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ALTOS

ALTOS

By O K
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Description

ALTOS speeds up the WordPress admin by giving you per-screen control over which active plugins are actually loaded. Most WordPress sites accumulate dozens of plugins over time, but only a few are needed on any given admin screen. Loading them all on every page wastes memory, time, and database queries.

ALTOS operates at the WordPress core level via the MU-plugins mechanism, intercepting the loading pipeline before WordPress fully initialises. It cleanly skips heavy code paths on screens where they aren’t needed — while preserving admin menus, dependency relationships, and safety guards.

Key features

  • Per-screen control — Set rules for each admin screen (Dashboard, Posts, Pages, Settings, WooCommerce, Custom Post Types, …).
  • Three states per rule — Enabled (always load), Disabled (never load), Defer (load after the main page).
  • Smart menu preservation — Admin menu entries stay accessible for blocked/deferred items via an automatic snapshot system.
  • Hierarchical rules — Global group screen, with intelligent inheritance.
  • Automatic mode with suggestions — Confidence-scored recommendations from real performance samples; you review and apply manually.
  • Dependency cascade detection — Catches dependent items when a parent is blocked.
  • Request-type optimisation — Separate rules for AJAX, REST API, WP-Cron, and WP-CLI.
  • Update Optimizer — Three strategies to reduce update-check overhead without breaking badge counts.
  • Per-plugin performance metrics — Real-time load time, DB queries, memory.
  • Developer tools — Admin drawer, admin-bar integration, REST endpoints, extensive filters/actions.
  • Built-in translations — Czech, Slovak, Polish, German, French, Spanish.

Typical impact

  • 30–50 % faster admin pages.
  • 20–40 fewer database queries per admin page.
  • 1–5 MB less memory per blocked item.

Safety by default

  • Manual mode requires explicit rules — nothing is changed without your action.
  • Automatic mode only suggests — never applies on its own.
  • The loader protects itself from being blocked.
  • Page-builder bypass for Elementor, Bricks, Divi, Beaver Builder during active editing sessions.
  • Emergency recovery URL for one-click bypass if a misconfiguration breaks the admin.

External Services

This plugin does not contact any external services. It does not send analytics, telemetry, license checks, or any other network requests. All rules, samples, snapshots, and configuration are stored exclusively in your own WordPress database.

The “Update Optimizer” feature exclusively throttles the standard WordPress update-check HTTP requests to api.wordpress.org — it never adds new endpoints and never sends additional data.

Privacy

ALTOS stores all of its data in your own WordPress installation:

  • Rules and configuration are stored in the WordPress options table.
  • Performance sampling data is stored in a plugin-owned custom table ({prefix}sapm_sampling_data) with 30-day retention.
  • No personal data about visitors or administrators is collected.

The plugin does not transmit any data to external services and does not contact any external endpoints other than throttling WordPress’s existing api.wordpress.org update checks when the (opt-in) Update Optimizer is enabled.

Installation

  1. Install via Plugins Add new Upload Plugin in WordPress, or upload the unzipped folder to /wp-content/plugins/altos/.
  2. Activate the plugin through the Plugins screen in WordPress.
  3. On activation, the plugin automatically writes a small MU-loader file to wp-content/mu-plugins/altos.php. This is what allows per-screen filtering to run before WordPress loads the regular plugins. The file is removed automatically on deactivation.
  4. Go to Settings Plugin Manager in your WordPress admin.
  5. Configure rules manually, or enable Automatic mode to get data-driven suggestions after a day or two of sampling.

Requirements

  • PHP 7.4 or newer (PHP 8.0+ recommended).
  • WordPress 6.0 or newer.
  • Write permission for wp-content/mu-plugins/ (almost all hosts allow this; some managed-WordPress hosts restrict it).

FAQ

How does this differ from “deactivating” a plugin?

ALTOS runs before WordPress loads regular plugins, using the MU-plugins mechanism. That means the code is genuinely not loaded on screens where you don’t need it — not loaded-and-then-suppressed. Deactivation is global and permanent; this lets you keep an item active site-wide while skipping it on specific admin screens or request types.

How does Automatic mode work?

For 24–48 hours after you enable it, the loader samples real performance data on your own admin: load time, database queries, memory per active item, per admin screen. It then analyses those samples to suggest rules with a confidence score (0–100 %) and estimated savings. Suggestions are never applied automatically — you review them and apply with one click.

Is it safe to block items?

ALTOS has multiple safeguards:

  • Dependency cascade detection — if you block a parent (e.g. WooCommerce), dependents are flagged automatically.
  • Smart menu preservation keeps blocked items’ admin menu entries reachable.
  • Critical scenarios (page-builder editing, WooCommerce checkout/cart) are auto-excluded.
  • The loader itself is auto-protected from being blocked.

Recommendation: enable Automatic mode on a staging site first, review the suggestions, then export to production.

Does this work with page builders?

Yes. Elementor, Bricks, Divi, and Beaver Builder edit sessions are detected and the loader steps out of the way to avoid breaking editor previews.

What about WooCommerce?

Full WooCommerce support: cart, checkout and account pages are excluded from any blocking on the frontend. Admin screens are recognised per area (products, orders, settings, …) so you can keep WooCommerce active on its own screens while skipping it elsewhere.

Does it affect the frontend?

The Frontend Optimizer is an opt-in feature. If you leave it disabled (default), the frontend is completely unaffected. With it enabled, you can selectively skip items per page-type context (homepage, single, archive, …).

How does the Update Optimizer work?

