Description
Speed Pilot is a WordPress performance toolkit for measuring, diagnosing, optimizing, and verifying site speed. It combines administrator-triggered Google PageSpeed Insights scans with local WordPress diagnostics, then provides conservative, opt-in tools to address eligible bottlenecks.
Start on the Dashboard, review the scan data, enable only the modules that fit the site, and verify every change with a fresh scan. Performance results vary by hosting, theme, page content, and third-party services; Speed Pilot does not guarantee a particular PageSpeed score.
Key capabilities:
- Google PageSpeed Insights scans for mobile, desktop, or both devices.
- Local diagnostics for WordPress, server, plugins, database signals, and homepage resources.
- Backup-first image compression with optional WebP and AVIF sidecars where the server supports them.
- Safe delivery of eligible AVIF/WebP image sidecars, including supported content-image output.
- Opt-in local CSS and JavaScript minification, critical CSS, LCP image priority, and Google Fonts helpers.
- Opt-in file-based page caching for safe public HTML responses, with automatic invalidation and overlap protection.
- Explicit, administrator-confirmed database cleanup batches, logs, reports, exports, privacy tools, and production-readiness checks.
Speed Pilot protects logged-in users, previews, editors, REST and AJAX requests, cron, sensitive WooCommerce routes, and detected conflicting optimization systems. When a safety condition cannot be confirmed, it leaves the original page behavior unchanged.
External services
Google PageSpeed Insights API
Speed Pilot uses Google’s PageSpeed Insights API to retrieve real performance results when an administrator starts a PageSpeed scan from the Speed Pilot Dashboard.
What data is sent: the public URL selected for scanning and the requested device/category parameters. No visitor data, account credentials, or personal data is sent by Speed Pilot.
When data is sent: only after an administrator manually starts a PageSpeed scan or API connection test. Speed Pilot does not contact Google on normal frontend page loads.
Terms of Service: https://policies.google.com/terms
Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
Current Limitations
- No CDN configuration, edge cache drop-in, or cache warming.
- No automatic local font conversion or guessed font-preload injection.
- No automatic scheduled database cleanup.
- No guarantee of a particular PageSpeed score.
Screenshots
Installation
- Upload the
speedpilotfolder to/wp-content/plugins/or install the plugin from WordPress. - Activate Speed Pilot through the WordPress Plugins screen.
- Open
Speed Pilotfrom the WordPress admin menu. - Add a Google PageSpeed API key in
Settings > APIonly if you want Google scans, then configure opt-in modules from the relevant Settings tabs. - Test enabled optimizations on staging or with a fresh PageSpeed scan before relying on them in production.
FAQ
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Does Speed Pilot optimize my site automatically?
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No. High-impact modules are opt-in. Speed Pilot analyzes the site first, then lets an administrator enable eligible image, asset, font, LCP, or page-cache features. Database cleanup always requires an explicit confirmation.
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How does image optimization work?
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Speed Pilot creates a local backup before optimizing a supported Media Library attachment. It can recompress source images, create WebP sidecars, and create AVIF sidecars when server support is available. The original asset remains the fallback and can be restored from the Images tab.
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How does page caching work?
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When enabled, Speed Pilot stores fresh, logged-out public HTML responses in its site-scoped cache directory and reuses them before theme rendering. It does not install an early-bootstrap cache drop-in, so WordPress still loads before an application-level cache hit is served. Logged-in, personalized, preview, editor, REST, AJAX, cron, search, error, sensitive WooCommerce, non-GET, and unsafe query-string requests are excluded. Detected page-cache plugins also block this feature.
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Where are generated optimization cache files stored?
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Minified CSS and JavaScript copies are static cache assets stored under WordPress’s content cache directory in
speedpilot-asset-cache. They are derived only from eligible local files, are served only through rewritten stylesheet or script URLs, and are never loaded with PHPincludeorrequire. Cache Tools can remove them, and the original asset remains the fallback if cache creation is unavailable. -
Does Speed Pilot send data to other services?
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Only administrator-triggered Google PageSpeed scans and connection tests use an external service. See the External services section for the exact data, timing, Terms of Service, and Privacy Policy.
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What data does the plugin retain?
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Speed Pilot stores scan history, optimization activity, optional logs, and local image backups in WordPress. Its privacy-policy guidance and personal-data exporter/eraser support administrator-linked records. Uninstall cleanup is opt-in so administrators can choose whether to retain historical data.
Reviews
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Contributors & Developers
“Speed Pilot: Speed Up Your Website Performance” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
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Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
0.14.11
- Added Google PageSpeed Insights external-service disclosure and streamlined the directory readme.
- Corrected local asset URL-to-path resolution for subdirectory WordPress installations and custom content/upload locations.
- Moved generated static CSS/JavaScript cache assets to WordPress’s content cache directory, added directory-listing guards, and wrote them through the WordPress filesystem API.
- Corrected prepared database query handling and protected database-analysis refreshes with a nonce.
- Confirmed WordPress.org-hosted translations rely on core auto-loading rather than a manual translation-loader call.
- Corrected image-delivery output-buffer ownership: WordPress 6.9+ uses the native core output filter, while older supported releases close the fallback buffer explicitly.
0.14.10
- Renamed displayed plugin branding, directory metadata, administrator screens, PDF reports, documentation, and marketing copy to Speed Pilot while preserving the existing plugin slug, text domain, options, database tables, and stored data.