Optimize Settings

  • performance
  • settings

Optimize Settings is where you put back a WordPress feature Dirigible Optimize switched off. Each card explains what Optimize does and has a checkbox that undoes it. Leave a box unchecked to keep the faster default.

Open the page

  1. In the WordPress admin, go to Dirigible → Optimize Settings. You need an Administrator account.
  2. Change a checkbox, then click Save → on any card. Every card saves the whole page.

Public REST API

Optimize blocks the WordPress REST API for visitors who aren't logged in. That cuts bot traffic and wasted server work. Logged-in editors aren't affected, and the block editor works as usual.

  • Check Allow REST API access for logged-out users when a service or plugin needs to read the site anonymously, such as an app, a headless front end, or a plugin feature that stops working for visitors.
  • When WooCommerce is active, public REST stays open no matter what, and the card says so.

Language and RSS Feeds

Most Dirigible sites are in English and don't use RSS, so Optimize skips both. Check a box to put the WordPress behaviour back.

Checkbox With the box unchecked (Optimize's default)
Use the Site Language The site and the admin run in English, whatever Settings → General → Site Language says, and WordPress loads no translation files, which saves work on every page. Check it for a site in another language.
Turn RSS feeds back on Feed addresses such as /feed/ and /comments/feed/ show "Feeds are disabled on this site," and pages carry no feed links. Check it for RSS-to-email newsletters, podcasts or feed readers.

Pages cached before you change either box keep their old language, feed links or "Feeds are disabled" answer until the cache is cleared. On Rocket.net, purge the site's cache after saving.

Disable Crawl Delay

Optimize adds crawl-delay rules to your site's robots.txt: a 5-second delay for all bots, and 6 to 10 seconds for aggressive SEO crawlers such as AhrefsBot, SemrushBot and Baiduspider. Google ignores crawl delays, so this doesn't slow Google's indexing.

Check Do not add crawl-delay rules to robots.txt to leave robots.txt as WordPress and your other plugins write it.

Pingbacks and Trackbacks

When you publish a post, WordPress normally visits every site you linked to, checks media links, and notifies Ping-o-Matic. Other sites can also send pingbacks and trackbacks that land in your comments. Optimize turns this off in both directions.

Check Send and accept pingbacks and trackbacks to restore them.

Editor

Three trims to the block editor. Check a box to put the WordPress behaviour back.

Checkbox With the box unchecked (Optimize's default)
Show WordPress.org patterns in the inserter The Patterns tab shows only the theme's and child theme's patterns. The editor skips about 300 KB of downloads from WordPress.org.
Offer blocks to install from the inserter (Block Directory) A block search with no results doesn't suggest plugins to install, and the editor loads 130 KB less JavaScript.
Check for editing conflicts every 10 seconds on post lists and classic edit screens Those screens check once a minute, like the block editor. A "someone else is editing" notice can take up to a minute to appear. Post locks still work.

Images

Uploads longer than 2,400 pixels are shrunk to that size, opaque PNG and still GIF uploads are saved as JPGs when that makes them smaller, and EWWW Image Optimizer's WebP copies and lazy load are switched off. The card shows the progress of the one-time WebP cleanup. Details: Images and EWWW Image Optimizer.

  • Keep PNG and GIF uploads as they are stops the JPG conversion.
  • Let EWWW Image Optimizer make WebP copies, rewrite pages to WebP and lazy load images appears only while EWWW Image Optimizer is active.

Daily PageSpeed Score

Google PageSpeed Insights tests the home page once a day, and the card shows the score, three speed figures and a 90-day chart. Click Test now → to run a test straight away. Details: Daily PageSpeed score.

  • Turn off daily PageSpeed tests stops the tests and hides the chart on the Dashboard.

What isn't on this page

Some trims have no checkbox, such as turning off emoji scripts and XML-RPC. See What Optimize turns off. To undo those, deactivate the plugin.