Performance Year-End Chat Summary: 23 December 2025

The full chat log is available beginning here on Slack.

View Transitions to CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.

• @westonruter kicked off the discussion by referencing plans to graduate the View Transitions plugin into core for WordPress 7.0, noting it pairs well with the adminadmin (and super admin) refresh and introduces theme support for configuration.
  • @mikewpbullet raised concerns about potential clashes with plugins or custom code and suggested a UIUI User interface checkbox or update splash screen guidance, while @schmitzoide proposed a general “Activate Advanced Features” checkbox.
  • @adamsilverstein noted performance plugins could add controls.
  • @westonruter clarified that sites could opt out via code toggles like filters or theme support, aligning with WordPress philosophy of decisions over options.
• Update: See #64470 and #64471.

Speculative Loading and Caching Enhancements

• @westonruter highlighted ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. #64066 to shift default eagerness from conservative to moderate when caching is detected, aiding View Transitions by reducing link click delays.
  • @mikewpbullet raised concerns about page caching rarely helping admin performance and noted that server-side caching via nginxNGINX NGINX is open source software for web serving, reverse proxying, caching, load balancing, media streaming, and more. It started out as a web server designed for maximum performance and stability. In addition to its HTTP server capabilities, NGINX can also function as a proxy server for email (IMAP, POP3, and SMTP) and a reverse proxy and load balancer for HTTP, TCP, and UDP servers. https://www.nginx.com/. or Varnish often runs without WordPress plugins that Site Health could detect.
  • @westonruter explained that core’s Site Health test already accounts for proxy caches beyond just plugins and remains extensibleExtensible This is the ability to add additional functionality to the code. Plugins extend the WordPress core software. for improvement.
  • @adamsilverstein acknowledged that comprehensive coverage is impossible but emphasized WordPress’s advantage in rendering detection rules dynamically.
  • @schmitzoide asked whether Site Health could diagnose performance issues.
    • @westonruter added that Performance Lab includes additional tests for excessive blocking scripts and styles.
  • @westonruter responded to @mikewpbullet‘s earlier admin concerns with two ideas: enabling bfcache in the admin for smooth back/forward transitions #63636, and considering speculative loading for admin menu items on sites with object caching enabled.
    • @mikewpbullet raised concerns that users may not want cached admin pages when hitting back, and that object caching is unlikely to help with page load times in admin where slowness comes from 3rd party background requests.

Admin and Dashboard Performance

• @adamsilverstein shared that tackling the Dashboard landing page is a priority for the new year and mentioned an existing performance ticket. @westonruter later identified ticket #55344 and suggested the Dashboard could leverage preload links for commonly-used resources like the edit post screen assets.
  • @westonruter connected this to ticket #57548 about retiring script and style concatenation in wp-admin, explaining the benefit would be effective preloading but noting that concatenation might still offer better performance without a primed cache, which requires benchmarking. This discussion led to exploring Compression Dictionaries, a newer capabilitycapability A capability is permission to perform one or more types of task. Checking if a user has a capability is performed by the current_user_can function. Each user of a WordPress site might have some permissions but not others, depending on their role. For example, users who have the Author role usually have permission to edit their own posts (the “edit_posts” capability), but not permission to edit other users’ posts (the “edit_others_posts” capability). that @westonruter explained allows browsers to reuse intersecting portions of different concatenated bundles.
  • @mikewpbullet questioned the need given server-side Brotli compression already exists.
  • @westonruter clarified this isn’t about PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher-based gzip but about the new compression dictionary transport standard that enables reusing cached bundle portions across different pages, particularly beneficial for blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. themes enqueue block styles on-demand based on page content, and in WordPress 6.9 this also applies to classic themes, so compression dictionaries would allow concatenating these varying bundles while enabling browsers to cache and reuse individual styles across pages with different bundles, significantly reducing CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. downloads for both logged-in and logged-out users.

Roadmap and Future Planning

• @schmitzoide asked about the team’s roadmap. @westonruter linked to the 2024 roadmap and explained this meeting serves to shape 2026 priorities, noting they’ll likely use milestoned TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. tickets rather than a full roadmap post given fewer active contributors currently.
  • @schmitzoide asked about graduating additional Performance Lab features and shared plans to propose ideas from block theme optimization work via repository tickets. @adamsilverstein encouraged opening issues for any PerfNow conference ideas worth experimenting with in the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party.
• @sirlouen asked about integrating performance testing activities similar to GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/’s approach, including GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ Actions tagging and handbook expansion. @westonruter welcomed aligning testing strategies with other core teams in the new year.

Our next chat will be held on Tuesday, December 30, 2025 at 16:00 UTC in the #core-performance channel in Slack.

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