Asset CleanUp: Page Speed Booster Plugin

Don’t just minify & combine CSS/JavaScript files ending up with large, bloated and slow loading pages: Strip the “fat” first and get a faster website 🙂

Faster page load = Happier Visitors = More Conversions = More Revenue

There are often times when you are using a theme and a number of plugins which are enabled and run on the same page. However, you don’t need to use all of them and to improve the speed of your website and make the HTML source code cleaner (convenient for debugging purposes), it’s better to prevent those styles and scripts from loading.

For instance, you might use a plugin that generates contact forms and it loads its assets (.CSS and .JS files) in every page of your website instead of doing it only in the /contact page (if that’s the only place where you need it).

“Asset CleanUp” scans your page and detects all the assets that are loaded. All you have to do when editing a page/post is just to select the CSS/JS that are not necessary to load, this way reducing the bloat.

The plugin works best in combination with a cache plugin (e.g. WP Rocket, WP Fastest Cache, W3 Total Cache), a hosting company that offers packages with server-level caching available (e.g. WP Engine, Kinsta) or a service like Cloudflare that has page caching enabled.

Main plugin’s benefits include

• Decreases the number of HTTP requests loaded and eliminate render-blocking resources (important for faster page load) by unloading useless CSS/JS
• Preload CSS/JS, Local Fonts & Google Fonts files to instruct the browser to download the chosen assets as soon as possible
• Minify CSS files (including inline code within STYLE tags)
• Minify JavaScript files (including inline code within SCRIPT tags)
• Combine remaining loaded CSS & JavaScript files
• Inline CSS Files (automatically & by specifying the path to the stylesheets)
• Defer combined JavaScript files by applying “defer” attribute to the SCRIPT tags
• Site-wide removal for Emojis, Dashicons for guest users and Comment Reply if they are not used
• Disable RSS Feeds
• Reduces the HTML code of the actual page (that’s even better if GZIP compression is enabled)
• Makes source code easier to scan in case you’re a developer and want to search for something
• Remove possible conflicts between plugins/theme (e.g. 2 JavaScript files that are loading from different plugins and they interfere one with another)
• Better performance score if you test your URL on websites such as GTmetrix, PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom Website Speed Test
• Google will love your website more as it would be faster and fast page load is nowadays a factor in search ranking
• Your server access log files (e.g the Apache ones) will be easier to scan and would take less space on your server

Google Fonts Optimization / Removal

• Combine all Google Font requests into fewer (usually one) requests, saving one round trip to the server for each additional font requested
• Choose between three methods of delivery: Render-blocking, Asynchronous via Web Font Loader (webfont.js) or Asynchronous by preloading the CSS stylesheet
• Option to preload Google Font Files from fonts.gstatic.com (e.g. ending in .woff2)
• Apply “font-display” CSS property to all loaded Google Font requests
• Enable preconnect resource hint for fonts.gstatic.com in case you use Google Fonts; don’t let the browser wait until it fetches the CSS for loading the font files before it begins DNS/TCP/TLS
• Remove all Google Font requests including link/font preloads, @import/@font-face from CSS files & STYLE tags, resource hints

Local Fonts Optimization

• Preload local font files (ending in .woff, .woff2, .ttf, etc.)
• Apply “font-display” CSS property value to LINK / STYLE tags (Pro version)

Remove useless links, meta tags and HTML comments within the HEAD and BODY (footer) tags of the website

• Really Simple Discovery (RSD) link tag
• Windows Live Writer link tag
• REST API link tag
• Pages/Posts Shortlink tag
• Post’s Relational Links tag
• WordPress version meta tag (also good for security reasons)
• All “generator” meta tags (also good for security reasons)
• RSS Feed Link Tags (usually they are not needed if your website is not used for blogging purposes)
• oEmbeds, if you do not need to embed videos (e.g. YouTube), tweets and audios
• Valid HTML Comments (exceptions from stripping can be added and Internet Explorer conditional comments are preserved)

Each option can be turned on/off depending on your needs. Instructions about each of them are given in the plugin’s settings page.

Disable partially or completely XML-RPC protocol

This is an API service used by WordPress for 3rd party applications, such as mobile apps, communication between blogs and plugins such as Jetpack. If you use or are planning to use a remote system to post content to your website, you can keep this feature enabled (which it is by default). Many users do not use this function at all and if you’re one of them, you can disable it.

Plugin works with WordPress Multisite Network enabled!

Asset CleanUp Pro
This plugin is the lite version of Asset CleanUp Pro that comes with more benefits including managing assets (CSS & JS files) on all WordPress pages, unloading plugins site-wide or via Regex(es), apply “async” and “defer” attributes on loaded JavaScript files which would boost the speed score even higher, move the loading location of CSS/JS files (from HEAD to BODY to reduce render-blocking or vice-versa if you need specific files to trigger earlier) and premium support. Click here to purchase Asset CleanUp Pro!

NOTES

People that have tested the plugin are so far happy with it and I want to keep a good reputation for it. In case something is not working for you or have any suggestions, please write to me on the forum and I will be happy to assist you. BEFORE rating this plugin, please check the following post http://chrislema.com/theres-wrong-way-give-plugin-feedback-wordpress-org/ and then use your common sense when writing the feedback 🙂

GO PRO

• Unload CSS/JS files on all WordPress pages including Categories, Tags, Custom Taxonomy (e.g. WooCommerce product category), 404 Not Found, Date & Author Archives, Search Results)
• Unload plugins in the frontend view (for guest visitors) * This will not just unload the CSS/JS files loaded from the plugins, but everything else related to them (e.g. slow database queries)
• Unload plugins within the Dashboard /wp-admin/ * Do you have any slow pages that are loading within the Dashboard? You can reduce seconds in page load for some bulky ones or fix plugin conflicts
• Instruct the browser to download a CSS/JS file based on the visitor’s screen size (e.g. avoid downloading assets in mobile view when they are not needed, if the screen size is smaller than 768px)
• Defer CSS by appending it to the BODY to load it asynchronously (Render blocking CSS delays a web page from being visible in a timely manner)
• Move JavaScript files from HEAD to BODY and vice-versa (CSS files moved to the BODY are automatically deferred)
• Defer JavaScript loaded files (by applying “defer” attribute to any enqueued JS file)
• Async JavaScript loaded files (by applying “async” attribute to any enqueued JS file)
• Inline JavaScript files (automatically & by specifying the path to the stylesheets)
• Apply “font-display:” CSS property to @font-face from existing local files to improve the PageSpeed score for “Ensure text remains visible during webfont load”
• Priority in releasing new features & other improvements (updates that are meant for both Lite and Pro plugins are first released to the Pro users)
• Premium support and updates within the Dashboard

Give Asset CleanUp a try! If you want to unlock all features, you can Upgrade to the Pro version.

• If you’re planning to use the Lite version of the plugin:

1. Go to “Plugins” -> “Add New” -> “Upload Plugin” and attach the downloaded ZIP archive from the plugin’s page or use the “Search plugins…” form on the right side and look for “asset cleanup”
2. Install and activate the plugin (if server’s PHP version is below 5.6, it will show you an error and activation will not be made).
3. Edit any Page / Post / Custom Post Type and you will see a meta box called “Asset CleanUp” which will load the list of all the loaded .CSS and .JS files. Alternatively, you will be able to manage the assets list in the front-end view as well (at the bottom of the pages) if you’ve enabled “Manage in the Front-end?” in plugin’s settings page.
4. To unload the assets for the home page, go to “Asset CleanUp” menu on the left panel of the Dashboard and click on “CSS & JS MANAGER” (“Homepage” is the default tab).

• I have purchased the Pro version. How to do the upgrade?

1. Go to “Plugins” -> “Add New” -> “Upload Plugin”; You will notice an upload form and an “Install Now” submit button. Download the ZIP file you received in your purchase email receipt (example: wp-asset-clean-up-pro-v1.1.8.2.zip), attach it to the form and install the new upgraded plugin.
2. Finally, click “Activate Plugin”!
3. Once the plugin is activated, make sure to grab the license key from the purchase email receipt and activate it in the “License” (plugin’s menu) page in order to be eligible for plugin updates from the Dashboard. That’s it 🙂

1. 

   When editing a page, a meta box will load with the list of loaded CSS & JS files from the active theme & plugins

2. 

   Plugin Usage Preferences (From "Settings")

3. 

   Combine CSS & JS files option

4. 

   Homepage CSS & JS Management (List sorted by location)

1.3.9.3

• WordPress 6.3 compatibility: Updated the code to avoid the following notice: “Function WP_Scripts::print_inline_script is deprecated since version 6.3.0”
• “WPML Multilingual CMS” plugin compatibility: Syncing post changes on all its associated translated posts / e.g. if you unload an asset on a page level in /contact/ (English) page, it will also be unloaded (synced) in /contacto/ (Spanish) and /kontakt/ (German) pages
• “WP Rocket” plugin compatibility: “Settings” — “Optimize JavaScript” — “Combine loaded JS (JavaScript) into fewer files” is automatically disabled when the following option is turned on in “WP Rocket”: “File Optimization” — “JavaScript Files” — “Delay JavaScript execution”
• “Hide My WP Ghost – Security Plugin” plugin compatibility: Asset CleanUp’s HTML alteration is done before the one of the security plugin so minify/combine CSS/JS will work fine
• “Site Kit by Google” plugin compatibility: JavaScript files from this plugin are added to the ignore list to avoid minifying as they are already minified (with just a few extra comments) and minifying them again, due to their particular structure, resulted in JS errors in the browser’s console
• Improvement: Changed the name of the cached files to make them more unique as sometimes, handles that had UNIX timestamps and random strings (developers use them for various reason, including debugging), were causing lots of redundant files to be generated in the assets’ caching directory
• Added jQuery Migrate script to the ignore list to avoid minifying it (along with jQuery leave it as it is, if the developer decided to load the large versions of the files, for debugging purposes)
• Front-end view: In the “Asset CleanUp” top admin bar menu, a new link is added that goes directly to the manage CSS/JS area for the current visited page for convenience
• Remove the usage of “/wp-content/cache/storage/_recent_items” directory from the CSS/JS caching directory as it was redundant to the caching functionality
• Option to skip “Cache Enabler” cache clearing via using the “WPACU_DO_NOT_ALSO_CLEAR_CACHE_ENABLER_CACHE” constant (e.g. set to ‘true’ in wp-config.php) – read more: https://www.assetcleanup.com/docs/?p=1502#wpacu-cache-enabler
• “Knowledge Base for Documents and FAQs” plugin: Do not show the CSS/JS manager at the bottom of the page when “Edit KB Article Page” is ON
• New “Brizy – Page Builder” setup: Prevent Asset CleanUp from triggering when the editor is ON
• Fix: “Do not load Asset CleanUp on this page (this will disable any functionality of the plugin)” – if turned ON, make sure the hardcoded list loads fine in the front-end view (Manage CSS/JS)
• Fix: Use the same “chmod” values from FS_CHMOD_DIR and FS_CHMOD_FILE (WordPress constants) for all the files and directories from the assets’ caching directory when attempting to create a file/directory to avoid permission errors on specific environments

1.3.9.2

• New Option: Contract / Expand All Assets within an area (e.g. from a plugin)
• “Overview” area: Added notifications about deleted posts, post types, taxonomies and users, making the admin aware that some rules might not be relevant anymore (e.g. the admin uninstalled WooCommerce, but unload rules about “product” post types or a specific product page remained in the database)
• Stopped using the “error” class (e.g. on HTML DIV elements) and renamed it to “wpacu-error” as some plugins/themes sometimes interfere with it (e.g. not showing the error at all, thus confusing the admin)
• Keep the same strict standard for the values within the following HTML attributes: “id”, “for” to prevent any errors by avoiding any interferences with other plugins
• Improvement: Only print the notice (as an HTML comment) about the “photoswipe” unload to the administrator (it’s a special case where the HTML has to be hidden in case the CSS file gets unloaded)
• WPML Fix: Prevent Asset CleanUp from triggering whenever /?wpml-app=ate-widget is loaded (in some environments, the content returned was empty and the automatic translation area was not loading)

