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PhastPress

By Albert Peschar

Performance & Optimization / Caching Solutions

PhastPress Review - In-Depth Analysis

PhastPress optimizes your site for improved performance using advanced techniques.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

6.88/10

User Rating

4.9/5 (based on 99+ reviews)

Active Installations

10,000+

Update Frequency

Excellent It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

1 / 10 (Very Low Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

PhastPress uses advanced techniques to manipulate your pages, scripts, stylesheets and images to significantly improve load times. It is designed to conform to Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix recommendations and can improve your site's score dramatically.

PhastPress' motto is no configuration. Install, activate and go!

PhastPress has the Phast web page optimisation engine by Albert Peschar and Milko Kosturkov at its core.

Phast optimizes images using PNG quantization and JPEG recoding. It inlines small images in the page and converts JPEG images into WebP for supporting browsers. Phast enables native lazy loading to speed up page loading and save bandwidth.

Phast loads all scripts on your page asynchronously and in a single request, while maintaining full compatibility with legacy scripts. It proxies external scripts to extend their cache lifetime and inlines critical CSS automatically. Phast loads non-critical CSS asynchronously and in a single request, inlines Google Fonts CSS, and lazily loads IFrames to prioritize the main page load.

Get the full power of Phast for your website by installing PhastPress now.

Comparing to Alternatives

PhastPress stands out among WordPress speed optimization plugins by focusing on simplicity and effective static asset optimization. Compared to other popular plugins, it offers a streamlined approach with strong performance improvements.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Simple and easy to set up with minimal configuration.
Effectively reduces the number of HTTP requests and optimizes static assets.
Responsive developer support with quick issue resolution.
Compatible with many popular plugins and themes.
Improves PageSpeed scores noticeably, especially on non-LightSpeed servers.

Weaknesses

Lacks advanced exclusion options for JavaScript assets.
May cause CSS optimization errors initially for some users.
Fewer features compared to some all-in-one optimization suites.
Limited documentation compared to more established plugins.

User Sentiment Analysis

User feedback highlights PhastPress as a powerful yet straightforward optimization tool with excellent support, though some desire more granular control.

Positive highlights

"Very simple and powerful." - andrebeltrame
"PhastPress is better than all of them, and it’s free." - jake79
"Quick support and effective optimization." - johns1951
"Works great with Elementor and WooCommerce." - Toine Rademacher
"Best for static asset optimization on Nginx/Apache." - iontulburedev

Common complaints

Lack of option to exclude certain JavaScript files.
Initial CSS optimization errors for some users.
Limited advanced customization features.
Not as feature-rich as some premium plugins.

Weaknesses

Needs better JavaScript exclusion controls.
Could improve documentation and user guidance.
Some users report minor compatibility issues initially.
Advanced users may find features limited.

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Users seeking a straightforward, effective, and free plugin to optimize static assets and improve page speed without complex setup.

Not ideal for

Users needing advanced customization options, such as selective JavaScript exclusions, or those wanting a comprehensive all-in-one optimization suite.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version offers powerful static asset optimization, reducing HTTP requests and improving page speed scores with simple setup.

Pro version

The premium version typically includes advanced features such as more granular control over asset optimization, priority support, and additional performance enhancements.

Final Verdict

PhastPress is an excellent choice for WordPress users who want a simple yet effective plugin to boost site speed, especially for static asset optimization. Its ease of use and responsive support make it accessible for beginners and effective for experienced users.

While it lacks some advanced features found in other plugins, its free version delivers significant performance improvements. Users requiring more control can consider the pro version or alternative plugins with broader feature sets.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free PhastPress plugin.

Optimisation

Optimization

Page Speed

Pagespeed Insights

Speed

FAQ

No. You do not need any other plugins, such as image optimization (e.g., Smush) or file minification (e.g., Autoptimize) after you install PhastPress, because PhastPress includes all necessary optimizations.

I recommend using the simple combination of PhastPress and WP Super Cache only. This reduces the potential for plugin conflicts, and it is really all you need.

