DietPress

DietPress is a free WordPress speed optimization plugin with a built-in page cache. Page caching, browser caching, GZIP and Brotli compression, deferred JavaScript, critical CSS, image loading attributes, preloading, locally hosted Google Fonts and selective asset loading, all in one plugin and all free.

And it goes further than a caching plugin: it also puts WordPress itself on a diet, switching off the features your site never uses. It pairs that with a clean, risk-based interface. Everything is configurable, the optimizations are already on by default, and nothing is hidden behind a paid tier. Activate it and your site is faster, or open the settings and tune every detail.

Coming from “Zero Config Performance Optimization”? This is the same plugin, now called DietPress and fully configurable. All your previous optimizations stay active by default; you just gained a settings page and a whole new set of WordPress-diet options.

By default WordPress loads functions, services and scripts that most sites do not need. They slow down loading times and consume hosting resources. DietPress lets you trim that fat and apply battle-tested performance tweaks, with a clear description of what each option does and what might break, organized by risk level so you always know what is safe.

WHY CHOOSE DIETPRESS

• Page caching, for free. Serve anonymous visitors a copy stored on disk instead of building the page again. The feature people buy WP Rocket or a NitroPack subscription for, with no licence and no monthly fee.
• No drop-in, no changes to wp-config.php. Unlike WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache, DietPress installs no advanced-cache.php and never edits wp-config.php. Switching it off leaves your site exactly as it was, with nothing orphaned behind.
• It tells you why. Most cache plugins leave you guessing when nothing is cached. DietPress reports its own status, tests itself against your home page, and names the exact reason a page was skipped.
• WooCommerce-safe by design. Carts, checkout, my account and any visitor carrying a cart cookie always get the live site, so nobody ever sees somebody else’s basket.
• Diet as well as speed. Where Perfmatters focuses on disabling scripts, DietPress covers that ground and adds page caching, critical CSS, local Google Fonts and a dashboard, admin and email cleanup, in one plugin.
• Light on your server. No account, no external service, no telemetry, no upsell nags. Everything runs on your own hosting.

WHAT THE PAGE CACHE DOES TO YOUR RESPONSE TIME

Measured on a WordPress 7.0 install with GeneratePress, WooCommerce and a 76 product catalogue, PHP 8.5, taking the median of 15 requests per URL. Your own hosting will give different figures, but the shape of the result will not change.

Server response time, the same pages with the page cache off and on:

• Home page – 52.7 ms without, 15.1 ms with, 71% faster
• WooCommerce shop – 45.4 ms without, 14.8 ms with, 67% faster
• A 110 KB article – 43.0 ms without, 15.1 ms with, 65% faster
• A 98 KB page – 41.0 ms without, 14.9 ms with, 64% faster
• A product category – 41.3 ms without, 15.1 ms with, 63% faster

The interesting part is not the percentage, it is that the cached figure barely moves. Serving a stored file costs the same whether the page was cheap or expensive to build, so the saving grows with the size of your site rather than with the power of your server. The heaviest page in the test is the one that gained most.

And what the server can take, 100 requests with 10 running in parallel:

• Home page – 38 requests per second without, 213 with
• WooCommerce shop – 43 without, 216 with
• A 110 KB article – 46 without, 210 with

That five-fold headroom is what keeps a modest hosting plan standing up when one of your posts does well.

TWO THINGS IN ONE PLUGIN

1. Performance optimizations (on by default)

• Automatic Critical CSS inlined in the head (optional experimental deferral of non-critical CSS)
• JavaScript defer parsing with smart dependency handling
• Image loading attributes safety net: lazy loading, decoding=async and fetchpriority for images that bypass core
• Automatic image dimensions for better CLS scores (including picture elements)
• Resource hints: preconnect and DNS prefetch for common third-party origins
• Theme stylesheet, critical fonts and logo preloading for a faster LCP
• Google Fonts display=swap
• Google Fonts local hosting: serve the fonts your theme uses from your own server, GDPR-friendly with a silent fallback to the Google CDN (opt-in)
• Selective third-party loading: WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, block library, Slider Revolution, TablePress, Smash Balloon, Formidable Forms and Everest Forms assets only load where they are used (opt-in)
• RSS feed optimization (cache headers and item limit)
• Server rules in .htaccess: browser caching with a configurable lifetime for media, for styles and scripts and for fonts, GZIP and Brotli compression, immutable cache headers, CORS for fonts and keep-alive (master switch plus per-feature toggles)
• Database maintenance: daily expired-transient cleanup and safe query optimizations
• Page cache: store each page on disk and serve it to anonymous visitors without building it again, with automatic purging, gzip precompression and a status panel that says whether it is working (opt-in, in its own tab)