1.3.9.1

• Improvement: Avoid deprecated errors related to PHP 8+ (although harmless, they are annoying to notice on the error_log files)
• WPML Fix: Prevent Asset CleanUp triggering its front-end optimisation code whenever /?wpml-app=ate-widget is triggered OR JavaScript code is detected in the content of the source
• Fix / PHP Warning: Undefined array key “script_src_or_inline_and_noscript_inline_tags” in […]/templates/meta-box-loaded-assets/_assets-hardcoded-list.php / Sometimes, if there are no STYLES OR SCRIPTS to be detected on a specific page (it rarely happens), the list of assets will not be fetched in PHP 8+

1.3.9.0

• When managing the assets via “Manage in the front-end view”, make sure to notify the user when scripts are wrapped by Internet Explorer conditional comments
• Hide “Manage CSS/JS” link on post types that aren’t relevant such as “Elementor” templates
• Manage CSS/JS: Show the NOSCRIPT tags on the hardcoded list
• Fix – If a tag (LINK/SCRIPT) is wrapped by IE comments, make sure the wrapping is preserved when the asset is preloaded, otherwise, the asset would load on all browsers when its meant to be loaded only by Internet Explorer
• Fix – In rare cases when an option value remained empty in the database (e.g. edited directly through phpMyAdmin), add_option() was used instead of update_option()
• Fix – Warning: strpos() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given in /classes/CleanUp.php (within the “doDisableOembed” method)
• Fix – PHP Warning: strpos(): Empty needle in /classes/Preloads.php (line: 316)
• Fix – Fatal error: Uncaught Error: json_decode(): Argument #1 ($json) must be of type string, array given in /classes/Main.php (line: 791)

1.3.8.9

• Improvement: Better detection of the tags when the source of a tag (e.g. “src” or “href”) is not wrapped around quotes or even has spaces added after or before the equal sign / e.g. OR
• Whenever XML-RPC is completely disabled in ‘Settings’ — ‘Disable XML-RPC’, make sure the following option is automatically turned ON: ‘Settings” — ‘HTML Source CleanUp’ — ‘Remove “Really Simple Discovery (RSD)” link tag?’
• Fix: The size of an asset loaded locally was not shown when the path to the file was relative and starting with the URI of the WordPress site URL / Example: The WordPress site URL was “https://yoursite.com/blog” and the tag was “”
• Fix: Exclude from optimisation JS files that contain “/@cc_on” and “@/” as they are meant to be loaded by Internet Explorer and not stripped if they only contain commented code

1.3.8.8

• “CSS/JS Manager”: If a handle has inline code associated with it, mention the size (e.g. bytes, KB) of that inlined LINK or SCRIPT (just like it’s mentioned for the LINK tags with the “href” attribute and SCRIPT tags with the “src” attribute)
• Higher accuracy in detecting (for optimization) the LINK tags that are loading CSS/JS files
• Improvement: If an asset is an unloaded through the CSS/JS manager and a preload (via LINK tag) was already set through another plugin (e.g. “Pre* Party Resource Hints”) or within the theme, for instance in functions.php, make sure to strip the preloading as it’s useless if the actual asset is not loaded in the first place
• Improvement: In case a WordPress installation has a subdirectory (e.g. www.mysite.com/blog), make sure any assets that have relative URIs (e.g. /blog/wp-content/style.css) are all optimized properly even if they were manually added from a 3rd party plugin or through the theme (e.g. within functions.php)
• If “SCRIPT_DEBUG” is set to “true”, load the non-minified versions of the plugin’s assets / read more: https://wordpress.org/support/article/debugging-in-wordpress/#script_debug
• Fix: Make sure none of the plugin’s assets are included within any combined CSS/JS files (if the options are enabled in “Settings”)
• Fix: Make sure to offer fallback to “wp_json_file_decode” in case the WordPress version is below 5.9.0 (as compatibility with older WP versions is promised)
• Added “wpacu_go_pro_affiliate_link” filter for altering the “Go Pro” link (e.g. for adding an extra query string with a specific reference)

1.3.8.7

• By default, the front-end optimization is not triggered for URIs with query strings (as they are usually not cacheable); Make more exceptions and trigger the optimization when there are common query strings (the page is cacheable) in the URI such as the ones starting with “utm_”, “mtm_”, “fb_”, etc.
• Higher accuracy in detecting WordPress core files (some of the undetected WP core files used to be shown in the “External 3rd Party” area)
• Cache Enabler Compatibility: Avoid the deprecated error related to “cache_enabler_before_store” by checking the version of Cache Enabler and using the right filter
• Improvement: Make sure all the unload rules from “Overview” are marked with red font as all load exceptions are marked with green font
• Fix: When editing a post/page and “Classic Editor” plugin is activated (basically when the page looks the same as it used to before Gutenberg editor was implemented in WordPress), the “Preview Changes” button from the top right side box does not work if the CSS/JS manager is loaded
• Fix: PHP 8.1 – Make sure substr() doesn’t have any null parameters to avoid any errors

1.3.8.6

• New option in the settings’ vertical menu: Disable RSS Feed
• Show any special settings in “Overview” — read more: https://www.assetcleanup.com/docs/?p=1495
• PHP 8 compatibility: Make sure no deprecated notices are shown when WP_DEBUG is ON due to older PHP code that is still compatible with PHP 5.6
• Notify the admin when the tracking notice is shown that he/she can manage this option in the “Settings” area (e.g. in case closing the notice box doesn’t work because of some JavaScript errors on that page, coming from a different plugin or the theme)
• Make sure the list of unloaded assets/plugins from the top admin bar is not broken due to the theme used that might have CSS interfering with Asset CleanUp’s one
• Make sure the user is redirected only once to the “Getting Started” page after the plugin is activated the first time (not after every re-activation as many developers are doing debugging)
• “Transliterator – WordPress Transliteration” compatibility: Avoid breaking the HTML content in Asset CleanUp’s admin pages
• Added “wpacu_print_info_comments_in_cached_assets” filter hook for the option to avoid printing by default of plugin’s comments in the CSS/JS files (e.g. the relative path to the file)
• Reduced the total number of template files (e.g. some were redundant)
• Reduce the total plugin’s size by compressing some of its images
• Higher accuracy in detecting Zion Page Builder to prevent Asset CleanUp from triggering when the page builder is used
• “Bricks – Visual Site Builder for WordPress”: Do not trigger Asset CleanUp whenever the page builder is used
• Bricks builder edit mode: Allow Asset CleanUp to trigger plugin & CSS/JS unload rules when the page editor is in use to make the editor load faster via define(‘WPACU_LOAD_ON_BRICKS_BUILDER’, true); that can be set in wp-config.php / read more: https://www.assetcleanup.com/docs/?p=1450
• Improvement: On pages without any unloading rules, do not make any DB calls or trigger extra PHP code to retrieve any load exceptions as they are irrelevant in this situation since the assets are loaded anyway
• Improvement: Optimised the code to avoid triggering DB calls to the “options” table to check specific transient values
• Improvement: Do extra checks to avoid calling get_transient() when it’s not needed on specific pages (to reduce the number of DB calls)
• Improvement: Remove extra DB queries related to “post_format” as this taxonomy is irrelevant for managing in Asset CleanUp
• Improvement: When Asset CleanUp is prevented from loading via the rules from “Settings” — “Plugin Usage Preferences” — “Do not load the plugin on certain pages” OR from “Do not load Asset CleanUp on this page (this will disable any functionality of the plugin)” within “Page Options” area (when managing assets for a specific page), make sure the checking is done earlier to avoid an extra DB query that would become irrelevant if the plugin would not be loaded on that page
• Improvement: Add more uniqueness to the plugin’s JS code deferring the CSS to avoid any conflicts with other similar codes
• Improvement: Escape as late as possible all variables when echoed
• Improvement: Load jQuery UI files locally, thus removing any unnecessary dependency on another site (e.g. not from “ajax.googleapis.com”)
• Improvement: Replaced json_encode() with wp_json_encode() for better security
• Improvement: “Overview” area / Make sure the unloaded CSS/JS from inactive themes is highlighted to alert the admin that the rules might never be needed and can be safely removed
• Compatibility with the “WordPress Popular Posts” plugin & other plugins (when optimizing the JavaScript code) that change the type of inline script tags to “application/json” (having a JSON string that is later read by the plugin’s script)
• Fix: “Google Fonts” — “Apply font-display: CSS property value” was not applying for hardcoded LINK tags when the Google fonts were not combined
• Fix: “Plugin Usage Preferences” — “Manage in the Dashboard” — “Fetch the assets on a button click”: if the user updates a post (when Gutenberg editor is used), the CSS/JS manager loads, when it shouldn’t as the admin never used the button to fetch the CSS/JS list in the first place
• Fix: Better RegEx for detecting “@import” within CSS comments when optimizing the CSS, thus avoiding useless attempts to fetch the information from the @import locations, since they are commented and not needed in the final CSS version
• Fix: When a word containing “calc” (e.g. calculation) was included in CSS comments, sometimes, the code following the comment was stripped
• Fix: Minify CSS / If there are new lines within calc(), the content minified ends up without spaces between the operators (e.g. the plus sign), which breaks the CSS code
• Fix: When CSS content gets cached, make sure to avoid altering incorrectly the “url” value when it starts with # – e.g. clip-path: url(#elementIdHere);
• Fix: The list “Grouped by loaded or unloaded status” was sometimes showing unloaded assets as “loaded”, confusing the admin
• Fix: Make sure all load exceptions for any unload rule are included in “Tools” -> “Import & Export”
• Fix: Sometimes when a static page was set as the homepage in “Settings” – “Reading” and then unset, the CSS/JS manager was not showing up and the “Page Options” was shown instead
• Fix: “Overview” area / The confirmation for clearing rules belonging to inactive CSS/JS wasn’t always showing the right handle, thus confusing the admin when confirming the action

1.3.8.5

• Added the “wpacu_settings” filter – add_filter() – so the plugin’s “Settings” can be altered via code (e.g. adding if clauses programmatically to alter the value of a certain textarea or have an option disabled on specific pages) when necessary
• Prevent the following option from being accidentally disabled: ‘Ignore dependency rule and keep the “children” loaded’ (e.g. in rare cases, some CSS/JS have dependencies on certain pages only)
• Fix: Added nonce checks for every WordPress AJAX call to improve security

1.3.8.4

• Fix: Warning: Undefined array key “show_assets_meta_box” in […]/wp-content/plugins/wp-asset-clean-up/classes/Settings.php on line 461

1.3.8.3

• Automatically preload any combined JS files within the BODY tag (that do not have any “defer” or “async” attribute) to improve the Google PageSpeed Insights score for the following: “Preload key requests”
• Reorganised the layout for “Manage in the Dashboard” from “Settings” -> “Plugin Usage Preferences”
• Fix: When minifying CSS content, do not strip the extra calc() when something like the following is used: “calc( 50% – 22px ) calc( 50% – 22px )”
• Fix: When Gutenberg editor is used and the post is updated, sometimes the CSS/JS manager is reloaded BEFORE the changes are saved showing the same state as it used to be confusing the admin that the changes weren’t applied

1.3.8.2

• If the security nonce is expired or not sent when certain forms are submitted, show an error message about the potential problems and how to fix them without showing the standard “Link has expired” error
• Added the plugin version under the “Lite” text next to the logo
• WPML Fix: Load the combined CSS/JS files from the right domain to avoid any CORS policy issues (in case there are multiple domains for each language)
• Fix: The CSS/JS manager form wasn’t submitting when “Do not load Asset CleanUp on this page (this will disable any functionality of the plugin)” was enabled
• Fix: Make sure the loading exception rule if the user is logged-in is saving correctly
• Fix: Do not show the “loading based on screen size” area if there is no SRC attached to the handle (e.g. “woocommerce-inline” handle)
• Fix: Do not print anything whenever a cron job is triggered (this is only for debugging)
• Fix: Assets’ position was not shown correctly within the Dashboard (HEAD instead of BODY)
• Fix: Do not trigger any cache clearing and page preloading if the post status is “draft” (after the post is saved)

