Description
Hummingbird makes your website faster and optimizes site performance by adding new ways to boost Google PageSpeed Insights with fine-tuned controls over file compression, deferring CSS and JavaScript styles and scripts, minify for CSS and JS, Lazy Load integration, and world-class caching.
Hummingbird is brought to you by the WordPress speed specialists that created Smush image optimization, now active on more than +1 million websites. Get the complete speed boost with Hummingbird and Smush.
If PageSpeed Insights is making these speed recommendations Hummingbird can help:
- Enable text compression – Use gzip to make your site fly.
- Preconnect to required origins – Use Hummingbird to establish earlier connections.
- Preload key requests – Prioritize resources based on order.
- Avoid enormous network payloads – Consider Lazy Load for comments or breaking up smaller posts.
- Use efficient cache – The Hummingbird Cache suite offers effective browser cache for caching any site.
- Fix your JavaScript execution time – Deliver smaller JS payloads, preload JS, and defer JS.
- Minify CSS – Strip unused code from your CSS.
- Minify JavaScript – Speed up the time it takes to parse your JS files.
- Eliminate render-blocking resources – Move critical CSS and JS inline and defer all non-critical JS/CSS.
- Defer unused CSS – Defer the loading of CSS not used for above-the-fold content.
- Lazy Load offscreen images (Smush free integration).
Hummingbird scans your site and provides one-click fixes to speed up WordPress in a flash.
You’ll get faster loading pages, higher search rankings (SERP) and PageSpeed scores, and happier visitors with Hummingbird’s WordPress speed optimization. Optimizing the speed of your site has never been easier!
Features Available in Hummingbird Include:
- Scan and Fix – Get a scan of your site, find out what’s slowing it down, and use one-click performance improvements to make critical speed improvements.
- World-class caching – A full caching suite to load pages faster with full-page, Gravatar, and browser cache tool.
- Performance Reports – Pro tips for running your site at super speed.
- Asset Optimization – Position, minify and combine Javascript, CSS, and Google Font files for top performance.
- Better Rankings – Improve scores on Google PageSpeed Insights (SEO ranking factor), YSlow, Pingdom, and GTmetrix.
- Increase Your Conversion Rate – Don’t keep visitors waiting: faster sites convert better.
- GZIP Compression – Blazing-fast HTML, JavaScript, and stylesheet (CSS) transfer.
- Configs – Set your preferred performance settings, save them as config, and instantly upload to any other site.
Learn The Ropes With These Hands-On Hummingbird Tutorials
- How To Optimize WordPress For Speed With Hummingbird
- How To Optimize Elementor for Free Using Smush and Hummingbird
- How To Optimize WPBakery Sites Using Smush And Hummingbird
- Speed Up and Optimize Avada for Free Using Smush and Hummingbird
- Optimize Divi for Free Using Smush and Hummingbird
Hummingbird Features to Speed Up WordPress
Scan and One-Click Fix
Hummingbird is a WordPress speed optimization plugin. It will scan your site, find files that are slowing it down, and provide tips and fixes for making your site run at top speed.
Hummingbird even has one-click improvements like a full cache suite, one-click minify for styles and scripts, and deferring CSS and JS for quickly optimizing performance. What could be easier!
World-Class Caching
You’ll get a world-class caching suite, including full-page, browser, and Gravatar cache.
Make your site load even faster with Hummingbird’s complete set of cache tools that give your visitors a faster browsing experience. Including full-page, browser and Gravatar caching.
Asset Optimization
Did you know that the more files you add to your site’s header, the slower it will load? With Hummingbird, you can easily customize the load position of your CSS, JavaScript (defer CSS and Javascript), Google Fonts, and other files to increase your page speed.
Quickly reorder, compress, and reposition files with Hummingbird’s minification feature. But play carefully – minification is a powerful tool (though if you need it, you can reset any changes you make in one click).
Transfer Data at Top Speed With GZIP
Hummingbird has GZIP powers to make sharing your site more efficient.
Sending zipped files is faster and can save you money on hosting. And don’t worry about setup, send Hummingbird instructions with the click of a button and she’ll handle the rest.
Built-in Cloudflare Integration
Hummingbird can be used to control your Cloudflare browser cache and Automatic Platform Optimizations (APO) settings as well! Simply add your Cloudflare API key and configure away.
