The newest upgrade to WordPress, labelled version 6.4, brings a bundle of changes aimed at enhancing website speed. These adjustments mainly affect how scripts are loaded on a site’s front-end interface, offering a quicker and smoother user experience.
Making web pages faster with smart script management
Previously, JavaScript files linked to WordPress themes and plugins were loaded without particular instructions for asynchronous loading. As a result, these scripts would stall other content from downloading, slowing down the webpage’s loading process.
With this new update, WordPress has introduced strategies for script loading into its core and bundled themes. Specifically, the update leverages ‘defer’ and ‘async’ attributes to improve script loading. These attributes direct the browser to either load scripts in the background (‘async’) or only after the rest of the webpage has loaded (‘defer’). The net effect is a considerable reduction in time for a webpage to become fully interactive.
The technical details of speeding up WordPress
The WordPress 6.4 update includes additional ‘defer’ attributes for JavaScript files that manage elements like navigation menus and embedded media. Likewise, the wp-embed script, responsible for displaying embedded posts, now also uses ‘defer’.
Before this update, there wasn’t a uniform way to include these attributes. However, with a dedicated API introduced in WordPress 6.3 and fully implemented in version 6.4, developers now have a standardised method to control script loading timings.
Moreover, this update rearranges where some scripts are placed within the webpage’s code. Most deferred scripts are moved back into a page’s <head> section. Since these scripts no longer block the page from rendering, the browser can discover and cache them sooner, further boosting website performance.
Certain less crucial scripts, like those for comment replies, are now in the footer but loaded asynchronously using ‘async’. This allows these scripts to load in parallel with other webpage resources.
What this update means for website users
The immediate benefit for the average website visitor is the faster loading of pages. If you’re using a WordPress-based site, you’re likely to experience less ‘jank,’ which means fewer unexpected shifts in page elements once the page has loaded. This update sets the stage for even more speed and performance improvements.