1.3.8.1

• Reduce the total number of submitted fields whenever the form from the CSS/JS manager is used to avoid having problems if “max_input_vars” (php.ini) is equal with 1000 or lower / read more: https://www.assetcleanup.com/docs/sometimes-data-is-not-saving-after-submitting-a-form-why/
• UX improvement: The state of an asset row (contracted or expanded) is now done via AJAX on click (to reduce the number of inputs from the form)
• UX improvement: When CSS/JS groups are contracted / expanded, make sure the change is preserved (Setting’s value: “On Assets List Layout Load, keep the groups:”) for future visits
• Do not add any CSS/JS manager link to the post’s actions (when the list of posts is viewed) if the post does not have the status of “publish” or “private”
• Highlight the fact that in the “Page Options” area within “Overview” (plugin’s menu), there are posts that are not “publish” or “private”
• FlyWheel compatibility: The WordPress root directory has to be different than ABSPATH in relation to the assets from the plugins or the theme
• Added the plugin version under the “Lite” text next to the logo
• Do not show any “Manage CSS & JS” link when viewing certain post types (e.g. “ct_template” from Oxygen Builder)
• Fix: “Uncaught ReferenceError: wpacuLoadCSS is not defined” by updating the fallback script for async preloading CSS
• Fix: “Warning: Constant WPACU_PREVENT_ANY_FRONTEND_OPTIMIZATION already defined”
• Fix: More accuracy in detecting all the loaded assets when they have to be filtered for alternative loading of different content / read more: https://www.assetcleanup.com/docs/?p=988

1.3.8.0

• The meta box “Asset CleanUp: Page Options” has had its contents moved to the “Page Options” area from the CSS/JS manager in any location the assets are managed
• Added “Page Options” for the homepage as well (e.g. latest posts) besides posts, pages, and any public custom post types (e.g. WooCommerce product pages)
• Prevent the plugin from triggering when WooCommerce API calls are made
• Make sure the following option works well when non-Latin characters are in the URI: “Do not load the plugin on certain page”
• Fix: When hovering over the post’s title in the Dashboard’s posts list (either post, page, or custom post type), make sure “Manage CSS & JS” is only shown to the right admins to avoid any confusion
• Fix: When assets’ list is fetched, WP Rocket was disabled which made some plugins/themes that are directly calling WP Rocket functions to generate fatal errors
• Fix: Make sure the handles with the following option always get unloaded: ‘Ignore dependency rule and keep the “children” loaded’
• Fix: Fatal error: Cannot redeclare assetCleanUpClearAutoptimizeCache() – if both plugins (Lite & Pro) are activated

1.3.7.9

• Option to skip Autoptimize cache clearing via using the “WPACU_DO_NOT_ALSO_CLEAR_AUTOPTIMIZE_CACHE” constant (e.g. set to ‘true’ in wp-config.php)
• Fix: Make sure that applying to unload on all pages of a certain post type works from “CSS & JS MANAGER” (which is the new place for managing CSS/JS files within the Dashboard, outside the edit post/page area)
• Fix: Manage assets didn’t work on “CSS & JS MANAGER” -> “Homepage” tab if the actual page was a static one set in “Settings” -> “Reading”

1.3.7.8

• New Option: Manage assets loading for posts, pages, and custom post types within “CSS & JS MANAGER” -> “MANAGE CSS/JS” without the need to go to edit post/page area which is often bulky and could have too many fields from the theme & other plugins leading to a higher number than the one set in php.ini for “max_input_vars”
• Higher accuracy in preventing the plugin from triggering when there are REST requests
• Improvement: Make sure “&display=” is added (if enabled) to Google Fonts links if their URL is changed to fit in JSON formats or JavaScript variables
• Divi builder edit mode: Allow Asset CleanUp to trigger plugin & CSS/JS unload rules when the page editor is on to make the editor load faster via define(‘WPACU_LOAD_ON_DIVI_BUILDER_EDIT’, true); that can be set in wp-config.php / read more: https://www.assetcleanup.com/docs/?p=1260
• Cache Enabler (compatibility with older versions): Make sure the deprecated “cache_enabler_before_store” hook is in use
• Unload “photoswipe” fix: If WooCommerce’s PhotoSwipe was unloaded, empty dots were printed at the bottom of the page from unused/unneeded HTML (hide it by marking the DIV with the “pswp” class as hidden)
• Improvement: Only use ‘type=”text/css”‘ when it’s needed (e.g. an older theme is used that doesn’t support HTML5)
• Improvement: Make SweetAlert2 independent (styling, functionality) from other SweetAlert scripts that might be loaded from other plugins/themes (e.g. “WooCommerce Quickbooks Connector” export in an edit product page was not working)
• Minify CSS/JS improvement: From now on, the minification can be either applied to files, inline JS code, or both (before, the files minification had to be enabled to files first and then to inline JS code; sometimes, users just wanted to minify inline code and leave the files untouched)
• Fix: Clearing load exceptions from “Overview” didn’t work for all pages of a certain post type
• Fix: Make sure the plugin works well (e.g. without any PHP errors) if the plugins’ directory is changed (e.g. from “plugins” to “plugins-custom-name”)
• Fix: Better detection for the homepage (e.g. the latest posts page was mistaken with the homepage in the front-end view of the CSS/JS manager)
• Fix: Better detection for the singular page; Make sure the latest posts page such as the “Blog” one is also checked)
• Fix: On some WordPress installations, the plugin’s menu icon from the Dashboard’s sidebar was not showing properly (the height was too large)
• Fix: If there are too many assets/plugins unloaded, when showing up in the top admin bar menu, the list was not scrollable (e.g. only 20 out of 40 assets were shown because the height of the browser’s window wasn’t large enough which can not be expanded on smaller devices)
• Fix: If the current theme supports HTML5, the ‘type=”text/javascript”‘ attribute is not added any more to altered SCRIPT tags by Asset CleanUp, thus avoiding any errors from W3C validators

1.3.7.7

• The layout of a CSS/JS area is changed on the make exception area & a new option was added to make an exception from any unload rule on pages belonging to a specific post type (e.g. unload site-wide, but keep the asset loaded on all WooCommerce ‘product’ pages)
• Oxygen plugin edit mode: Allow Asset CleanUp to trigger plugin & CSS/JS unload rules when the page editor is on to make the editor load faster via define(‘WPACU_LOAD_ON_OXYGEN_BUILDER_EDIT’, true); that can be set in wp-config.php / read more: https://www.assetcleanup.com/docs/?p=1200
• In specific DIVI powered websites, the “PageSpeed” parameter is appended to the URL from the client-side, thus make sure to only check for “et_fb” when detecting if the DIVI builder is on to avoid loading Asset CleanUp there
• Fix: Make sure that for languages such as Arabic where the Dashboard’s menu is shown on the right side, the plugin’s icon is not misaligned
• Fix: When “Update” button is clicked on edit post/page (Gutenberg mode), while there’s no CSS/JS list fetched (“Fetch the assets on a button click” is on), make sure the list is not fetched after the page is saved (it’s only refreshed if it was loaded in the first place)

1.3.7.6

• Fix: Make sure WP Rocket is fully triggered when the assets are fetched via Asset CleanUp, as the “Uncode” theme is calling get_rocket_option() without checking if the function exists
• Fix: Added nonce checks to AJAX calls made by Asset CleanUp for extra security

1.3.7.5

• Higher accuracy in detecting the source map for CSS & JS files in order to update it if the caching file is created; Make sure no caching file is created if there’s no change already made to the JS content (e.g. minify), otherwise, it doesn’t make sense to only change the source map
• Delete an option related to the plugin (from {wp_}options) instead of updating it with an empty value
• Do not trigger the plugin when Zion Page Builder from Kallyas theme is used to avoid using extra resources or print any assets below the page when “Manage in the front-end” is enabled, thus, cluttering the page
• Fix: Sometimes, due to multiple query strings the optimized asset URLs weren’t replacing the original asset URLs correctly (e.g. /?version=value&ver=1.2)
• Fix (CSS Minify): Do not update “0px” to “0” from a global declared variable (e.g. “:root { –some-var: 0px; }” should not have “px” removed)
• Fix: Avoid preg_match() errors coming from any RegEx from the following option: “Do not combine the (CSS|JavaScript) files matching the patterns below (one per line)”
• Fix: If WordPress version is below 5, an error is generated when print_translations() is triggered because the method does not exists within wp_scripts()
• Fix: Prevent combined CSS files from generating from just one file (useless) when the array is filled twice by mistake with the same file path

1.3.7.4

• Improved the caching mechanism: The most recently created files are never deleted in case HTML pages that weren’t cleared for weeks or more would still load them successfully; Once “ver” is updated, then the now old file will be cleared in a couple of days (e.g. at least one day + the number of days set in “Settings” -> “Plugin Usage Preferences” -> “Clear previously cached CSS/JS files older than (x) days”)
• Combine JS Update: Make sure the inline “translations” associated with a JS file is appended to the combined JS files, as this would also avoid possible errors such as “Uncaught ReferenceError: wp is not defined”
• Set a higher priority of the order in which the plugin’s menu shows up in the top admin bar to make room for the notice related to the unloaded assets; Changed the notification icon from the menu (from exclamation to filter sign)
• Improved the way the file paths from “Inline CSS” area are matched to make sure regular expressions can also be used for a match, not just the relative path to the file
• Make sure preg_qoute() is used in CleanUp.php when clearing LINK/SCRIPT tags to avoid any errors such as unknown modifier
• The super admin will always be able to access the plugin’s settings for security reasons
• Do not trigger the plugin when Zion Page Builder from Kallyas theme is used to avoid using extra resources or print any assets below the page when “Manage in the front-end” is enabled, cluttering the page
• Fix: Sometimes, due to the fact there were no line breaks on specific code shown in the hardcoded list, the left-side meta box had its width increased so much that it was hiding or partially showing the right-side meta boxes area that was only visible by using “View” -> “Zoom Out” in Google Chrome

1.3.7.3

• Added notice about the unloaded rules to the plugin’s top admin bar menu (with an exclamation sign) for easier noticing the unload rules that are applied on the current visited page (/?wpacu_debug is another way of viewing the list when the top admin bar / plugin’s menu is unavailable for the logged-in admin)
• If an unload exception is chosen (after an existing unload rule has already been chosen), mark it with green font to easily notice it when managing the CSS/JS
• CSS Minifier Update: Better detection and minification for CSS related to math functions such as min(), max(), calc() and clamp(); Fix broken CSS (rare situations) that uses nested calc()
• Prevent Asset CleanUp from triggering when certain REST calls are made (e.g. the one from Thrive Ovation for testimonials) to avoid any conflicts
• Compatibility with “WordPress Admin Theme – WPShapere” plugin – make sure Asset CleanUp’s icon is not misaligned
• Better detection of the Oxygen (plugin) page builder edit mode (when the page builder is active)
• Replaced jQuery deprecated code with new one (e.g. the code is reported by plugins such as “Enable jQuery Migrate Helper”)
• Clear “Cache Enabler” cache after Asset CleanUp cache is cleared to avoid any CSS/JS references (in the HTML source code) from /wp-content/cache/asset-cleanup/ (old files that were deleted)
• Fix: PHP Deprecated: cache_enabler_before_store (from Cache Enabled plugin) / Replaced it with the following filter: “cache_enabler_page_contents_before_store”

1.3.7.2

• New Setting: Restrict access for administrators on the “CSS & JS Manager” area, thus decluttering the posts/pages whenever they edit them; Very useful if there are admins (e.g. store managers that don’t have to mix with Asset CleanUp’s assets list for various reasons) that should not view the meta boxes from edit post/page, the CSS/JS list from the front-end view (if enabled), etc. (“Settings” -> “Plugin Usage Preferences” -> “Allow managing assets to:”)
• Improvement: Extra checks are made to detect if the page is an AMP one and if it is, no changes would be made to the HTML source (e.g. no SCRIPT tags in the HEAD section of the page)
• Clear caching once a day via WP Cron in the case over 24 hours have passed since the last clearance (e.g. in case the admin hasn’t cleared the caching in a long time or hasn’t touched the Dashboard for days)
• Deactivate the appending of the inline CSS/JS code (extra, before or after) to the combined CSS/JS files if all the files’ size is over 700 MB as this often suggest the inline code is not unique (e.g. having WordPress nonces that often change)
• Oxygen Builder Fix: Make sure the file /wp-content/uploads/css/universal.css is taken into consideration for minification as it’s among the files that aren’t minified by default
• Fix: Basic preloading was not taking place anymore
• Fix: “PHP Warning: in_array() expects parameter 2 to be array, boolean given” is generating if the current media query load list is empty
• Fix: Make sure /wp-content/cache/asset-cleanup/(css|js) directories are re-created if necessary, in case they were removed (e.g. for being empty or by mistake)
• Fix: Prevent the meta boxes from showing up in the edit post/page area (thus, decluttering the edit area) if the user’s role is not “administrator” (e.g. it was showing it to editors without any CSS/JS to manage which was often confusing)
• Changed the “Plugins Manager” area to have the same feeling as the “CSS & JS Manager”; Removed the “Always load it (default)” option as it’s redundant since all the plugins are loaded by default unless there are unload rules set there; The load exceptions are now showing in green font to stand out in case they overwrite any unload rule.