Fully Compatible With Smush Image Optimization
You can complement Hummingbird’s WordPress speed optimization features with our award-winning sister-plugin Smush image optimization. Smush compresses your images, giving your site less to load – and thus a faster load time. Hummingbird + Smush integrate perfectly together, and are the perfect match to speed up WordPress.
Compress, optimize (optimise), and fix PageSpeed performance with properly sized images, lazy load, next-gen WebP convert, image formatting, and more.
Save time with Hummingbird Configs
Configs allow you to save your prefered Hummingbird configuration settings and apply them to your other sites in a few clicks. You can create unlimited configs.
Faster Websites Rank Higher, Convert Better
Every millisecond counts: your visitors expect an ever-faster website, with a page load time of under two seconds expected – and the norm. If visitors don’t get that on your site, they will leave.
If you’re running a business website or eCommerce store, that means if your website does not load quickly, you will lose sales.
Hummingbird is here to help you; it’s a one of a kind WordPress performance optimization plugin that can make your site run at superspeed, for free!
You get our WordPress performance optimization suite, which includes minification and GZIP for small page sizes, full caching for faster loading, and integration with Cloudflare’s APO / browser cache, and our sister-plugin Smush image optimization.
Hummingbird is built with ease-of-use in mind; it makes your WordPress site faster, but it’s also fast to set up. You can scan your site and implement recommended changes in one-click, getting a fast site in mere minutes.
All the above is free and will speed up WordPress for you. If you need the very fastest WordPress site, you should get a WPMU DEV Membership.
Our Membership gives you access to Hummingbird Pro – which features automated scanning, uptime monitoring, enhanced minify compression (with 2x the regular optimization), CDN hosted minification – alongside Smush Pro image optimization, all our premium WordPress plugins, and 24/7 WordPress support.
It’s an incredible deal, and you can find out more here.
What do People say About Hummingbird?
★★★★★
“Hummingbird is so easy to use. I thought it wouldn’t change my speed much because I already made improvements. I ran the scan, it gave me recommendations, I pushed a button to apply them and it made my site even faster!” – Camilo
★★★★★
“Hummingbird is getting smarter with each update. Today it’s become so good that it forced me to remove giant cache and optimization plugins like WP Super Cache and WP Sweep because now Hummingbird includes all those features – but in a more impressive way.” – swagatam1975
★★★★★
“Hummingbird took me from 32 to 84 on Google page speed plus made my site 50% faster on GTmetrix!” – Nicolas
★★★★★
“I just built a real bloated sack of crap of a WP site, and after configuring Hummingbird and letting it do its thing, the site is actually fast — much faster than it has any right to be…I’m impressed.” – Cacarr
A Note From Hummingbird
Hey! This is Hummingbird, your trusted solution to speed up WordPress. I’m part of the WPMU DEV team, a superhero-suite of WordPress plugins, services, and support. Here are some of our other free plugins:
- Smush – Image Compression and Optimization
- Forminator – Form, Quiz, Poll and Survey Builder
- Hustle – Pop-ups, Slide-ins and Email Opt-ins
And if you need ALL our Pro plugins AND 24/7 WordPress support, get WPMU DEV membership! You can try it for free: wpmudev.com
My superhero friends run the WPMU DEV Blog, your source for the very best WordPress tutorials. If you need to be in the know about WordPress, check it out.
Thanks for looking at Hummingbird, and I look forward to flying through your site to make it faster than ever.
Enjoy, The Hummingbird
About Us
WPMU DEV is a premium supplier of quality WordPress plugins, services and support. Join us here:
https://wpmudev.com/
Don’t forget to stay up to date on everything WordPress from the Internet’s number one resource:
WPMU DEV Blog
Hey, one more thing… we hope you enjoy our free offerings as much as we’ve loved making them for you!
Screenshots
FAQ
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Do I need Hummingbird if I already have caching like WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache?
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Yes! Of course, our cache suite is more than enough, but if you already use WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache, the special monitoring tools Hummingbird offers still make it worth it. To ensure compatibility, only activate overlapping features in one of the plugins.
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Does Hummingbird work with Cloudflare?
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Yes! Hummingbird is built to take full advantage of Cloudflare features. Just plug in your API to get started.
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Does Hummingbird work with WooCommerce?
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Yes! Hummingbird works great with ecommerce plugins like WooCommerce and MarketPress. For best results, when configuring full-page cache, follow the WooCommerce recommended cache settings. Hummingbird will exclude the cart, my account and checkout pages to keep content dynamic.
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Why is my WordPress slow?