Fast Velocity Minify is not compatible with PhastPress, and causes PhastPress not to work. Please use either plugin, but not both.

Should you need to disable PhastPress on certain pages, you can use the following code to do so:

add_filter('phastpress_disable', '__return_true');

Make sure that this code runs during template_redirect or earlier.

Add this code to your theme’s functions.php, or to a new file in wp-content/mu-plugins:

add_filter('phastpress_disable', function ($disable) {     return $disable || is_cart() || is_checkout(); });

By default, PhastPress delays the load of all scripts until after the DOM has finished loading, so that the browser can render the page as quickly as possible. If you wish to load specific scripts as soon as possible, such as Google Analytics, you may add the data-phast-no-defer attribute to the script. It would be preferable to also mark external scripts as async, when possible.

For example:

<script data-phast-no-defer> // my script goes here </script>

Or:

<script async data-phast-no-defer src="http://url.to.my.script/"></script>

If you (or a plugin) are using wp_enqueue_script to add the script to the page, you can use the phast_no_defer data key to stop PhastPress from processing the script:

wp_script_add_data('my_script_name', 'phast_no_defer', true);

Make sure this is run after registering the script. If you are trying to apply this to a script loaded by a plugin, you could use the wp_print_scripts hook:

add_action('wp_print_scripts', function () {     wp_script_add_data('my_script_name', 'phast_no_defer', true); });

If you use the HTML source code to find the script name, note that -js and -js-extra are not part of the name. For example, for a script like <script id="jquery-core-js"> in the source code, the script name is jquery-core, and that is what you should pass to wp_script_add_data.

This is applied automatically for these scripts:

Google Analytics script inserted by Monsterinsights since PhastPress 1.29.
Tracking script inserted by Slimstat Analytics since PhastPress 1.30.
Google Analytics script inserted by Google Site Kit since PhastPress 1.75.
Google Analytics script inserted by GA Google Analytics since PhastPress 1.76.

Your theme or a plugin is trying to send HTTP headers after the page has started rendering and bytes have been sent to the browser. This is wrong, but it works when PHP output buffering is enabled.

PhastPress always sends output as soon as possible, to reduce the time to first byte. That means this problem cannot be fixed without slowing down sites without buggy themes/plugins.

To fix the problem on your site, the following code needs to be run in order to enable output buffering:

<?php add_action('template_redirect', function () {     ob_start(); });

You can add this code to your theme’s functions.php, or create a file output-buffer.php in wp-content/mu-plugins with the above code. You may have to create this directory first.

Alternatively, download output-buffer.zip and extract the contents into your web folder. You should end up with a file named output-buffer.php in wp-content/mu-plugins.

Yes. Add these two lines to your .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f RewriteRule ^wp-content/.*[^/]\.(jpe?g|gif|png)$ wp-content/plugins/phastpress/phast.php [L,NC,E=PHAST_SERVICE:images]

Then in PhastPress settings, disable image optimization in tags and CSS.

Now, reload your site and check if images are optimized.

Yes, as long as you use a CSP with a script-src policy containing nonce-*. To enable Phast’s support for CSP implement the phastpress_csp_nonce filter:

<?php add_filter('phastpress_csp_nonce', function () {     return 'my-nonce'; });

Contributors and developers

“PhastPress” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Albert Peschar

Pro version Free Version

WPS

6.88

Average

Pro version

Ratings

4.9 out of 5 | 99

Version

3.9

Last updated

3 months ago

Active installations

10,000+

WordPress version

6.8.5 or higher

PHP version

7.3 or higher

Languages

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PhastPress Review - In-Depth Analysis

Performance Overview

What It Does

Comparing to Alternatives

User Sentiment Analysis

Who Should Use This?

Pricing & Value

Final Verdict

Other Notable Features

FAQ

Contributors and developers

Ratings

Reviews (99)

Sort by:

Contributors & Developers

Interested in development?

Changelog

Security Status

Secure

No Unpatched Vulnerabilities

Known Vulnerabilities (2)

WPS

6.88

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