1.3.7.1

• New option in “Settings” -> “Combine loaded JS (JavaScript) into fewer files” -> “Wrap each JavaScript file included in the combined group in its own try {} catch(e) {} statement in case it has an error and it would affect the execution of the other included files”
• Changed the way hardcoded assets are printed to ensure they are retrieved with higher accuracy (the retrieval is made via AJAX calls) so the same list will also show in the Pro version
• Added debugger for preloaded CSS/JS to load the page as if the preloading is not enabled (/?wpacu_no_css_preload_basic & /?wpacu_no_js_preload_basic)
• Prevent the plugin from triggering on certain situations (e.g. for “Contact Form X” AJAX call and “Lumise” plugin, in edit mode)
• Check if a directory is empty before using rmdir() to avoid any errors printed (e.g. even if @ was appended in front of the function, the irrelevant errors were still logged in some environments)
• Higher accuracy in detecting older cached files to be marked for deletion (making sure older files are cleared)
• Fix: Make sure /wp-content/cache/asset-cleanup/(css|js) directories are re-created if necessary, in case they were removed (e.g. for being empty or by mistake)
• Fix: Basic preloading was not triggering anymore for LINK tags

1.3.7.0

• Made sure a directory exists before attempting to delete it (for old directories) to avoid any error reports (harmless, but annoying) from plugins such as “Fatal Error Notify Pro”
• Updated notification related to HTTP/2 from Combine CSS/JS tabs within “Settings”
• If the total files from the caching directory generated by the combined CSS/JS files occupy over 1 GB in disk space, deactivate automatically the appending of the inline CSS/JS code associated with the tags to the generated combined CSS/JS files as that’s usually the culprit for having so many redundant files in the caching directory, leading to unnecessary disk space
• Older caching files are by default set to be cleared after 4 days (the new default value) instead of 7
• Updated “Help” page
• Show more information about the caching directory in “Tools” -> “Storage Info” (each directory with CSS/JS files is shown along with the total size of the assets within it)
• WP Rocket 3.7+ compatibility fix: “Minify HTML” is removed (read more: https://github.com/wp-media/wp-rocket/issues/2682), thus, make sure this gets verified (for compatibility reasons) as well in Asset CleanUp
• Shorten the file name of the combined CSS/JS to avoid possible duplicates
• Fix possible errors (400 Bad Request) when AJAX calls are made by Asset CleanUp
• Check if Cloudflare is used and notify the user about whether it’s needed to enable “CDN: Rewrite assets URLs” (read more: https://assetcleanup.com/docs/?p=957)

1.3.6.9

• Improvement: Save resources and do not check anything for optimization when the feed URL (e.g. /feed/) is loaded (the plugin should be inactive for these kinds of requests)
• Improvement: Do not trigger the plugin when WooCommerce makes AJAX calls (no point in using extra resources from Asset CleanUp)
• Improvement: When Google Fonts are marked for removal, nullify other related settings, leading to the usage of fewer resources
• The strings “/cart/” and “/checkout/” are added to the exclusion list where Asset CleanUp is not triggered if the pattern is matched (read more: https://assetcleanup.com/docs/?p=488); These kinds of pages usually do not need optimization and if the admin decides to do some, he/she can remove the exclusion
• Fix (writing files to cache directory): If the handle name contained forward-slash (/), make sure that the final file name gets sanitized (including slash removal) to avoid errors related to file_put_contents() such as trying to write to directories that are non-existent
• Fix (unnecessary cached files): The plugin was caching CSS/JS files that did not need to be cached (e.g. already minified JS), leading to unnecessary extra disk space
• “WP-Optimize” minify is not triggering anymore when /?wpacu_clean_load is used for debugging purposes (viewing all files loading from their original location)
• Do not strip inline CSS/JS associated with the handle if the original file is empty as there’s a high chance the inline code is needed

1.3.6.8

• Make the plugin’s user aware about jQuery Migrate not loading starting from WordPress 5.5 (a notice is showing in “Settings” -> “Site-Wide Common Unloads” if the WP version >= 5.5)
• Add alerts for WooCommerce assets when the user is about to unload them to make sure he/she is aware of the consequences (e.g. “js-cookie”, “wc-cart-fragments”)
• Oxygen plugin compatibility: Make sure the page loads fine when “Manage in the front-end view” is enabled and the admin is logged-in (e.g. ob_flush() is used to print missing content)
• Added action hooks before (“wpacu_clear_cache_before”) & after (“wpacu_clear_cache_after”) the plugin’s CSS/JS caching is cleared
• Do not deactivate the plugin automatically on Dashboard view if the PHP version is below 5.6 and when the plugin is activated, prevent its activation when the PHP version is below 5.6 printing an error message
• Yoast SEO Compatibility Fix: Prevent the plugin from minifying SCRIPT tags if the type is different than “text/javascript”, avoiding errors with plugins such as Yoast SEO (type: application/ld+json)
• WordPress 5.5 & “Enable jQuery Migrate Helper” Fix – /assets/script.min.js: jQuery.fn.load() is deprecated
• When the CSS/JS list is fetched using the “Direct” way of fetching the assets (“Manage in the Dashboard”), there are two calls made; Now the progress is shown for each of the calls for easier debugging in case the assets’ list is not retrieved successfully
• Improvement: Do not defer the plugin’s own script file as sometimes its functions do not work (e.g. if there are JS errors from other plugins); It’s better to have it loaded as render-blocking (small file anyway), as soon as possible
• Improvement: Do not leave extra space in the LINK & SCRIPT tags (it makes things easier when debugging the HTML source that might have been altered by the plugin)
• Fix: Avoid triggering the plugin if the request is an API one starting with “/wp-json/wc/” (excluding the site’s base URL), WooCommerce related (REST requests)
• Fix: PHP Notice: Array to string conversion (CombineCss.php on line 503)
• Fix: PHP Notice: Undefined index: is_frontend_view (view-by-location.php on line 311)
• Fix: Fix: When assets are fetched, the list of CSS/JS wasn’t showing up (AJAX call error) if the page URL that is called (from which the assets are fetched) is loaded with HTTP protocol while the Dashboard (the URL from which the AJAX call is made) is accessed via the HTTPS protocol – Error: “This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS.”
• Fix: “PHP Warning: Use of undefined constant CURL_HTTP_VERSION_2_0” (triggered only for the admin to check if the server supports the HTTP/2 protocol); Show the verify link for HTTP/2 protocol if the automatic detection is not working
• Fix: “PHP Notice: Undefined variable: pluginListContracted in (…)/templates/meta-box-loaded-assets/view-by-location.php”
• Security Fix: Sanitize values from BulkChanges.php to prevent the execution of arbitrary code (e.g. JavaScript code)

1.3.6.7

• Fix: CombineJs.php – PHP Notice: Array to string conversion (it happened when there were more than one inline JS code associated with a handle)
• Fix: CombineJs.php – Prevent PHP notice errors from showing up
• Security Fix: Sanitize values from BulkChanges.php to prevent execution of arbitrary code (e.g. JavaScript code)
• Security Fix: Sanitize value from $_REQUEST[‘wpacu_selected_sub_tab_area’] to prevent execution of arbitrary code (e.g. JavaScript code)
• Security Fix: Sanitize $postId (make sure it’s only an integer) from the “duplicate_post_meta_keys_filter” filter to avoid any SQL injection attack

1.3.6.6

• The caching of a file is re-built based on the filemtime() value as developers often forget to update the value of the “ver” (/?ver=) after updating a CSS/JS file’s content
• When listing the loaded stylesheets (LINK tags), make sure to print the “media” attribute if it’s different than “all” so the admin will be aware if that particular CSS is meant for mobile or other devices (e.g. to save time from going through the HTML source code and check it out there)
• Files loaded from “/wp-content/bs-booster-cache/” are not minified/combined (as they are already minified) to avoid getting a large caching directory (often having lots of GB)
• Prevent certain JavaScript code containing random strings such as nonces (e.g. CDATA one) from being added to the combined JS files to avoid the plugin generating lots of JS combined files that would increase the total disk space by writing to the caching directory
• New ways to sort the list of the CSS/JS files that are managed: “Grouped by their size (sorted in descending order)”, “Grouped by having at least one rule & no rules”, “All enqueues in one list”
• At least PHP 5.6 is now required (anything below that and the plugin won’t activate). Official support for PHP 5.6 ended on December 31st, 2018. Unless you really have to use it (e.g. old code that won’t work with never PHP version), it’s strongly recommended that you update to PHP 7+ as it’s much faster & uses less resources than older PHP versions, not to mention the improvement in terms of security vulnerabilities & bugs – Read more about unsupported PHP branches: https://www.php.net/eol.php
• Fix: “Combine CSS” was not working, unless “Combine JS” was also enabled

1.3.6.5

• Improved the function that verifies if a CSS/JS content is already minified (to avoid minification that would use extra resources); Set limitations to the number of entries in the database to avoid the number getting too large
• Caching dynamic assets (CSS/JS) is no longer enabled by default as it might cause some issues on certain themes/plugins, thus it has to be enabled by the admin only if necessary
• Added “Read more” links for some of the handles that have special documentation written about them (e.g. “How to unload Swiper in Elementor” or “How to check if Gutenberg Blocks CSS file is needed or not”)

1.3.6.4

• New Option: “When list is grouped by location, keep the assets from each of the plugins in the following state”: ‘Contracted’ mode is now available and if you have many plugins, the list can be contracted when the CSS/JS manager list is loaded
• New Option: “File Size:” available for each CSS/JS, either local or external
• Combine CSS/JS “Apply combination only for logged-in administrator (for debugging purposes)” is no longer available and has been replaced with two options: “Apply it only for guest visitors (default)” & “Apply it for all visitors (not recommended)” (if chosen, it enables the combine CSS/JS option for logged-in users which is usually not ideal)
• “Overview” new options: 1) Added option to remove all load exceptions for a handle in “Overview” page when the load exceptions are not tied to any bulk unload rule; 2) Clear redundant unload rules if the site-wide rule is already applied
• “Autoptimize” compatibility: Make sure the HTML source code is always altered before “Optimize HTML Code?” is triggered in Autoptimize

1.3.6.3

• New Feature in the CSS/JS Manager: The handle rows can be contracted/expanded (their status is saved when the form is submitted); This is useful to make the whole area smaller (less scrolling) as there will likely be CSS/JS files that you know you will never edit for a long time (if ever) and it’s better to have them contracted
• New Option in “Settings” – “Plugin Usage Preferences”: Hide Dashboard’s “Asset CleanUp” menu from the left sidebar in case you don’t use the plugin too often or wish to have a cleaner sidebar (read more: https://assetcleanup.com/docs/?p=584)
• Compatibility with Ronneby Theme: Alter the style/script tag later (e.g. by appending plugin markers) after plugins such as “Ronneby Core” alter it (in this case it prevents the URLs from the LINK tags to be stripped)
• When listing dependencies in the CSS JS managing list (e.g. the “children” of a “parent”), show the unloaded ones in the red font; Dependency handles are linked as anchors for easier navigation between them
• “WP Rocket” compatibility: Make sure HTML changes made by Asset CleanUp are always applied (via “rocket_buffer” filter hook) before WP Rocket saves the HTML content to the cached file
• Fix: After updating the the CSS/JS manager on any page, the page preloads for the guest visitors; Make sure the response from wp_remote_get() is always checked to avoid PHP errors logged to error_log (even though the errors are harmless for the front-end view, the error log files can get too big)
• Fix (unstyled CSS/JS management area in front-end view): Make sure the plugin’s own style is properly loaded asynchronously in Firefox in any situation

