Tickets and contributions
The Performance Team works on performance-related tickets in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and holds a fortnightly Bug Scrub on Wednesdays; check https://make.wordpress.org/meetings/ for current time.
In September, the Performance Team published a post regarding Analyzing the Core Web Vitals performance impact of WordPress 6.3 in the field, which details the findings from the analyses that were conducted to assess the performance impact using public data sets from HTTPHTTP HTTP is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web and this protocol defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. Archive and Chrome User Experience Report.
The focus in September was on tickets prioritized for the upcoming WordPress 6.4 release for which BetaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 1 was released on September 26, 2023. Early indications of benchmarking are showing positive improvements in performance. Noteworthy inclusions in WordPress 6.4 include: improvements to template loading performance 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 and Classic Themes, usage of the new script loading strategies “defer” and “async” in core, blocks, and themes, additional enhancements to optimize image loading performance, and new functions to optimize the use of autoloaded options.
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 Checker
The Performance Team has been working with the Plugin Review team to launch an early version of the Plugin Checker discussed in the Turning the Tide blog post. This has now been merged into a single repo under the WordPress organization https://github.com/WordPress/plugin-check. Look out for updates over the coming weeks.
Performant Translations Plugin
Further updates have been made to the Performant Translations plugin and next steps here would be to test the plugin and determine a path forward to integrate into WordPress Core. To test the plugin, please see the Call for Testing: Performant Translations post.
Team headlines and updates
In October, the Performance Team also has a Hallway Hangout scheduled (announced in this blog post) for 2023-10-19 15:00, where we will review WordPress 6.3 performance impact in the field, diving into WordPress 6.4 performance improvements and looking ahead at what can be learned for WordPress 6.5.
Performance Lab Plugin
Performance Lab plugin updates are released monthly on the third Monday of the month.
September’s release 2.6.1 was a smaller release including removing the PHPStan config file from the plugin directory and also adding assets to the various Performance Lab plugins (Fetchpriority and WebP Uploads). The Dominant Color Images plugin was approved, and work continues on the next set of enhancements around uncoupling the plugin features from the Performance Lab plugin related to the settings screen UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing..