built for developers and site owners who want speed without the noise.
Page Caching
advanced-cache.php) serves cached responses before WordPress fully boots — minimal PHP overhead per request.DONOTCACHEPAGE constant./cart, /checkout, /my-account).Code Minification
<pre>, <textarea>, <script>, and <style> content.matthiasmullie/minify for production-grade compression.xspeed_skip_minify filter for fine-grained control.GZIP Compression
.htaccess with mod_deflate rules.Built for Developers
/wp-json/xspeed/v1/ for programmatic control.Cross-Server
xSpeed is designed with privacy in mind. The plugin does not collect personal user data, store IP addresses, use tracking cookies, or contact any third-party servers. All optimizations happen locally on your server. The only HTTP request xSpeed ever makes is to your own site’s home URL (see “External services” below) to confirm whether your server is serving gzipped responses.
xSpeed is developed by the trusted team at WPDeveloper, a leading WordPress marketplace used and loved by over 5 million users.
If xSpeed makes your site faster, please rate it on WordPress.org — it really helps.
xSpeed contacts exactly one external endpoint, and only your own site:
GET request to your site’s home URL (home_url('/')) with an Accept-Encoding: gzip header to detect whether your web server is already serving gzipped responses. The response body is discarded; only the Content-Encoding header is read.xspeed_gzip_active).home_url()). xSpeed does not contact any third-party server, analytics endpoint, license server, or telemetry collector.GET from your server back to your server.This plugin bundles the following GPL-compatible third-party libraries:
Used for CSS and JavaScript minification.
Dependency of matthiasmullie/minify.
Used for the xSpeed admin interface bundle.
Used for admin interface icons.
xspeed folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory, or install through the WordPress plugins screen directly.xSpeed works on Apache, nginx, LiteSpeed, IIS, and any standard PHP-capable host. Page caching and minification are server-agnostic. GZIP auto-configuration is supported on Apache and LiteSpeed (via .htaccess); on nginx and IIS, xSpeed surfaces a copy-pasteable config snippet for you to add manually.
Yes. Each site in the network maintains its own cache and settings.
Only run one page-cache plugin at a time. Deactivate any other caching plugin before activating xSpeed.
No. Caching stores a temporary copy of the rendered HTML to serve faster — your content stays exactly as you wrote it.
Open xSpeed Settings, paste the URL path (e.g., /cart) into the Excluded URLs textarea (one per line), and changes save automatically.
Click Purge on the Cache panel, or use the Purge xSpeed Cache entry in the admin bar (visible site-wide for administrators). The cache also auto-purges on content changes.
xSpeed includes safety checks: it skips files already minified, refuses to ship minified output that fails a syntactic-balance check, and falls back to the original asset whenever anything looks off. If you ever spot a problem, simply toggle the relevant minify option off in Performance.
Yes. Either toggle the option off in the admin UI, or as a developer enable WP_DEBUG (xSpeed automatically skips HTML minification when debug is on), or use the xspeed_skip_minify filter.
Yes. Pages like /cart, /checkout, and /my-account are common cache exclusions — add them to Excluded URLs and xSpeed will bypass caching for those paths. Logged-in users (including customers in their account area) are never served cached pages.
Static-rewrite cache, Site Health & Fonts.
Static-rewrite cache + Site Health:
– New: Static-file rewrite path — cached HTML is served directly by Apache / nginx / LiteSpeed, bypassing PHP entirely on cache hits (5-15ms TTFB vs ~85ms via the PHP drop-in).
– New: .htaccess static-cache block — installed automatically on cache enable, removed cleanly on disable. Block precedes WordPress’s own rules so static files match first.
– New: nginx config snippet — copy-pasteable server { } block surfaced in the dashboard when nginx is detected (PHP can’t write nginx config). Avoids the “if is evil” pitfall via a named-location fallback.
– New: LiteSpeed LSCache coexistence — xSpeed detects LSCache’s server-level module and steps back instead of double-caching.
– New: Active rewrite probe — Health module pings the cache directory and confirms the rewrite is actually serving static bytes (not just present in .htaccess).
– New: WordPress Site Health integration — Tools Site Health now lists an xSpeed check covering static-rewrite status + nginx config requirements.
– New: Persistent banner — Cache panel warns the admin when caching is on but the static-rewrite block isn’t engaged (slow fallback path).
– New: Copy-to-clipboard button on every config-snippet panel (nginx, GZIP, object-cache).