1.3.6.2

• Once a page is updated, the plugin preloads that page for both the admin and the guest visitor, making sure any new changes would take effect, saving the admin’s time and making sure any first visitor coming to that page will access it faster (not having to wait for the caching to re-built)
• If the attribute “data-wpacu-skip” is applied to any CSS/JS, then no alteration (e.g. no minify and no addition to any combine list) will be applied to that file (apart from the actual unload or attributes such as async/defer)
• ‘Remove All “generator” meta tags?’ improvement: Higher accuracy in stripping META tag generators if the option is enabled in case some of their attributes have no quotes around them (rare cases)
• If ‘Remove “REST API” link tag?’ is enabled, the /wp-json/ reference is also removed from the “Response headers” when accessing the page via remove_action()
• Compatibility with extra page builders: “X” & “PRO” themes (Theme.co), “WP Page Builder” & “Page Builder: Live Composer” plugins: whenever their editor is ON, no unloads or any other changes to the HTML source (including minification) are performed to make sure the editor is loading its files and works smoothly
• Compatibility with “Redis Object Cache” plugin: The global variable $wp_object_cache from the WordPress core is no longer used and it’s replaced with a custom solution
• Compatibility with “404page – your smart custom 404 error page” plugin and similar plugins that are making pages as 404 customizable ones
• For debugging purposes, the admin can use /?wpacu_no_cache to view how the website would load without the CSS/JS cache applied (the files will still be referenced from the caching directory but they will be dynamically generated instead)
• Sometimes, large inline STYLE/SCRIPT tags’ content has to be minified; if it’s between 40KB and 500 KB it will be cached; any tags’ content over 500KB will not be minified as it would use too many resources; it’s advisable to put very large tag content into a .js external file as it would affect the TTFB (time to the first byte) when the page is loaded
• Any inline CSS/JS associated with a handle (generated via wp_add_inline_style() and wp_add_inline_script() respectively) are automatically added to the combined file
• Combined CSS/JS files are all stored in /wp-content/cache/asset-cleanup/(“css” or “js”)/ to avoid duplicated files that used to be stored in “logged-in” directory which is no longer created; This reduces the total disk space especially when the same CSS/JS is created (sometimes these files are quite large) for both guests & logged-in users
• If “Combine loaded CSS (Stylesheets) into fewer files” is enabled, the LINK tags that are preloaded (at least two of them) will also be combined, thus reducing the number of HTTP requests
• The method loadHTML() from DOMDocument is processing tags faster as the initial HTML source passed to it as a parameter goes through several filters, making it much smaller which makes a different in page speed when it comes to large HTML sources
• Prevent certain DOMDocument calls (which can be slow on large HTML documents) when they are not necessary (e.g. when preloading CSS stylesheets and the RegEx which is faster can do the same task with the same accuracy)
• Strip LINK tags that are pointing to empty content (including any inline code associated with the enqueued style added via wp_add_inline_style() function) if “CSS Files Minification” is enabled, making sure any empty tags are also stripped when “Inline CSS Files” is enabled, this saving HTTP requests and having less DOM elements
• In some cases, the PHP function strtr() has proven to be faster than str_replace() to make replacements, thus it has been applied to some methods that are dealing with the alteration of the HTML source
• Notify the admin that unloading ‘jquery-migrate’ won’t unload it’s “child” as well, ‘jquery’ (as it’s a special case)
• Fix: In rare cases, URLs to the assets are starting with ../ (it’s not the best practice as this would only work depending on the page’s URL structure); Make sure the file’s size is calculated correctly and the right URL for the file is checked in the background to determine if it returns a 200 OK response or not
• Fix: Store the assets info (which are shown only within the Dashboard for reference purposes) with the relative location (UR) to the asset, in case the data is later imported from a Staging to Live environment, it won’t show any Staging URLs on the Live website on pages such as “Overview”, thus avoiding any confusion the admin might have
• Fix: Make sure the time dequeueing CSS/JS is calculated correctly
• Fix: If “Asynchronous via Web Font Loader (webfont.js)” was chosen for “Combine Multiple Requests Into Fewer Ones”, the font weights weren’t added to the final generated SCRIPT tag
• Fix: Make sure when the handle information is saved, there are no PHP notice errors if the ‘src’ index is missing as some handles do not have an “src”

1.3.6.1

• Increased the speed of unloading (dequeueing) styles & scripts by ~40ms (caching is used to avoid calling the same PHP code during several action hooks)
• Higher accuracy in stripping ‘before’ and ‘after’ associated inline SCRIPT after adding the content to the JS combined file
• When combining JS content, make sure to extract the right relative path to make it combinable if a local file is loaded and it starts with // in the “src” attribute
• Show confirmation message when unloading specific files that are very likely needed such as jQuery, Backbone & Underscore libraries
• Alert the admin when there are unload rules from inactive plugins on pages such as “Bulk Changes” & “Overview”
• Keep Dashicons loaded if the toolbar (top admin bar) is shown
• Prevent front-end optimisation code from triggering while the CSS/JS is fetched, thus saving resources and improving the speed of retrieving the assets
• Optimised the plugin to use less calls to MinifyCss & MinifyJs for hardcoded assets reducing considerably the resources used (sometimes timeout errors are generated in hosts with a lower resources allocated)
• When a plugin page (e.g. “Settings”) is visited within the Dashboard, trigger a maintenance script that will remove inactive handle data information (from handles without any rule attached to it, often from deleted plugins no longer used) from the “wpassetcleanup_global_data” option value (from options table), thus making it lighter
• In many hosting environments, the total number of fields submitted is maximum 1000 (set by default in php.ini); The total number of fields that were sent have been reduced (e.g. hardcoded assets information) as they are only enabled via JavaScript whenever they are relevant to make sure there are less fields sent (to void partial submit and missing data as a result in case the admin has difficulties increase the default 1000 in php.ini)
• Do not automatically store hardcoded assets info when the CSS/JS manager list is loaded; Instead, store it IF there’s a rule attached to it in order to make the contents of the “wpassetcleanup_global_data” option smaller in size (for a lighter database & faster MySQL queries)
• Clear plugin’s cache via AJAX after “Settings” is updated within the Dashboard (this is more effective then clearing it when the page reloads as it could take some time to clear the cache if there are lots of files stored there)
• Whenever Asset CleanUp’s caching is cleared, the Autoptimize (if enabled) caching is also cleared via AJAX (in an asynchronous way) to avoid any broken CSS/JS (rare cases) even for short time
• Trigger certain actions (to save database & disk space) when the plugin is deactivated: Clear all its transients from the database & Remove the caching directory if it doesn’t have any more CSS/JS; If all the plugin’s changes were cleared via “Tools” -> “Reset”, then deactivating the plugin will completely clear any of its traces
• The plugin’s own files that are needed for the plugin’s functionality (they are only loading for the logged-in admin), are loaded asynchronously (CSS) and deferred (JS) to ensure the admin doesn’t load them as render-blocking especially when managing the pages in the front-end view
• The combined CSS tags can now be altered for any reason via add_filter() through the ‘wpacu_combined_css_tag’ tag name, just like the combined JS tags are via ‘wpacu_combined_js_tag’
• While the CSS/JS assets are fetched prevent extra performance plugins from triggering their optimisation for CSS/JS/HTML as the action is irrelevant and uses resources during the fetching of the assets for the admin
• Fix: Remove request to non-existent CSS file within the Dashboard that generated a 404 Not Found error in the browser’s console (harmless, but confusing)

1.3.6.0

• Improved the speed of the generated & printed combined CSS/JS assets by ~30ms (depending on the hosting package and the PHP version used) when the HTML source is altered by avoiding extra useless verifications of the HTML output
• When managing the assets, make sure to show “before” and “after” content (so the user is aware how is that inline tag generated) associated with a handle too (not just the “data” one added via wp_localize_script())
• When managing the assets, make sure the checkboxes from the load exception area are always disabled if there’s no unload rule set, thus avoiding any user error to mistakenly add useless load exceptions to an already loading asset, also avoiding any confusing and get a cleaner list in the “Overview” area
• “Overview” page update: If there’s any “Load it for the logged-in user” exception for a handle, show it
• Fix: Avoid creating redundant CSS files when minify inlined tags is enabled, leading to a large number of files in the caching

1.3.5.9

• Removed unused files from “vendor” (Composer’s directory) and updated the Minify CSS/JS library to the latest version, fixing errors for PHP 7.4+
• Fix: In some cases, a 500 Internal Error was generated while fetching the assets list for management via the Dashboard view

1.3.5.8

• Caching: Expired CSS/JS files are cleared differently (in time after visiting various pages) to save resources and errors related to the PHP memory (e.g. shared hosting packages often have limitations in terms of the server’s CPU & memory usage)
• Allow CSS/JS management for privately published pages
• Strip empty STYLE/SCRIPT tags if, after optimization, their content is empty (e.g. the CSS was minified as it had only comments in it)
• Show if there are any hardcoded (non-enqueued) LINK/STYLE/SCRIPT tags in the list of CSS/JS list (management of these tags is available in the Pro version)
• Make sure the combined CSS/JS file is valid before its tag is generated in the HTML output (in rare cases, the cached CSS/JS files get deleted either by mistake when developers are cleaning up the caching directory OR they weren’t properly created in the first place)
• Compatibility fix to avoid PHP warning error when “Smart Slider 3” & “WP Rocket” are used and the CSS/JS assets are fetched

1.3.5.7

• Make the admin aware in case a certain CSS/JS asset is loaded within Internet Explorer conditional comments (Read more: https://www.sitepoint.com/internet-explorer-conditional-comments/)
• From now on, “disk” is the default method for storing the cached information of the assets
• Fix: Make sure the path to /wp-includes/ (or other internal directories) is the right one when the blog URL is like mysite.com/blog/
• Fix: Sometimes, warning errors were printed in the “Settings” page after an update (within the Dashboard): “Warning: array_search() expects parameter 2 to be array, null given”

1.3.5.6

• Added “Debugging” tab to “Tools” page, allowing the option to download the error log file & view other debugging options
• Improvement: Sometimes, 200 OK (success) is returned, but due to an issue with the page, the assets list is not retrieved; Notify the admin about this
• Fix: Sometimes, warnings (harmless, but obtrusive) were given when updating plugin’s settings and previewing pages: “Warning: array_unique() expects parameter 1 to be array, null given”

1.3.5.5

• Updated Minify CSS library for PHP 7.4 support (avoid any PHP errors from “implode” function)
• Improvement: “display=” is now also applied to Google Fonts loading via WebFontConfig within inline SCRIPT tags
• FileSystem is always using the “direct” method for altering CSS/JS files, thus avoiding (e.g. by mistake via a different plugin using the same WordPress FileSystem class) any reading/writing error for the cached files
• When fetching assets, make sure some plugins such as Fast Velocity Minify (that could interfere with the HTML output) are deactivated
• When updating a post/page/homepage, the caching is now cleared after the page is updated via an AJAX call (asynchronously), thus reducing the memory usage and the time spent until the page reloads
• Debugging feature: If /?wpacu_clean_load is used, it will show the unoptimized version of the page (great for locating specific files that were perhaps combined and cached by various plugins)
• Removed Freemius SDK

1.3.5.4

• New Feature: Stop triggering Asset CleanUp (early stop) on specific front-end pages
• New Feature: Easier way to deactivate options for debugging purposes on page load via /?wpacu_debug (printing an options area at the bottom of any front-end page for the logged-in admin)
• Improvement: Removed plugin’s meta boxes when a block is edited in Oxygen (as the meta boxes are not relevant there)
• Improvement: Compressed images for a lighter plugin
• Improvement: Do not trigger Asset CleanUp if TranslatePress Multilingual plugin is in edit mode (front-end view)
• Improvement: Storage info for cache directory shows the total size/number of all files (not just CSS/JS ones)
• Improvement: On page request (within the Dashboard), /wp-admin/?wpacu_get_cache_dir_size will retrieve information about the caching directory (e.g. all its files and their sizes get listed)
• Bug Fix: Avoid any PHP errors or very high CPU usage with some hosting packages in case a “circular reference” error is detected (e.g. an @import from a CSS file that is having the URL path to the same CSS file)
• Bug Fix: CSS/JS URLs starting with // were giving unreachable error when checked if they are valid or not (e.g. from //fonts.googleapis.com/)
• Bug Fix (plugin compatibility): Remove call_user_func_array() PHP error if SiteGround’s “Remove Query String From Static Resources” is enabled
• Bug Fix: Prevent errors in some BuddyPress pages as $post->post_type is undefined