Three strategies are available:

  1. TTL extension — Throttle the outbound api.wordpress.org update HTTP calls so they only re-run after a configurable interval (12 h 24–72 h). WordPress keeps its own cache; we only reduce how often it gets refreshed.
  2. Page-specific — Only run update checks on the dedicated Plugins, Themes and Updates admin pages.
  3. Cron-only — Move all update checks to background WP-Cron; the admin never blocks on them.

All strategies preserve update badge counts and “Check now” buttons still work as expected.

Can I use it on multisite?

Yes. Network activation is supported but each subsite needs its own per-site rules. The MU-loader is created once for the network.

Does the plugin contact any external servers?

No. See the External Services section above.

What languages is the plugin translated into?

English (source) plus Czech (cs_CZ), Slovak (sk_SK), Polish (pl_PL), German (de_DE), French (fr_FR), and Spanish (es_ES). Translations live in /languages/ as .po/.mo. Community translations from translate.wordpress.org are also picked up automatically.

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Contributors & Developers

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

Contributors

“ALTOS” has been translated into 1 locale. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “ALTOS” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

1.3.9 — 2026-06-10

  • UPDATED Tested with WordPress 7.0.

1.3.8 — 2026-05-18

  • NEW Explicit user consent flow for the MU-loader install. After activation, an admin notice asks whether to install the small loader file in wp-content/mu-plugins/. Without consent the plugin runs in limited mode (filtering still works for later option queries; only the very first plugin-load pass is unaffected).
  • CHANGED No more silent self-healing of the MU-loader file. The file is created only on explicit click of “Install loader file” in the admin notice, and removed automatically on deactivation.
  • FIXED Plugin URI header now points to the WordPress.org plugin directory.
  • FIXED Two inline <script> blocks in the settings page extracted to a dedicated assets/admin-handlers.js enqueued via wp_enqueue_script. The frontend bar’s JSON payload now goes through wp_add_inline_script() instead of an inline <script> tag.
  • FIXED All $_POST / $_GET / $_SERVER super-global reads now use wp_unslash() plus an explicit sanitize_*() helper. $_SERVER[REQUEST_TIME_FLOAT] is cast through (float) before arithmetic. $_SERVER[REQUEST_URI] goes through sanitize_text_field( wp_unslash( … ) ).
  • FIXED All json_decode() results from POST payloads are now deep-sanitised by a new recursive sanitize_rules_array() helper before being persisted. stripslashes() replaced with wp_unslash() where applicable.
  • IMPROVED All uses of WP_PLUGIN_DIR / WP_CONTENT_DIR annotated with explanatory comments documenting why the WordPress-provided constants are the correct API here (no __FILE__-relative helper exists for resolving other plugins’ base paths or the must-use plugins folder at the MU-loader load stage).

1.3.7 — 2026-05-15

  • NEW Internationalisation: ships with full Czech, Slovak, Polish, German, French, and Spanish translations.
  • NEW Per-language .pot, .po, and .mo files in /languages/. Domain Path header added.
  • CHANGED Plugin renamed to “ALTOS” with slug altos for the WordPress.org directory.
  • CHANGED Self-hosted GitHub updater removed — WordPress.org handles updates from now on.
  • CHANGED Update Optimizer refactored to throttle HTTP requests only; it no longer hooks the update transients (cleaner separation from WordPress’s own updater).
  • FIXED Two stray non-English strings replaced with translatable English source strings.
  • FIXED Hardened output escaping across the admin UI (_e() esc_html_e() etc.).
  • FIXED Replaced parse_url(), unlink(), date() and mt_rand() with their WordPress-recommended counterparts.
  • IMPROVED All input super-globals now go through wp_unslash() + sanitize_*.
  • IMPROVED Stricter phpcs:ignore documentation on the plugin’s own database queries (custom sampling_data table).

1.3.5

  • FIXED MU-loader self-healing — recreates a missing MU file on admin_init to prevent permanent loss after a failed activation.
  • FIXED Early translation loading warning on WP 6.7+ (_load_textdomain_just_in_time notice).
  • IMPROVED MU-plugin directory resolution consistently respects the WPMU_PLUGIN_DIR constant.

1.3.2

  • FIXED Self-protection in filtering: the loader can no longer block itself.
  • FIXED Invalid frontend rule modes safely fall back to passthrough.
  • IMPROVED Lower overhead in frontend/cache and auto-rules paths.

1.3.0

  • NEW SHA256 package integrity validation before install.
  • IMPROVED Frontend drawer uses a shared drawer CSS with unified visual style.
  • IMPROVED Frontend bar JavaScript refactor (Shadow DOM mount, per-page override UX, reset flow).
  • IMPROVED Update metadata caching strategy (lock + fallback + HTTP validators).

1.2.0

  • NEW Automatic mode with confidence-scored suggestions.
  • NEW Custom table for sampling data, 30-day retention.
  • NEW Update Optimizer (TTL extension / Page-specific / Cron-only).
  • NEW Dependency cascade detection.
  • NEW Request-type rules (AJAX, REST API, WP-Cron, WP-CLI).
  • NEW Per-plugin performance metrics.
  • NEW Admin drawer overlay.
  • IMPROVED Hierarchical rule system with global / group / screen levels.
  • IMPROVED Smart menu preservation system.
  • IMPROVED WooCommerce integration.
  • IMPROVED REST API endpoints for programmatic control.

1.1.0

  • NEW Per-screen control system.
  • NEW Defer-loading support.
  • NEW Admin drawer interface.
  • NEW Performance monitoring dashboard.

1.0.0

  • Initial release.

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