We Tested 3 WordPress Minify Plugins Our Results

Minification is a popular way to optimize your WordPress website. There are plenty of WordPress minify plugins to help you do this, but its hard to know which ones provide the best results without testing them first – which can get messy.To save you some time and effort, we decided to test a few of our top picks and provide you with the results, so youll know which popular minification plugins live up to their reputation.In this article, well talk about what minification is and how it can benefit your site. Then well compare three of our favorite WordPress minify plugins to help you pick the best one. Lets get started! real security benefit beyond a little bit of obfuscation, though.Minifying your code is unlikely to make a  massive difference in your WordPress sites page load times.  But it is a small optimization strategy that can cut your page load times by a couple of percentage points, which makes it a worthy tactic to implement.Three WordPress minify plugins compared If youd like to minify your websites code, there are plenty of plugins that can help you out. As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, the best way to know how efficient these plugins are is to test them. To that end, we set up a test WordPress website that runs four relatively complex plugins – WooCommerce, Yoast SEO, Smush Image Compression and Optimization, and Loginizer.Before minifying any of its scripts, our test sites home page had a size of 311.6 KB, and it took 0.61 seconds to load (according to Pingdom Tools):Throughout the next few sections, well try out some top WordPress minify plugins and share our results with you. Between each test, well restore our website to its initial state from a backup for accuracys sake. Of course, keep in mind that your own results may vary, and larger sites will likely see more significant improvements.1. Autoptimize (Free) Autoptimize Author(s): Frank Goossens (futtta)Current Version: 2.5.1Last Updated: September 11, 2019 autoptimize.2.5.1.zip 94%Ratings 8,117,091Downloads WP 4.0+Requires Autoptimize is one of the most popular WordPress minify plugins around. Along with minifying your scripts, it can also bundle them together, cache them, and even set them to load later, in order to further optimize your websites performance.Testing the Autoptimize pluginUsing this particular plugin is remarkably simple. Just install and activate it, then go to the  Settings → Autoptimize  tab on your dashboard. Inside, youll find options to optimize your HTML, JavaScript, and CSS:For this test, we enabled all three options and saved our changes. Then, we checked out our loading times:Using this plugin, we cut down our home pages size to 297.8 KB, and our loading time decreased accordingly to 0.58 seconds. This is a small but still noticeable difference.2. Fast Velocity Minify (Free) Fast Velocity Minify Author(s): Raul PeixotoCurrent Version: 2.7.7Last Updated: October 14, 2019fast-velocity-minify .2.7.7.zip 94%Ratings 1,495,580Downloads WP 4.7+Requires Fast Velocity Minify combines your CSS and JavaScript files, so your servers have to deal with fewer requests. At the same time, it also minifies them and creates cached copies for faster loading times.Testing the Fast Velocity Minify pluginUnlike our previous entry, this plugin automatically enables the options to minify your HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. However, you  can  disable one or more of them manually by going into the  Settings → Fast Velocity Minify  tab:Moreover, you can exclude specific files from being minified if youd like.As far as performance goes, here are our results after activating this plugin and minifying all possible files:Our homepages size came down from 311.5 to 291.3 KB, and it loaded in a mere 0.55 seconds. This is a bit better than Autoptimizes results, although ultimately comparable.3. Merge + Minify + Refresh (Free) Merge + Minify + Refresh Author(s): Launch InteractiveCurre nt Version: 1.8.12Last Updated: December 20, 2018merge-minify-refresh.zip 84%Ratings 162,519Downloads 3.6.1Requires As you can imagine from its name, Merge + Minify + Refresh  works its magic by combining your CSS and JavaScript files and minifying them. It also caches them so your server doesnt have to repeat the entire loading process each time theyre requested, and  it automatically updates everything when you make changes to those files.Testing the Merge + Minify + Refresh  pluginJust like our previous pick, this plugin automatically enables minification for your JavaScript and CSS. However, it doesnt include an option to optimize your HTML.There are also fewer customization options here than for Fast Velocity Minify, but still more than what Autoptimize offers. For example, you can exclude files from the minification process, and even enable Gzip encoding for better results:After activating this plugin, we tested our home pages loading times once more:Our file size c ame down to 300.3 KB, and the page loaded in 0.58 seconds. Overall, this is a smaller improvement in overall size than we saw with the previous two plugins, but is similar to Autoptimize when it comes to performance.A summary of our findingsOverall, the results we found during our tests were in line with our expectations. Each plugin delivered a small increase in performance, but nothing out of the ordinary:3 top WordPress minify plugins tested and comparedAutoptimizeFast Velocity MinifyMerge + Minify + RefreshOriginal page size (in KB)311.6311.6311.6Original loading time (in seconds)0.610.610.61Post-minification page size (in KB)297.8 (-4.43%)291.3 (-6.52%)300.3 (-3.63%)Post-minification loading time (in seconds)0.58 (-4.92%)0.55 (-9.84%)0.58 (-4.92%)Additional settings availableNoYesYesThe top plugin, in this case, turned out to be Fast Velocity Minify. Not only did it get the best results, but it also offers far more settings than its competitors, which makes it ideal for power u sers.On the other hand, if youre looking for an easy-to-use plugin, you cant go wrong with Autoptimize. Its results were almost as good as Fast Velocity Minifys, and it only requires you to enable a few settings to get going. Finally, Merge + Minify + Refresh wasnt a disappointment when it came to results, but could benefit from including more options. Overall, its a decent enough middle point between the other two plugins.ConclusionThere are plenty of choices when it comes to WordPress minify plugins, but figuring out which one is right for you can be tricky. The best way to do it is to test each of them and compare their performance. However, lets be honest – few people have the time to do this themselves. Free guide5 Essential Tips to Speed Up Your WordPress SiteReduce your loading time by even 50-80% just by following simple tips.