1.3.5.3

• New Feature: Make exception (from any unload rule) and load an asset if the user is logged in
• Adjust the text below “CSS & JS Manager” & “Bulk Changes” to keep it on the same line
• Improvement: Added the total number of handles for stylesheets and scripts in “Overview” page
• Improvement: Sometimes, specific plugins are used to alter the HTML source (e.g. features such as minify HTML); Make sure no META tags are left in the BODY tag as it would give validation errors in https://validator.w3.org/
• Bug Fix: In rare cases, the version of a CSS/JS could be an array, not just a float/integer number; Prevent notices from showing up when ‘ver’ is an array and make sure the proper query string is passed to the link/path of the source file

1.3.5.2

• Improvement: Added “Overview” page which has the list of all the changes made to a specific CSS/JS file (handle), offering a much easier way to understand the changes made and do any debugging
• UI Improvement: The height of the CSS/JS asset row (when managing the list) is smaller, depending on the settings, making it easier to do scrolling
• UI Improvement: Adjust the total height of the “Note” textarea based on the content added, thus reducing the spacing between assets for easier scrolling/management
• Code Improvement: Split a few large files into multiple ones for easier management
• Backend Performance Improvement: Prevent Asset CleanUp’s (own) CSS/JS from loading in edit post/page when the files aren’t needed (e.g. no meta boxes are showing up because they were hidden)
• Extra compatibility with AMP pages: Do not move from HEAD to BODY any SCRIPT tags containing //cdn.ampproject.org/
• Bug Fix: Do not alter any Google Fonts links if there is no “family=” within it (“Smart Slider 3” fix)

1.3.5.1

• Bug Fix: Prevent PHP notice errors from showing up in error log reports (not affecting the plugin’s functionality)
• Improvement for debugging purposes: Change the “Settings” values on page-request (via query string)
• Debugging Improvement: When /?wpacu_show_handle_names is used, it will print the handle name as a “data” attribute tag within the LINK/SCRIPT; Great for debugging and to find out if any of the assets are hardcoded
• Make sure Asset CleanUp’s combine CSS/JS works if “HTML Minify” is enabled in W3 Total Cache

1.3.5.0

• Bug Fix: Sometimes, when external URLs (from a different domain) were present in the assets management list, when checking them via JavaScript for their status, the browser returned some errors interfering with “Add Media” not allowing the user to upload new images from the edit post/page area

1.3.4.9

• New Feature: Check if the CSS/JS files are reachable; Once the Assets List is loaded for management, AJAX calls would be made to check if the files are not returning 404 not found errors and anyone that returns an “error” gets highlighted (e.g. it’s good in situations when a file was enqueued, but later deleted and forgotten thus ending up with 404 Bad Requests in the browser)
• UI Improvement for “Bulk Changes”: When a checkbox is ticked, highlight the area of the targeted handle (applies for any results in all the tabs)
• Improvement: Automatic compatibility added for “WP AMP — Accelerated Mobile Pages for WordPress and WooCommerce” (premium plugin)
• Improvement: For easier reference (determining where a handle is coming from: a plugin, the theme etc.), more information such as the source and the version number is added next to each handle in “Bulk Changes”
• Improvement: Once the management CSS/JS list gets loaded, AJAX calls would be made to determine if the source (URL) would return a successful response or not. If a 404 is retrieved or any other error code, then the source URL would be in red color along with a notice the page might load unreachable (bad requests) CSS/JS
• PHP 7.4 Compatibility Fix: Removed deprecated errors for “Array and string offset access syntax with curly braces is deprecated”
• WordPress 4.3 CSS Fix: In the new WP version, some buttons and drop-downs (selects) were unaligned and showing incomplete text

1.3.4.8

• Compatibility with “AMP (Official AMP Plugin for WordPress)” and “AMP for WP – Accelerated Mobile Pages” plugins: If the page is of AMP type, no Asset CleanUp settings/rules will be triggered to avoid validation errors; Moreover, NOSCRIPT tags added by Asset CleanUp are moved to the BODY tag (they are no longer stored in the HEAD tag) to avoid further validation errors in case other AMP plugins/scripts are used and Asset CleanUp doesn’t detect them
• New Feature: Skip “Test Mode” on page request for debugging purposes via /?wpacu_skip_test_mode – e.g. useful when you have to check a website and you don’t have admin access and “Test Mode” is enabled (you can check if anything is broken there while the page loads fine for other visitors)
• Improvement: Changed the way the assets list is showing up for management by reducing the size of each row (with CSS/JS file details) so it’s easier for scrolling (e.g. load exceptions are showing up only if you chosen a bulk unload option, reduced the height of some of the areas, such as “Handle:”, “Source:” and notes area).
• Improvement: The number of total submitted fields is smaller now as the assets list area is not as cluttered since irrelevant fields are not submitted anymore with an empty value (this is not only useful for aesthetic reasons, but it’s limiting the risk of submitting over 1000 fields where max_input_vars from php.ini is limited to only 1000 inputs)
• Improvement: No matter what type of layout to show the assets list is chosen from “Assets List Layout:”, it will show the total number of CSS/JS for each group (e.g. total files from the theme, total files from all the active plugins, etc.)
• Improvement: Option to choose how the caching information (asset details including its location in the caching directory) is retrieved in “Plugin Usage Preferences” (useful to reduce database queries in case one has a large database that is slow in retrieving information)
• Improvement: If all CSS/JS from a plugin (when the assets list is grouped by location) are bulk unloaded (e.g. on all posts, site-wide), then “Unload on this page” (Check All | Uncheck All) (which becomes irrelevant) is replaced with ‘Make an exception from bulk unload, “Load it on this page”‘ (Check All | Uncheck All)

1.3.4.7

• Improvement: When assets are fetched to show in the load manager, prevent WP Rocket from running as well as Query Monitor from outputting information
• “Duplicate Post” compatibility fix: Make sure Asset CleanUp’s meta values are taken into account when a post is cloned
• Bug Fix: Hide any PHP notice errors (reported in the error log in some environments) for cached CSS/JS as the 3rd parameter (“src” as it is) wasn’t added to the returned array

1.3.4.6

• New Feature in “Optimize JavaScript”: Move jQuery Inline Code After jQuery library is called
• Combine Google Fonts Improvement: Strip any extra characters (like double comma ,,) from existing LINK tags pointing to fonts.googleapis.com (more info: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/preload-google-fonts/)
• Bug Fix: Prevent notice errors from showing up on certain hosting environments in Misc.php (in case fetching plugins’ icons from WordPress.org fails) and CleanUp.php
• Added more tutorials to “Getting Started” -> “Video Tutorials”

1.3.4.5

• Improvement: Hardcoded LINK/SCRIPT tags that have relative URLs (no site url added to them) are also checked for optimization (e.g. )
• Cache Dynamic Assets Improvement: It also checks for www.domain.com?query type of URLs without forward slash / after the domain’s extension);
• Inline JS automatically is no longer enabled by default (new installations); A note was added about what it means to inline JS files so the user will be extra careful
• Bug Fix: ‘Ignore dependency rule and keep the “children” loaded’ wasn’t working properly for SCRIPT tags in 1.3.4.4 due to the wrong parameter passed to strip the HTML tag

1.3.4.4

• Inline automatically CSS smaller then (specific size) KB (if option is enabled)
• Inline CSS Improvement: Inline dynamic loaded CSS (if option is enabled)
• Improvement for “Google Font Remove”: Added more patterns to detect Web Font Loader CDN requests
• WP Rocket Compatibility Fix: If the CSS/JS files’ path get changed by “WP Rocket” (path contains “/wp-content/cache/busting/”), make sure they are getting unloaded by Asset CleanUp if ‘Ignore dependency rule and keep the “children” loaded’ option is checked along with the unload rule
• New Feature: Rewrite cached static assets URLs with the CDN ones if necessary (located in “Settings” -> “CDN: Rewrite assets URLs”)
• Strip Google Fonts references from JavaScript (.js) files (if the removal option is active)
• Append “display” parameter to Google Font URLs within JavaScript files (if any option for “font-display:” is chosen)
• Bug Fix: Make sure all values from “Site-Wide Common Unloads” show the correct status (enabled/disabled) in “System Info” from “Tools”

1.3.4.3

• New Assets Management Feature: Until now, the list was loaded automatically on edit post, page, custom post type, and taxonomy. You can choose to fetch the list when clicking on a button. This is good when you rarely manage loaded CSS/JS and want to declutter the edit page on load and also save resources as AJAX calls to the front-end won’t be made to retrieve the assets’ list.
• New Feature: Cache Dynamic Loaded CSS & JavaScript to avoid loading the whole WP environment and save resources on each request (e.g. /?custom-css=value_here or /wp-content/plugins/plugin-name-here/js/generate-script-output.php?ver=1)
• Reduced the number of database queries to fetch cached information making the pages preload faster (when the caching is rebuilt) thus reducing the loading time especially if PHP 5.6 is still used (which is slower than PHP 7+ when it deals with database connections).
• Combine JS files improvement: If there are multiple files that have “defer” or “async” attribute set (or both) and they are not preloaded, then they will be grouped into fewer files; Before, only SCRIPT tags without these attributes were combined
• Improvement to reduce disk space: Make sure already minified (100%) static .js files aren’t cached
• Google Fonts Optimization: Requests that are for icons (e.g. https://fonts.googleapis.com/icon?family=Material+Icons) are also combined to reduce HTTP requests
• “Optimize CSS Delivery” from WP Rocket works together with “Inline Chosen CSS Files” from Asset CleanUp
• Prevent plugin from loading when Themify Builder (iFrame) is used
• Bug Fix: Sometimes, the position of an asset (HEAD or BODY) is reported incorrectly if it was enqueued in specific action hooks; Extra checks are made to fix that as sometimes developers do not use wp_enqueue_scripts() which is the proper hook to use when enqueuing items that are meant to appear on the front end
• Bug Fix: If CSS files get inlined, make sure @import without “url” is updated correctly in all situations
• Bug Fix: In rare cases, managing assets for the Homepage is not working properly. Reason: $post is overwritten by external plugins or the theme because the developers have forgotten to use wp_reset_postdata() and reset it to its initial value (which should be 0 in this case).

1.3.4.2

• New Feature: Remove Google Font Requests (including link/font preloads, @import/@font-face from CSS files & STYLE tags, resource hints)
• Minify/Combine CSS Improvement: Any @import found including a local CSS in another CSS file is fetched (and minified/optimized if necessary) and added to the parent file (this reduces HTTP requests, saving additional round-trip times to the overall page load) – Read more: https://gtmetrix.com/avoid-css-import.html
• Hardcoded CSS/JS (not enqueued the WordPress way) from the same domain (local) get minified/optimized
• Bug Fix: In rare cases, when viewing the homepage assets in the Dashboard, the wrong page is checked (e.g. a post instead of the actual homepage) because specific themes/plugins do not use wp_reset_postdata() to restore $post global to its original value (none in this instance)
• Bug Fix: If Google Fonts loading type is async (optional with preload) then make sure it’s applied even if there’s only one LINK request

1.3.4.1

• Combined CSS files are now grouped by the LINKs media attribute (before, only “all” (default) stylesheets were combined); e.g. if there are three “print” stylesheet and four “only screen and (max-width: 1024px)”, then two separate combined CSS files will be created for each media type
• Make sure the “media” attribute is always added to the STYLE tag if a certain one (besides ‘all’) was set
• If Google Fonts loading type is async (optional with preload) then make sure it’s applied even if there’s only one LINK
• Bug Fix: If the relative path to a font/background image in a CSS file started with ./ the full path to the file wasn’t updated when copied to the cache

1.3.4.0

• New feature: Inline Chosen CSS files (usually small ones) saving the overhead of fetching them resulting in fewer HTTP requests (more: https://varvy.com/pagespeed/inline-small-css.html / https://gtmetrix.com/inline-small-css.html)
• New Option to load Google Fonts: Asynchronous by preloading the CSS stylesheet
• Reduced redundant CSS/JS files cached for logged-in users, thus making clearing the caching faster and reducing the total disk space (sometimes, on certain hosting environments with lower memory limit clearing the whole caching resulted in “PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of (X) bytes exhausted”)

