WP-Optimize 4.5.0: more control, smarter performance tuning

Performance optimisation isn’t about switching everything on and hoping for the best. As WordPress sites grow, the need for finer control, smarter defaults, and fewer surprises becomes much more important.

WP-Optimize 4.5.0 focuses on exactly that. This release introduces new Premium features for more precise performance tuning, along with a range of fixes and tweaks that improve stability, compatibility, and everyday reliability across different site setups.

Let’s take a look at what’s new.

One of the biggest additions in WP-Optimize 4.5.0 is the ability to cache only selected URLs.

Instead of applying caching rules across your entire site, Premium users can now choose exactly which pages should be cached. This is especially useful for:

• Sites with mixed content (static pages + dynamic areas)
• Membership or e-commerce sites with personalised pages
• Testing caching safely without affecting critical URLs

It gives you far more control, without needing complex exclusions or workarounds.

External font requests can quietly slow pages down and introduce privacy concerns. With this release, WP-Optimize Premium now lets you host Google Fonts locally.

This reduces third-party requests, improves load times, and helps with privacy-focused setups – all while keeping your site’s typography looking exactly the same.

WP-Optimize 4.5.0 introduces an optional way to apply Capo.js rules to enhance page performance.
Capo.js focuses on improving how critical resources are loaded, helping browsers prioritise what matters most during page render. For advanced users, this provides another layer of performance tuning without manual scripting.

Alongside the headline features, this release includes a number of fixes and refinements that improve how WP-Optimize behaves in real-world environments.

• Fixed an issue where sitemaps were being cached incorrectly
• Prevented the page optimiser from initialising on non-HTML requests
• Archived pages now have their cache cleared automatically when related posts are updated
• CSS and JavaScript merging is now disabled by default to reduce compatibility issues

• Fixed issues with detecting WebP conversion availability
• Removed a persistent WebP conversion failure message that could appear incorrectly
• Improved overall stability of image optimisation checks
• Fixed a missing tooltip in the Smush “Compress” pop-up in the Media Library

• Improved compatibility with older WordPress versions (pre-6.1 and 4.9)
• Enhanced 404 detector support for plain permalink structures
• Allowed some database cleanup actions for Kinsta-hosted sites
• Improved timestamp handling to prevent rare fatal errors
• Removed unused libraries from autoload to reduce overhead

• Added support for bypassing WPO features via a URL query parameter defined by the WPO_DISABLE_MODE_URL_PARAM constant.
• Adjusted internal option handling to avoid unnecessary calls in the Premium version

WP-Optimize 4.5.0 is available now.
To update, head to your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins, and click Update now next to WP-Optimize.
As always, we recommend keeping your optimisation tools up to date to ensure the best performance and compatibility with WordPress core.

• Feature – Premium – Cache – Added ability to cache only selected URLs
• Feature – Premium – Minify – Host Google Fonts locally
• Feature – Premium – Option to enhance page performance by applying Capo.js rules
• Fix – Cache – Fixed sitemap caching issue
• Fix – Improved compatibility with WordPress versions earlier than 6.1
• Fix – Reset WebP conversion failure no longer appears in the popup
• Fix – Resolved issues with detecting WebP conversion availability
• Fix – Smush – Fixed missing tooltip in the “Compress” pop-up in the Media Library
• Fix – Stop initialization of page optimizer for non-HTML requests
• Fix – Remove marcusschwarz/lessc lib from autoload
• Tweak -Added support for bypassing WPO features via a URL query parameter defined by the WPO_DISABLE_MODE_URL_PARAMconstant
• Tweak – Allow some database record cleanup for Kinsta users
• Tweak – Clear cache of archived pages when a related post is updated
• Tweak – Disabled CSS and JS merging by default
• Tweak – Enhanced 404 detector compatibility with plain permalinks
• Tweak – WP_Optimize_Options::auto_option_settings() is not called in the Premium version
• Tweak – Improved timestamp handling to prevent fatal errors on WordPress 4.9