Fonts:
– New: Fonts module — adds font-display: swap to enqueued web fonts so visible text doesn’t wait on a slow Google Fonts response, and exposes a preload list for above-the-fold font files.
– New: FontsModule tests covering the swap rewrite + preload <link> emission.
Improvements & fixes:
– Improved: Server-type detection is cached so CLI / cron contexts see the same server type as web requests.
– Improved: Drop-in (advanced-cache.php) and WP_CACHE constant are preserved across plugin upgrades; auto-heal hook tightened to admin_init to avoid REST/cron noise.
– Improved: Plugin Check pass — i18n textdomains, WP_Filesystem coverage, SQL preparation, sanitization, and plugin/readme headers all cleaned up for WordPress.org review.
– Fixed: nginx snippet rewritten to avoid the try_files trap that broke pretty permalinks.
– Fixed: Rewrite condition normalized for trailing-slash + non-trailing-slash URLs.
– Fixed: WP-Rocket-style canonical pattern — server-level conditional rewrite.
– Fixed: Minify tag-rewrite filters bail in non-frontend contexts (REST / admin / cron).
– Fixed: wp.org release zip now ships vendor/ — resolves the 1.0.1 activation fatal.
– Improved: Release pipeline rebuilt — .distignore-driven dist build, CI verify step, version-named artifact on every run.
– Improved: Plugin version read from the PHP header — single source of truth.
Foundation release — full feature set + Pro hooks.
Module architecture + LiteSpeed parity floor:
– New: Module architecture — every feature now ships as a self-contained Module (Cache, Health, Preloader, Heartbeat, Minify, GZIP, Lazy Load, Disable Bloat, Database, CDN, Cloudflare, Object Cache, Browser Cache).
– New: Health module — 24-hour hit/miss counter + activity log.
– New: Preloader module — sitemap-driven cache warmer with content-publish auto-warm.
– New: Cache exclusion intelligence — glob URL patterns, cookie patterns, User-Agent bypass, ignored query parameters.
– New: Per-device cache (mobile-separate).
– New: Per-post cache rules — don’t-cache + custom expiry meta box.
– New: Minification — CSS / JS / HTML minify, combine, defer JS, delay JS, async CSS, remove ?ver= query strings.
– New: Lazy Load module — images / iframes / videos + auto CLS-fix.
– New: Disable Bloat module — 6 ergonomic toggles (dashicons, oEmbed, RSS, XML-RPC, jQuery Migrate, REST auth).
– New: Database module — optimize tables, scheduled cleanup, autoload analysis.
– New: CDN module — pull-zone URL rewriting.
– New: Cloudflare module — zone connect, auto-purge, dev-mode toggle.
– New: Object Cache module — Redis / Memcached config + status + flush.
– New: Browser Cache module — Cache-Control + Expires headers.
– New: Settings search across the entire dashboard with keyword highlighting.
– New: 3-step setup wizard on first activation with preset chooser and benchmark.
– New: Sidebar grouping under domain headers (Cache / Performance / Network / Insights / Tools).
– New: Sidebar tooltips + search shortcut in the collapsed rail.
– New: xspeed_branding filter — agencies can rebrand the dashboard.
– New: xspeed_cache_skip_for_post + xspeed_cache_expiry_for_post filters.
Pro-essentials (everything xSpeed Pro depends on, bundled here so any Pro release works against this single Free version):
– New: xspeed_module_descriptor filter — Pro hooks this to swap its panels to LicenseLockedPanel when license is invalid.
– New: AI Privacy module — GDPR off-switch + xspeed_ai_can_collect_data filter that Pro AI features must consult before recording visitor data.
– New: Pro upsell teasers — in-context inline cards on Cache, Minify, Lazy Load, Browser Cache and Disable Bloat panels.
– New: Locked Pro module rows in the sidebar — shows what Pro offers with a clear upgrade prompt.
– New: Pro Audit on the Cache panel — site-specific scan listing the top Pro features that would help THIS site, with severity chips and concrete reasons (not generic marketing copy).
– New: Sidebar slot for the license module (appears when xSpeed Pro is installed).
– New: Global 36px form-control height baseline across the dashboard.
– New: filemtime() cache busting on admin asset URLs.
Improvements & fixes:
– Improved: React panel registry — modules auto-render in the dashboard.
– Improved: Portal-based save indicator — zero layout shift.
– Improved: Distribution zip prunes dev dependencies (composer install –no-dev).
– Fixed: 5 duplicate module icons + regression test.