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There are plenty of factors involved in why you’d have WordPress slow. Hummingbird’s scanning and one-click fixes can work out why your site is slow, and with one click, speed up WordPress for you. Easy peasy!
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What’s the difference between Hummingbird and Hummingbird Pro?
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The free Hummingbird plugin is a powerful suite of WordPress speed optimization features! You can deliver big improvements in your page speed in mere minutes using our one-click implementation of recommended fixes. Some of the reviews above show you the results you can get.
Hummingbird Pro is available as part of the WPMU DEV Membership, and adds automated scanning, uptime monitoring, enhanced minify compression (with 2x the regular optimization), and CDN hosted minification. This will make your site even faster.
Membership also gets you all our premium WordPress plugins, including Smush Pro, for the very best image optimization with image resizing, lazy load, and next-gen WebP convert, and 24/7 WordPress support. Hummingbird is a great free plugin, and Hummingbird Pro is even better. You can find out more here.
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Somebody help! I turned on Asset Optimization and it broke my site!?
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Asset Optimization is a great way to speed up your site but moving, combining, using minify, and rearranging CSS and JavaScript (.JS) files can also mess with styling and break functionality. We recommend making incremental changes and testing your site as you go so you can undo the changes if something breaks. And remember, don’t panic. If something goes wrong you can start over with the click of a button 🙂
Reviews
Contributors & Developers
“Hummingbird – Optimize Speed, Enable Cache, Minify CSS & Defer Critical JS” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors“Hummingbird – Optimize Speed, Enable Cache, Minify CSS & Defer Critical JS” has been translated into 16 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
3.1.1 ( 2021-09-07 )
- New: Import/export of asset optimization settings on network subsites
- Enhance: Page caching warnings and errors
- Enhance: Compatibility with PHP 8.1
- Fix: PHP warning in Asset Optimization module
- Fix: Error with [object Object] in Gzip module
- Fix: Page cache status when disabling the plugin on the network
- Fix: Preload key requests audit in performance test
- Fix: Performance scans not always starting in Firefox
- Fix: Cloudflare integration not detecting mapped domains on subsites
- Fix: Cloudflare modal not properly closing
- Fix: Overlapping tooltips on Asset optimization page
3.1.0 ( 2021-07-20 )
- New: Asset optimization preload option
- New: Asset optimization async option for external assets
- New: Add prefix to Redis cache via the WP_REDIS_SALT define (possible to store cache for multiple sites in a single database)
- New: DNS prefetch for asset optimization CDN
- New: Filter relevant audits in the performance test
- New: Connect to Cloudflare via API token
- Enhance: Allow setting crossorigin attribute for preconnect resources
- Enhance: Performance test score metrics weights (inline with latest Lighthouse changes)
- Enhance: Performance test tooltips
- Enhance: Make sure logging is active only when both WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG are set
- Enhance: Set the cache by device type option in Cloudflare APO for new installs
- Enhance: White labeling support
- Enhance: Processing of configs from other plugins
- Fix: Do not preconnect to Google fonts servers if no fonts are being optimized
- Fix: Broken purchase link in Cloudflare APO integration
- Fix: Page cache module not always showing on subsites
- Fix: Redis not connecting to external servers via hostname
- Fix: PHP warnings for undefined index original_size
- Fix: PHP warnings when doing performance scans from Dashboard
- Fix: PHP warnings array_filter() expects parameter 1 to be array
- Fix: Saving/applying settings via configs for Page Caching module on network installs
3.0.1 ( 2021-06-17 )
- New: Configs
- New: Define for controlling Redis exclusion groups
- New: Allow adding admin bar shortcuts for purging various caches
- Enhance: Move admin bar cache controls settings to the Settings – General page
- Enhance: Performance test informative audits UI
- Fix: Dashboard and Gzip compression module layout issues on mobile devices
- Fix: White pages when page cache is removed without header files
- Fix: Asset optimization empty debug link on subsites
- Fix: Documentation links
- Fix: Skip performance test button styles
- Fix: Skipping performance tests on subsites
3.0.0 ( 2021-05-19 )
- New: Performance reports (synced with latest Lighthouse API)