2. Put WordPress on a diet (risk-based, opt-in)

• Light (safe for any site): emojis, RSD/WLW tags, shortlinks, self-pingbacks, comment pagination, and more
• Moderate (evaluate first): oEmbed, jQuery Migrate, Dashicons on the frontend, Global Styles and Duotone, remote block patterns, avatars and Gravatar, comment threading, and more
• Strict (site-specific): granular RSS feed control, Heartbeat API mode, post revisions and autosave, disable comments, XML sitemap, native lazy loading/fetchpriority, content types, selective loading for WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, block assets, Slider Revolution, TablePress, Smash Balloon, Formidable Forms and Everest Forms, and more
• Widgets: dashboard widgets (including third-party ones from Yoast, WooCommerce, Elementor, Jetpack, Wordfence, Rank Math, Gravity Forms), classic sidebar widgets, block-editor widgets and the Customizer
• Emails: silence the automatic emails WordPress sends on its own, grouped by area: auto-update results for core, plugins and themes (plus the new-version notice), comment moderation and new-comment notices, and new user, password and email-change notices, plus toggles for the admin email verification prompt and post-by-email. Every option is off by default, and critical notices such as a failed core update are always kept

SCALE, PROFILES AND ANALYZER

• Savings indicator: HTTP requests removed, CSS/JS saved and active optimizations at a glance
• Quick profiles: Personal Blog, WooCommerce Store, Landing Page and Maximum Cleanup
• Site analyzer: personalized recommendations based on your active plugins and content, page cache included
• Import and export your whole configuration as a JSON file

COMPATIBILITY AND EXTENSIBILITY

The plugin includes filters for developers:

• dietpress_critical_css – Customize the inline critical CSS
• dietpress_critical_css_handles – Define which CSS handles are critical
• dietpress_skip_defer_script_handles – Opt scripts out of the JavaScript defer
• dietpress_skip_defer_style_handles – Opt stylesheets out of the CSS deferral
• dietpress_preconnect_hints – Customize preconnect origins
• dietpress_dns_prefetch_domains – Customize DNS prefetch domains
• dietpress_critical_fonts – Define critical fonts to preload
• dietpress_exclude_local_fonts – Exclude Google Fonts stylesheets from local hosting
• dietpress_selective_{module}_has_content – Mark a page as showing the content of a selective loading module, so its assets are kept. The module is wc, cf7, formidable, everest_forms or revslider
• dietpress_selective_{module}_styles / dietpress_selective_{module}_scripts – Adjust the handles removed by each module
• dietpress_selective_page_hides_content – Mark a page as rendering content the content scan cannot reach, so no module removes anything (this is what handles Elementor)
• dietpress_selective_is_wc_page – Override the WooCommerce page detection of selective loading
• dietpress_selective_wc_keep_cart_fragments – Keep the cart fragments script when your theme has a hand-coded mini-cart
• dietpress_selective_cf7_has_form – Mark pages that load a Contact Form 7 form dynamically
• dietpress_selective_blocks_dequeue – Override the block library dequeue decision
• dietpress_selective_everest_forms_dequeue_dashicons – Keep Dashicons when another plugin enqueues it directly
• dietpress_native_sitemap_in_use – Tell DietPress your plugin builds on the native WordPress sitemap, so the option that removes it becomes unavailable
• dietpress_cache_bypass – Keep the current page out of the page cache
• dietpress_cache_bypass_cookies – Adjust the cookie name prefixes that make a visitor uncacheable
• dietpress_cache_ignored_params – Adjust the query parameters that do not change the page
• dietpress_cache_exclude_urls – Adjust the excluded URL patterns
• dietpress_cache_post_urls – Adjust the URLs purged along with a post

Compatible with:

• Well-coded themes and page builders (Divi, Elementor, Beaver Builder, Bricks Gutenberg)
• Cache plugins (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, etc.). The one exception is the optional page cache module, which will not run beside another page cache and says so; everything else in DietPress works alongside them as it always has
• Security plugins (DietPress focuses on performance and deliberately leaves security to them; we recommend our free Vigilant)
• CDNs (Cloudflare, StackPath, KeyCDN, etc.) thanks to CORS and Vary headers
• WordPress Multisite (except the optional page cache module, which does not support it yet)

HOW TO VERIFY THE OPTIMIZATIONS

• Cache rules: check your .htaccess for a block marked # BEGIN DietPress with immutable Cache-Control headers
• Logo preload: view page source and look for <link rel="preload" ... fetchpriority="high"> pointing to your logo
• Critical CSS: view source and look for <style id="core-diet-critical-css"> in the head
• Compression: test at giftofspeed.com/gzip-test

Always measure with tools like Google PageSpeed, GTMetrix or WebPageTest, and run each test at least twice to account for caching.

Support

Need private support or custom development?

Do you need one-on-one help, priority troubleshooting, or a custom feature, integration, or tweak built specifically for your site? I offer private support and custom development. Just contact me and tell me what you need.

Need help or have suggestions?

• Official website
• WordPress support forum
• YouTube channel
• Documentation and tutorials

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About AyudaWP

We are specialists in WordPress security, SEO, AI and performance optimization plugins. We create tools that solve real problems for WordPress site owners while maintaining the highest coding standards and accessibility requirements.