1.3.3.9

• Option to disable “Freemius Analytics & Insights?” in “Settings” -> “Plugin Usage Preferences” (good if you do debugging & often deactivate the plugin or you just don’t like plugin feedback popups)
• Changed the vertical “Settings” menu by renaming “Minify CSS & JS Files” & “Combine CSS & JS Files” to “Optimize CSS” & Optimize JavaScript; Added the status of the minify/combine below the menu titles to easily check what optimizations were done
• Improved the way JS files are combined; If “Defer loading JavaScript combined files” is enabled in “Optimize JavaScript”, make sure that any external script between the first and last combined JS tags has “defer” attribute applied to it to avoid any JS errors in case a “child” JS file is loaded before a combined “parent” one.
• Option to minify inline content between from STYLE and SCRIPT (without any “src” attribute) tags
• Optimize minify CSS/JS feature to use less resource when dynamically generating the optimized (cached) files; Minification is performed via a new library (ref: https://www.minifier.org/)
• Option to choose between “Render-blocking” and “Asynchronous via Web Font Loader (webfont.js)” when loading the combined Google Font requests
• Bug Fix: Sometimes the dynamically created drop-down from “Hide all meta boxes for the following public post types” (in “Settings” -> “Plugin Usage Preferences”) via jQuery Chosen plugin was returning an empty (0px in width) selector

1.3.3.8

• Option to hide all meta boxes for specific post types (e.g. not queryable or do not have a public URL, making the assets list irrelevant)
• Bug Fix: In some servers, when preload feature is used and the HTML is not fully valid for DOMDocument, PHP errors were printing
• Extra compatibility with “Breeze – WordPress Cache Plugin”
• Do not trigger Asset CleanUp on Avada’s Fusion Builder Live: Edit Mode

1.3.3.7

• New Feature: Google Fonts Optimization: Option to preload Google Font Files
• New Feature: Enable preconnect resource hint for fonts.gstatic.com in case you use Google Fonts
• New Feature: Local Fonts Optimization: Option to preload Local Font Files
• New Feature: Strip LINKs that are made to Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com) without any “family” value (e.g. some themes/plugins allow to input the font family but don’t validate empty submits)
• Extra Compatibility with the latest version of SG Optimiser
• Bug Fix: Excluding CSS/JS files from combination was not working effectively if Minify CSS/JS was also applied to the asset

1.3.3.6

• New Feature: Google Fonts Optimization: Combine multiple font requests into fewer requests; Option to add “font-display” CSS property (PageSpeed Insights Reference: “Ensure text remains visible during webfont load”)

1.3.3.5

• New Option To Conveniently Site-Wide Unload Gutenberg CSS Library Block in “Settings” -> “Site-Wide Common Unloads”
• Better way to clear cached files as the system doesn’t just check the version number of the enqueued file, but also the contents of the file in case an update is made for a CSS/JS file on the server, and the developer(s) forgot to update the version number
• When CSS/JS caching is cleared, the previously cached assets older than (X) days (set in “Settings” -> “Plugin Usage Preferences”) are deleted from the server to free up space
• New Information was added to “Tools” -> “Storage Info” about the total number of cached assets and their total size
• Prevent specific already minified CSS files (based on their handle name) from various plugins from being minified again by Asset CleanUp (to save resources)
• Bug Fix: When the asset’s note was saved, any quotes from the text were saved with backslashes that kept increasing on every save action

1.3.3.4

• Preload CSS/JS Compatibility Update: If “WP Fastest Cache” is enabled with “Minify CSS” or “Minify JS” option, Asset CleanUp preloading works fine with the new (cached) URLs
• New Option in “Assets List Layout”: Sort assets by their preload status (preloaded or not)
• Bug Fix: Sometimes, the file writing permission constants were not loaded (e.g. FS_CHMOD_FILE)
• Bug Fix: Some transients where left in the database after a “Reset Everything” was performed causing confusing regarding the total number of unloaded assets
• Prevent Asset CleanUp from loading any of its rules when Gravity Forms are previewed

1.3.3.3

• New Feature: Option to preload CSS/JS files by ticking “Preload (if kept loaded)” checkbox for the corresponding file (More info: https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/audits/preload)
• Hide irrelevant Asset CleanUp MetaBoxes when custom post types from “Popup Maker” & “Popup Builder” plugins are edited

1.3.3.2

• Bug Fix: When pages were updated, jQuery Migrate and Comment Reply were loaded back (when they were marked for unloading)
• Bug Fix: Sometimes, WP Rocket caching was not fully cleared because of an Asset CleanUp hook that interfered with it

1.3.3.1

• Option to unload on all pages (site-wide) the Dashicons for non-logged-in users
• Load it on this page (exception) is preserved if chosen before any bulk unload
• Better accuracy in getting the total unloaded assets
• Used transient to store total unloaded assets from the SQL query (it’s slow on some servers)
• Improved “Plugin Review” notice to use fewer queries to determine if it will be shown or not
• On plugin activation, mark Checkout/Cart pages from WooCommerce & EDD to not apply plugin combine/minify options
• Minify/Combine CSS/JS files option from Asset CleanUp will be unavailable if Fast Velocity Minify is active
• Fixed undefined error related to ignoring “children” option
• Implemented WordPress File System for dealing with read/write cached CSS/JS files
• Improved “CSS/JS Load Manager” pages overview layout
• Disable oEmbeds Feature; Option to update “Assets List Layout” while managing the assets
• Added tip messages next to various handles
• Bug Fix: AJAX call for retrieving plugins’ icons was not working
• Updated Freemius SDK to 2.3.0

1.3.3.0

• Minify/Combine CSS/JS files option from Asset CleanUp will be unavailable if the same feature is used in other plugins (the list includes: Autoptimize, WP Rocket, WP Fastest Cache, W3 Total Cache, SG Optimizer) to save resources and potential conflicts
• Remove Shortlink – Addition: Clean it up from the HTTP header as well (not just within the HEAD section of the website)
• Do not trigger Asset CleanUp on Elementor & Divi Page Builders AJAX calls from the Edit Area; Only trigger fetching plugin icons from WordPress.org in specific situations (this is especially to save resources on some hosting environments such as the shared ones)

1.3.2.9

• New Feature: Enable Minify CSS/JS on the fly when admin is logged in (for debugging purposes) – via /?wpacu_css_minify
• Updated “Tools” -> “System Info”: Has database information related to the Asset CleanUp’s entries
• Option to override “administrator” (default) role, in order to acesss plugin’s pages
• Do not trigger Asset CleanUp on REST Requests, WPBakery Page Builder Edit Mode, Brizy Page Builder Edit Mode
• Avoid notice errors if some “SG Optimizer” features are enabled
• Minify CSS: Compatibility with “Simple Custom CSS” plugin
• Match sidebar and top bar menus; Allow unloading of CSS/JS on the fly (via URI request) for debugging purposes; Added coloured left border for assets that had their position changed to easily distinguish them
• New Feature: Ignore dependency rule and keep the “children” loaded
• New Feature: CSS/JS “Notes” (useful to remember why you have unloaded or decided to keep a specific file)
• Bug Fix: Posts’ Metas (e.g. load exceptions) were not imported
• Bug Fix: Make sure specific elements from “Site-Wide Common Unloads” are properly imported/exported

1.3.2.8

• “Import & Export” added under “Tools” For Settings & Load/Unload Rules
• “General & Files Management” -> “Assets List Layout” – 2 new options: Group by dependencies & Group by loaded/unloaded status
• Option to hide “Asset CleanUp” menu from the sidebar
• Minified CSS/JS Improvement: Do not replace the original source path with the minified one if the cache file was deleted via an external action (e.g. the “cache” directory was deleted via cPanel/FTPS)

1.3.2.7

• Bug Fix: array_key_first() didn’t have a fallback for PHP 5 causing plugin admin pages to disappear
• Do not trigger Asset CleanUp if either of the following page builders are in edit mode: “Thrive Architect”, “Page Builder by SiteOrigin” & “Beaver Builder”
• Code improvement; Hide meta boxes from Themify builder templates

1.3.2.6

• Prevent plugin from triggering any of its settings when page builders (e.g. Divi, Elementor, Beaver Builder, Oxygen, etc.) are in edit mode for maximum compatibility
• Compatibility with SG Optimizer plugin
• Option to prevent plugin to trigger any of its settings & unload rules on request via “wpacu_no_load” query string
• Do not minify CSS/JS from /wp-content/uploads/ (e.g. files belonging to Elementor or Oxygen page builder plugins)
• Added more things to “System Info” including settings and browser information
• Apply relative URLs for combined CSS/JS script/stylesheet tags, if URL opened is via SSL and the WordPress site URL starts with http://
• Bug Fix: Clear CSS/JS cache was returning a blank white page
• Bug Fix: Minify JS – Exceptions weren’t applied

1.3.2.5

• Bug Fix: 403 Forbidden error was returned when fetching assets within the Dashboard because of the wrong nonce check
• Option to show on request all the settings (no tabs) within “Settings” plugin’s area by appending ‘&wpacu_show_all’ to the URL like: /wp-admin/admin.php?page=wpassetcleanup_settings&wpacu_show_all

1.3.2.4

• “Manage in the Front-end?”: Add exceptions from printing the asset list when the URI contains specific strings (e.g. “et_fb=1” for Divi Visual Builder)
• Option to hide plugin’s meta boxes on edit post/page area within the Dashboard
• Make sure no irrelevant errors are written excessively to the server’s log printed via DOMDocument in case the HTML is not fully valid

1.3.2.3

• New Option in “Assets List Layout”: Sort by CSS/JS position (HEAD and BODY tags)
• New Feature: Strip HTML Comments
• Assets Meta Box update: Changed ‘advanced’ to ‘normal’ for $context parameter (e.g. Oxygen Builder 2.2 compatibility); added option to update the $content and $priority of the Asset CleanUp meta boxes via “add_filter” via the following tags (for each meta box): wpacu_asset_list_meta_box_context, wpacu_asset_list_meta_box_priority, wpacu_page_options_meta_box_context, wpacu_page_options_meta_box_priority
• Bug Fix: Settings update now trigger on ‘init’ rather than ‘plugins_loaded’ for maximum compatibility with all WP installs;
• Bug Fix: Make sure Emojis are always disabled when specified in the Settings and there is no DNS prefetch to //s.w.org
• Potential WooCommerce bug fix (is_woocomerce() returns true while is_cart() isn’t sometimes)
• Added video tutorials in the “Getting Started” area
• Removed HTML usage notice for Asset CleanUp

1.3.2.2

• Security Fix: Updated Freemius SDK to 2.2.4
• Bug Fix: Within the Dashboard, an error related to an undefined constant in Plugin.php was showing up

1.3.2.1

• Prevent AJAX calls from triggering to retrieve asset list when a new post/page is created as the CSS/JS files should only be fetched when after the post/page is published
• Improved the PHP code to use fewer resources on checking specific IF conditions
• Added introduction to the “Settings” area about how the plugin is working to give a clear understanding of what needs to be done to optimize the pages
• Bug Fix: Prevent CSS files containing “@import” from getting combined (they remain minified) to prevent breaking the layout
• Bug Fix: “Do not minify JS files on this page” checkbox from the side meta box (edit post/page area) wasn’t kept as selected after “Update” button was used
• Bug Fix: Avoid PHP notice errors in case arrays that do not always have specific keys are checked
• Security Fix: Updated Freemius SDK to its latest version

1.3.2

• Minify/Combine JS files & HEAD CleanUp features are now available in the Lite version

1.3.1

• CSS Files within BODY tag are also combined just like the ones from HEAD tag
• Offer the option to clear the CSS/JS caching even if CSS/JS Minify/Combine options were deactivated
• Bug Fix: Old links to the manage homepage page from the admin bar were updated with the new ones
• Bug Fix: On some WordPress setups, the path to the CSS background image URL after combination was updated incorrectly

1.3

• New Feature: Minify CSS
• Bug Fix: Make sure no 500 errors are returned on save settings or save post when the wrong caching directory is read

1.2.9.9

• Bug Fix: Side “Asset CleanUp: Options” meta box was not showing in the edit page/post within the Dashboard view

1.2.9.8

• New Feature: “Asset CleanUp: Options” side meta box showing options to disable plugin functionality for posts, pages, and custom post types; Ideal to use with the “Preview” feature if you wish to see how a page loads/looks before publishing any changes

1.2.9.7

• Bug Fix: Prevent fatal error from showing in PHP 5.4 when the plugin was updated
• Re-organised the plugin’s links within the Dashboard to make it easier to navigate through
• “Combine CSS files into one” feature update – CSS files having media=”print” or media=”only screen and (max-width: 768px)” (and so on) are not combined
• “Combine JS files into fewer ones” feature update – jQuery and jQuery Migrate are combined as a single group (not together with any other files); if just jQuery is loaded (without jQuery Migrate), it will not be added to any group and load independently