- New: Cloudflare automatic platform optimization (APO) integration
- New: Cloudflare integration for subsites
- New: Asset optimization font preloading
- New: Allow customizing page cache file names with a wphb_cache_* cookie
- New: Preconnect option
- Enhance: Asset optimization asset action tooltips
- Enhance: UX in Redis integration
- Enhance: Asset optimization and page cache compatibility
- Fix: Asset optimization settings reset
- Fix: Asset optimization UI inconsistencies
- Fix: Clear cache notice on network subsites
- Fix: Select element styles on reporting screens
- Fix: Overwriting network admin settings in advanced tools
- Fix: Page cache clearing taking too long during post edit
- Fix: Cloudflare browser caching settings not syncing with Hub
2.7.3 ( 2021-04-12 )
- New: Tutorials module
- New: LiteSpeed instructions for Browser Caching module
- Enhance: Update the Plugin Health module UI/UX
- Enhance: REST API endpoints now require at least edit_posts capability
- Enhance: Uptime reporting description
- Enhance: Improve export/import description
- Enhance: CSS above the fold description
- Enhance: Privacy mode detection in GZIP compression module
- Enhance: Asset Optimization UI/UX
- Enhance: Asset Optimization processing of compressed assets
- Enhance: Asset Optimization switching between modes
- Enhance: Support for RGBA when optimizing CSS files
- Enhance: Fallback to siteurl if HTTP_HOST is not defined when clearing cache
- Fix: Recursive loops in Page Caching preloader
- Fix: Asset Optimization not rewriting relative paths for inlined assets
- Fix: Remove unused expiry time option for IIS servers in browser caching module
- Fix: Page caching not properly detecting Asset Optimization CDN status
- Fix: Page caching clearing all cache when static page is set as home page
- Fix: Selects overlapping other DOM elements
- Fix: PHP notice when re-checking browser caching status
- Fix: PHP notice for undefined index db_frequency
- Fix: Performance test notices on mobile
2.7.2 ( 2021-02-25 )
- New: Redis support for unix sockets
- New: Select database for Redis integration
- New: Add support for WOFF2 fonts in Browser Caching module
- New: Support for LiteSpeed server in Browser Caching module
- New: Clear Cloudflare cache from admin bar
- Enhance: Asset Optimization notifications
- Enhance: Asset Optimization support for RTL assets
- Enhance: Integration with Varnish cache
- Fix: Asset Optimization combining assets on Basic mode
- Fix: Asset Optimization not being able to inline remote assets in rare cases
- Fix: Asset Optimization duplicating inline scripts during processing
- Fix: Asset Optimization improve handling of core WordPress scripts
- Fix: Asset Optimization compatibility with Oxygen builder
- Fix: Asset Optimization compatibility with Bimber theme
- Fix: Browser Caching module overwriting individual expiry values
- Fix: High contrast icons in Asset Optimization module
- Fix: 500 server error when clearing Varnish cache from the dashboard
- Fix: Tabs navigation on mobile devices
2.7.1 ( 2021-01-18 )
- New: Integration with ACF – page cache will be auto purged on changes in ACF options
- New: Select what cache to clear from the dashboard page
- Enhance: PHP 8.0 compatibility
- Enhance: Asset Optimization handling expired assets
- Enhance: Allow hiding Asset Optimization modals
- Enhance: Remove unused assets from plugin package
- Enhance: Plugin health module descriptions
- Enhance: Performance in wp-admin
- Enhance: jQuery 3 compatibility
- Enhance: Compatibility with object cache
- Fix: Cloudflare integration breaking Gzip server value on the Hub
- Fix: Compatibility issues with Themeco Pro theme page builder
- Fix: Asset Optimization not respecting order for some inlined assets
- Fix: Do not auto enable Asset Optimization on new subsites in a network
- Fix: Disable Asset Optimization on login pages
- Fix: Cloudflare integration wizard UI
- Fix: Cloudflare re-check status returning incorrect values
- Fix: Browser cache returning false status
- Fix: Page caching status on subsites
- Fix: Notices on image optimization meta box on the dashboard page
- Fix: Toggling page caching module from Hub
2.7.0 ( 2020-11-12 )
- New: Site Health module
- New: Clear page cache for all subsites from network admin
- Enhance: Asset Optimization on WPMU DEV hosting staging
- Enhance: Asset Optimization “How does it work?” section
- Enhance: Gzip configuration UI/UX
- Enhance: White labelling support
- Enhance: Nginx instructions for browser caching and gzip compression
- Fix: Rare instance of fatal PHP error in Page Caching module in multisite
- Fix: Database cleanup removing drafts that are not from WordPress posts/pages
- Fix: Cloudflare configuration wizard
- Fix: Upgrade page buttons hover state
- Fix: Elements with non-unique IDs in Asset Optimization module