Dirigible Optimize

Dirigible Optimize makes a Dirigible site lighter and faster. It switches off WordPress extras most sites never use, keeps image uploads small, tests the speed of your home page with Google PageSpeed Insights once a day, and can count visitors with Dirigible Analytics.

Everything that changes how pages load lives in this one plugin. If something on a site looks or behaves wrong, deactivate Dirigible Optimize, check the page, then reactivate it. Your design doesn't depend on it, so nothing breaks while it's off. See Troubleshooting.

Getting started

1. Install and activate Dirigible Optimize alongside the Dirigible theme. Most trims work right away, with nothing to set up.
2. Add its license under Dirigible → Licenses. The daily PageSpeed test only runs on licensed sites.
3. Open Optimize Settings if you need to put a WordPress feature back. Most cards have a checkbox that undoes Optimize's change.

What it changes

• Turned off for every site: emoji scripts, XML-RPC, classic widgets, oEmbed discovery, attachment pages, and a few unused tags in the page head. See What Optimize turns off.
• Turned off, with a checkbox to restore: translations (the site and admin run in English), RSS feeds, pingbacks and trackbacks, WordPress.org patterns, the Block Directory, and the 10-second editing-conflict check. If bots hammer a site's REST API, you can lock it down for logged-out visitors. See Optimize Settings.
• Images and PDFs: uploads are compressed and lose their camera and GPS details, very large uploads are shrunk to 3,000 pixels, large screens get large images, new image sizes are added to older images in the background, opaque PNG and still GIF uploads are saved as smaller JPGs, and PDFs of 10 MB or more are compressed in the background. See Images and PDFs.
• Visitor analytics (on by default): visitors, page views, visits, traffic sources and top pages, counted on the site itself with no third-party service, under Analytics in the admin menu. See Dirigible Analytics.
• Next page ready sooner: in Chrome and Edge, a link's page starts loading when a visitor hovers over it, not only when they click, so it usually opens instantly. It applies to logged-out visitors on sites with pretty permalinks, skips wp-admin, downloads and links with a query string, and runs no scripts, so analytics only count real visits. Pages come from the host's cache, so a hover costs very little.
• Block styles in the page: the styles for large blocks such as Cover, Gallery, Navigation and Social Icons come inside the page, like the smaller blocks' styles already do, so the page doesn't wait for a separate file before it appears. Pages look exactly the same.
• Revisions: each post keeps its newest 10 revisions, and you can trim the ones already stored in the background. See Revisions.
• Speed tracking: a daily PageSpeed score with a 90-day chart, on Optimize Settings and the Dashboard. See Daily PageSpeed score.
• Fast first visit after updates: an update to WordPress, the theme or a plugin clears the host's cache of your pages, so the next visitor waits for a freshly built page. About a minute and a half after updates finish, Optimize loads the home page itself (twice, like a logged-out visitor), so the first real visitor usually gets the fast cached copy. Several updates in a row get one visit.
• Gravity Forms: on Dirigible 5.31.78 and later, form pages skip WordPress's icon font stylesheet. The theme draws the form's icons itself.
• WooCommerce header cart: on shop sites that show the cart in the header, the styles for the cart panel (the one that slides out when a visitor clicks the cart) load after the page has loaded (or as soon as a visitor heads for the cart) instead of with it. The cart button looks the same, and the panel opens and works as before. Cart, Checkout and My Account pages, and pages with other WooCommerce blocks, are left as they are. A checkbox puts WooCommerce's loading back. See Faster pages with the header cart.
• Lighter jQuery: on the public site, pages skip jQuery Migrate, and jQuery loads after the page whenever every script that uses it can wait, Gravity Forms included. Both have a checkbox to put them back. See Optimize Settings.
• Google Maps on demand: a Google Maps embed (the code from Google Maps' Share → Embed a map) loads when a visitor scrolls near it, not with the page. A map at the top of a page shows straight away, and nothing changes in how it looks or works.
• Matterport tours on click: a Matterport 3D tour embed shows a preview picture of the tour with a View 3D tour button, in the same space the tour takes up. The tour itself (often 1–2 MB) loads when a visitor presses the button, so the rest of the page loads faster.
• Instagram Feed only where it shows: with Smash Balloon's Instagram Feed (free or Pro), its styles and scripts load only on pages that show a feed. Every other page loads faster, and feeds look and work as before.
• Turnstile on demand: with the Simple Cloudflare Turnstile plugin, the "verify you're human" check loads when a visitor reaches or starts filling in a form, not on every page view. See Turnstile on demand.
• One spam check per form: when Turnstile protects a Gravity Forms form, reCAPTCHA steps aside on that form, so visitors get one check and pages skip Google's reCAPTCHA download. See One spam check per form.
• No Spellbook telemetry: with Gravity Wiz's Spellbook installed, its weekly report to Gravity Wiz (site details, active plugins and Gravity Wiz license keys) isn't sent. Gravity Perks still check their licenses and update as usual.
• reCAPTCHA on demand (off unless support turns it on): with the Gravity Forms reCAPTCHA add-on (v3), Google's script can wait until a visitor starts using the page. It's off by default because loading it later can lower spam scores for real people. See reCAPTCHA on demand.

Usage

• Optimize Settings: a tour of every card and checkbox.
• Troubleshooting: rule Optimize in or out when something looks wrong.