1.2.9.6

• Bug Fix: After post/page update, a fatal error was showing on calling a method that doesn’t exist

1.2.9.5

• Changed the way the combined loaded CSS files caching is stored (/wp-content/cache/asset-cleanup/); Transients are not used anymore to avoid having too many records in the options table
• Clear cache now keeps the old merge CSS files in the “cache/asset-cleanup” folder in case a cached page still makes reference to any of the files

1.2.9.4

• Bug Fix: If PHP version is lower than 7, an error is shown when fetching the plugins’ icons in the background to be shown on the management list (when sorted by the assets’ location)

1.2.9.3

• New sorting by location (default) option in “Assets List Layout” setting
• Cache transients are also cleared when resetting everything
• Changed plugin’s default settings (“Inline code associated with this handle” is contracted by default)

1.2.9.2

• WooCommerce & WP Rocket Compatibility – Bug Fix: When both WooCommerce and WP Rocket are active and an administrator user is logged in and tries to place an order, the “Sorry, your session is expired.” message is returned

1.2.9.1

• PHP 5.4+ minimum required to use the plugin
• “Combined Loaded CSS” feature (concatenates all the remaining loaded stylesheets within the HEAD section of the page and saves them into one file) to reduce HTTP requests even further
• Improved “Getting Started” area
• Made “Settings” as the default page where you (the administrator user) is redirected when activating the plugin for the first time

1.2.9

• Added “System Info” to “Tools” page to fetch information about the WordPress environment in case something needs debugging
• Added “Getting Started” page to make things easier for anyone who doesn’t understand how the plugin works

1.2.8.9

• Only trigger specific actions when necessary to avoid the use of extra server resources
• Make sure “ver” query string is stripped on request only for the front-end view; Avoid removing the license info from the database when resetting everything (unless the admin chooses to remove the license info too for a complete uninstall)
• Updated the way temporary data is stored (from $_SESSION to WordPress transient) for more effective use of server resources

1.2.8.8

• Option to clean any license data after everything is reset in case the Pro version was used before on the same website
• Removed “Opt In” option from the non-sensitive diagnostic tracking until it will get replaced with a smoother version

1.2.8.7

• Bug Fix: When settings are reset to their default values via “Tools”, make sure ‘jQuery Migrate’ and ‘Comment Reply’ are loading again if added in the bulk (site-wide) unload list (as by default they were not unloaded)

1.2.8.6

• Better support for WordPress 5.0 when updating a post/page within the Dashboard
• On new plugin installations, “Hide WordPress Core Files From The Assets List?” is enabled by default
• Added option for users to opt in to security and feature updates notifications, and non-sensitive diagnostic tracking
• Added “Tools” page which allows you to reset all settings or reset everything
• Bug Fix: Notice error was printing when there was no source file for specific handles that are loading inline code (e.g. woocommerce-inline)

1.2.8.5

• Option to hide WordPress core files from the management list to avoid applying settings to any of them by mistake (showing the core files for unload, async or defer are mostly useful for advanced developers in particular situations)
• Improved security of the pages by adding nonces everywhere there is an update button within the Dashboard related to the plugin
• Added confirmation message on top of the list in front-end view after an update is made (to avoid confusion whether the settings were updated or not)
• The height of an asset row (CSS or JavaScript) is now smaller as “Unload on this page” and bulk unloads (site-wide, by post type etc.) are placed on the same line if the screen width is large enough, convenient when going through a big list of assets

1.2.8.4

• Added “Input Fields Style” option in plugin’s “Settings” which would turn the fancy CSS3 iPhone-like checkboxes to standard HTML checkboxes (good for people with disabilities who use a screen reader software or personal preference)
• Added notification in the front-end view in case WP Rocket is enabled with “User Cache” enabled
• Option to have the “Inline code associated with the handle” contracted on request as it will reduce the length of the assets management page in case there are large blocks of text making it easier to scan through the assets list
• Tested the plugin for full compatibility with PHP 7.2 (5.3+ minimum required to use it)

1.2.8.3

• Added the logo on top of each admin page belonging to the plugin
• Changed plugin’s icon from the Dashboard left menu

1.2.8.2

• Added option to expand / contract “Styles” and “Scripts” management list and ability to choose the initial state on page load via plugin’s “Settings” page

1.2.8.1

• Added “Test Mode” option which will unload assets only if the user is logged in as administrator and has the capability of activating plugins.
• This is good for debugging in case one might worry that a CSS/JavaScript file could be unloaded by mistake and break the website for the regular (non-logged in) users.
• Once the page loads fine and all looks good, the “Test Mode” can be disabled so the visitors will load the lighter version of the page.

1.2.8

• Bug Fix: PHP code change to properly detect the singular pages had the wrong condition set

1.2.7.9

• Improved CSS styling for the assets list to avoid conflicts between other CSS rules from other themes and plugins

1.2.7.8

• PHP Code Improvement

1.2.7.7

• In case the assets can’t be retrieved via AJAX calls within the Dashboard, the user will be notified about it and any response errors (e.g. 500 Internal Errors) would be printed for debugging purposes
• Make the user aware that there could be also CSS files loaded from the WordPress core that should be unloaded only if the user is comfortable with that
• Improved “Help” page by adding more explanations about how to upgrade to the Pro version and how to seek professional help in case you’re stuck

1.2.7.6

• Bug Fix: “Everywhere” bulk unloads could not be removed from “Bulk Unloaded” page

1.2.7.5

• Bug Fix: When inline CSS code was attached to a handle, it would trigger an error and prevent the assets from printing in the back-end view

1.2.7.4

• Added “Feature Request” link
• Bug Fix: Sometimes scripts are loading on Dashboard view, but not showing on Front-end view
• Better detection for the home page especially if custom layouts are added like the one from “Extra” theme

1.2.7.3

• Made it more clear what bulk unloads are within the description of the options
• Added more extra options to the plugin’s settings that become available if a premium upgrade is made
• Updated banner preview from the WordPress plugin’s page

1.2.7.2

• Bug Fix: Sometimes, specific scripts were showing up on Dashboard view, but not showing on Front-end view
• Extra confirmation required when unloading site-wide “jQuery Migrate” and “Comment Reply” from the plugin’s settings (to avoid accidental unload)

1.2.7.1

• Removed “@” from printing in the output when using AJAX call to fetch the assets, to avoid conflict with Cloudflare’s email protection
• Replaced deprecated jQuery’s live() with on() to avoid JavaScript error on the front-end in case jQuery Migrate is disabled

1.2.7

• Removed iCheck and replaced with pure CSS to make the plugin lighter
• Added top menu for easier navigation between plugin’s pages;
• Added “Pages Info” with explanations regarding the type of pages that can be unloaded
• Removed “Lite” from the plugin’s title

1.2.6.9

• Made sure that default.php (new file) is not missing within /templates/meta-box-loaded-assets/ directory

1.2.6.8

• Important: If you use the premium extension, please upgrade to 1.0.3
• Removed “WP” from the plugin’s title
• Prevent the LITE plugin from loading if the PRO version is enabled as loading both plugins is not relevant anymore
• Avoided loading Asset CleanUp’s own CSS and JS within the Dashboard view as they are irrelevant since they’re only loaded for the admins that manage the plugin

1.2.6.7

• Bug Fix: “Unload on All Pages of [post type here] post type” was not showing within the Dashboard view

1.2.6.6

• Bug Fix: Assets were not retrieved within in the Dashboard for the home page

1.2.6.5

• Bug Fix: Fatal error “Can’t use method return value in write context” (for PHP versions < 5.5)

1.2.6.4

• Bug Fix: When editing a post/page within the Dashboard and the “Update” button was pressed before the “WP Asset CleanUp” meta box was loading, it sent an empty unloaded list to the plugin and it deleted the current settings for that particular post/page

1.2.6.3

• Bug Fix: On some environments, a fatal error shows when activating the plugin (the issue was posted on the support and the ticket solved)

1.2.6.2

• Added “Disable jQuery Migrate Site-Wide?” and “Disable Comment Reply Site-Wide?” (which belong to WordPress core files and often are not used in a WordPress website) to “Settings” page for the convenience of the user
• Bug Fix: jQuery Migrate can be properly unloaded now without affecting the load of jQuery

1.2.6.1

• Bug Fix for PHP versions lower than 5.6 – Menu.php triggered a PHP warning as PHP constants were not allowed in class constants

1.2.6

• New Feature: Disable Emojis Site-Wide
• Hide “WP Asset Clean Up” menu if the logged in user doesn’t have ‘manage_options’ capabilities (technically, it’s just for administrators)

1.2.5.3

• Bug Fix: PHP Warning when array was passed to json_decode(), instead of string

1.2.5.2

• Bug Fix: Unload on All Pages of [post_type_here] post type wasn’t keeping previous records when choosing new values to unload

1.2.5.1

• Bug Fix: Better accuracy for determining the current post ID and whether the page is the home page

1.2.5

• Bug Fix: Remove JavaScript error from window.btoa() in case the page contains non-latin characters
• Added “Get Help” page within the plugin’s menu to anyone interested in hiring me or any of my colleagues for professional help related to the plugin or any other WordPress task

1.2.4.4

• Updated AJAX calls to work fine within the Dashboard even if mod_security Apache module is enabled as there were some problems on specific servers
• Added “Unload on this page” text next to the first checkbox to explain its purpose better
• Added “WP Remote Post” method to retrieve assets (in case the default “Direct” method doesn’t work)
• Enable/disable asset list loading within the Dashboard (in case one prefers to only have it within the front-end)

1.2.4.3

• Bug Fix: PHP versions < 5.4 triggered errors

1.2.4.2

• Now styles that are loaded in the BODY section of the page are unloaded (if selected); Sometimes, in special cases, within “wp_footer” action (or other similar one such as “get_footer”), wp_enqueue_style is called

1.2.4.1

• Bug Fix: When the handle’s key on update was equal with 0 (for remove global unload), the rule would not be remove *

1.2.4

• Bug Fix: Remove “Unload everywhere” rule had to be updated to work no matter what key is assigned to the handle in the array resulting from the JSON

1.2.3

• Assets can now be disabled for all the pages belonging to a specific post type
• The list of assets disabled globally (everywhere, for a specific post type etc.) can be managed in a single page too

1.2.2

• Bug Fix: Sometimes scripts in the footer were not detected for unloading

1.2.1

• Bug Fix: Sometimes the assets exceptions list (when disabled globally) for the homepage is not loaded from the right source

1.2

• Disable assets site-wide
• Add exceptions on pages where assets should load (if they are disabled everywhere)
• Bug Fix: Sometimes, due to website caching services/plugins, the HTML comments are removed needed from getting the assets

1.1.4.6

• Now the asset list can be updated on the front-end (below the loaded page, post, front page) if the feature is enabled in the “Settings”
• The assets URL is now clickable and loads the CSS/JS file in a new tab

1.1.4.5

• Some assets containing specific ASCII characters in the URL were not shown. This is solved now and they will show fine in the list.
• A warning icon is shown next to each script that is part of WordPress core. Also, a message on the top of the list warns the user about the risks of unloading core files

1.1.4.4

• If the Dashboard is accessed through HTTPS, then the AJAX call to the front-end must be through HTTPS too – otherwise the call gets blocked and the assets list will not show (loading message will appear and confuse user)

1.1.4.3

• Improved code to not show any PHP errors in case WP_DEBUG constant is set to ‘true’

1.1.4.2

• Prevent JavaScript errors from showing in the background and interfere with the functionality of other plugins in case script.min.js is loaded in pages where the plugin is not needed

1.1.4.1

• Prevent any calls to be made for non-published posts/pages as the list of assets is relevant only after the post is published and all assets (from plugins and the themes) are properly loaded on that post/page

1.1.4

• Bug fix that prevented the AJAX calls from triggering on specific WordPress settings

1.1.3

• Improved the code and made sure that the actual URL being fetch is shown to avoid confusion

1.1.2

• Fixed a bug that wasn’t loading the iCheck jQuery plugin all the time when it was needed
• Better check if PHP version is 5.3+ (notification is shown only in the Dashboard and the plugin does not load in the front-end)

1.1

• Remove assets from loading in public custom post types too besides the basic ‘post’ and ‘page’ ones
• Remove assets from loading in home page as well if “Front page displays” is set to “Your latest posts” in “Settings” -> “Reading”
• The plugin uses is_front_page() function to determine where the visitor is on your website

1.0

• Initial Release