Quicklink for WordPress

Description

Quicklink for WordPress attempts to make navigation to subsequent pages load faster. Embedded with the plugin is a javascript library, which detects links in the viewport, waits until the browser is idle and prefetches the URLs for these links. The library also tries to detect, if the user is on a slow connection or on a data plan.

This plugin builds heavily on the amazing work done by Google Chrome Labs.

More information about Quicklink on the official Website.

How it works

  • Detects links within the viewport (using Intersection Observer)
  • Waits until the browser is idle (using requestIdleCallback)
  • Checks if the user isn’t on a slow connection (using navigator.connection.effectiveType) or has data-saver enabled (using navigator.connection.saveData)
  • Prefetches URLs to the links (using <link rel=prefetch> or XHR). Provides some control over the request priority (can switch to fetch() if supported).

If you are a developer, we encourage you to follow along or contribute to the development of this plugin on GitHub.

Installation

From within WordPress

  1. Visit ‘Plugins > Add New’
  2. Search for ‘Quicklink for WordPress’
  3. Activate ‘Quicklink for WordPress’ from your Plugins page.

Manually

  1. Upload the quicklink folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
  2. Activate the Quicklink for WordPress plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

FAQ

Will this make my website faster?

Yes and no. This plugin has no impact on the actual performance of your website. But navigating the website will feel faster, because potential navigation targets of the user have been prefetched in the users browser.

Will this make my website slower?

Slowing down the site is highly unlikely, but possible. If this plugin is used with a caching plugin, the additional hits on the server should not impact performance. But if resource intensive, uncached targets are being prefetched, a performance loss is to be expected.

What can I do if my website is getting slower?

You should fist check, that a good caching plugin like “WP Super Cache”, “W3 Total Cache” or “WP Rocket” is enabled. If this is not enough you can always add exception rules to the Quicklink configuration by modifying the ‘quicklink_options’ filter.

Reviews

16 Jolay 2021 1 reply
where i can see the performance?...i even don't see the performance for the link.It is there have any experience userinterface for that?
26 Jona 2019
This plugin is flawless. Only added it on a couple of sites, but my PageSpeed Insights scores are still the same. The plugin is written by reputable coders who know what they are doing. Definitely worth adding, because prefetching page links is all the rage. That's why the Jamstack websites such as Gatsby are so quick to navigate. If you want your WordPress to be as fast then this is the type of plugin you should be adding, once you've done the basics like W3 Total Cache, Smush and the rest...
27 Febroary 2019 2 replies
I use this plugin in combination with WP Rocket and lazyloading. It works perfectly together, no issues or what so ever. But I'm not sure if this plugin is supported by all browsers. It works smoothly on Chrome, but on Firefox I don't seem to notice a difference. Got to test it with other browsers. But overall, good plugin. Recommended.
Read all 11 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Quicklink for WordPress” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“Quicklink for WordPress” has been translated into 6 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Quicklink for WordPress” into your language.

Interested in development?

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

Changelog

0.10.0

  • General maintenance for the repository
  • Updated Quicklink dependency to version 2.3
  • Tested for WordPress 6.2

0.9.0

  • General maintenance for the repository
  • Updated Quicklink dependency to version 2.2
  • Tested for WordPress 5.8

0.8.0

  • Updated Quicklink dependency to version 2.0

0.7.3

  • Made a function have a less generic name

0.7.1

  • Fix some more deprecations with WooCommerce

0.7.0

  • Changed the defaults to ignore links with get requests to improve compatibility
  • Removed some deprecated functions for WooCommerce

0.6.0

  • Updated Quicklink to version 1.0.1

0.5.0

  • Added rules and compatibility for WooCommerce

0.4.0

  • Updated the script loading to load asynchronously
  • Updated the plugin assets

0.3.0

  • Added compatibility with AMP
  • Added amazing contributors
  • Added the new WordPress filter ‘quicklink_options’ to modify quicklink settings

0.2.0

  • Release for the plugin repository
  • Tuned quicklink ignores for WordPress

0.1.0

  • Initial release