Performance Lab

Performance Lab plugin updates are released monthly on the third Monday of the month.

September’s release, v.1.5.0, was a small one as the team was focused on WebP work (see below). The only addition was an improvement to the autoloaded options Site Health check.

Proposals and Discussion

Performance Team chats are held weekly on Tuesdays; check https://make.wordpress.org/meetings/ for current time.

• The team worked over the last several months to add WebP and multiple MIME support for images for inclusion in 6.1 (see #54086, #54094, and #54097). Per Matt’s post on 11 September, this work will not be included in 6.1 and we are working to identify next steps. The WebP additions were reverted on 19 September.
• We have several new Performance Lab modules in the works, including:
  • Optimize autoloaded options to track which autoloaded options are actually being used on a site and, based on that, regularly rebuild the list of options to autoload by dynamically modifying the `autoload` column in the database
  • Database performance Health Checks to identify the site’s database server version and recommend updating as well as noting issues with MySQLMySQL MySQL is a relational database management system. A database is a structured collection of data where content, configuration and other options are stored. https://www.mysql.com/. tables
  • Add `fetchpriority=high` to non-lazy images to set the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) or first large image on a page in order to improve the page’s LCP
  • Background processing infrastructure (part of the currently on hold regenerate existing images work) to build out a new infrastructure for background processing that can be utilized for a variety of future use cases
• @aristath’s proposal to add SQLite support to coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. could become a Performance Lab module for initial testing

Tickets

In addition to Performance Lab, the Performance Team also works on performance-related tickets in core and holds a monthly Bug Bash on the first Wednesday of every month; check https://make.wordpress.org/meetings/ for current time.

The Team merged several performance-related improvements for 6.1, including adding two new Site Health checks for Persistent Object Caching (#56040) and Audit Full Page Cache (#56041) from the Performance Lab 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 as well as #37114, #54541, #54677, #55005, #55227, #55392, #54106, #49532, and several improvements to `WP_Query`, multisiteMultisite Multisite is a WordPress feature which allows users to create a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. Available since WordPress version 3.0, Multisite is a continuation of WPMU or WordPress Multiuser project. WordPress MultiUser project was discontinued and its features were included into WordPress core.https://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network., REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/., caching APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways., scripts and images – see our recent meeting notes for a full list.

Props to @mukesh27 and @spacedmonkey for doing the bulk of this work!

#performance