Safe Speed Cache — Documentation

Guide to installing, setting up and using Safe Speed Cache 1.0.0 for WordPress.

1. Installation

Requirements: WordPress 6.3 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer. Multisite networks are not supported.

From a zip file

1. In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
2. Choose safe-speed-cache-1.0.0.zip and click Install Now.
3. Click Activate. Nothing on your site changes yet.

2. Getting started

1. Open Safe Speed Cache in the dashboard and read the Setup check.
2. If it reports nothing risky, press Enable page cache. If it reports a problem (another cache plugin, a foreign advanced-cache.php, a host that already caches pages, a read-only wp-config.php, a multisite network), nothing is changed and you are told why.
3. Open your site in a private window and look at the response header X-AJPC-Cache: the first visit is MISS, the next is HIT.

3. Page cache

• Pages are saved on disk and served by an advanced-cache.php drop-in, with a cache lifetime you set. An optional separate cache for phones and tablets is off by default.
• Never cached: logged-in users, commenters, password-protected posts, carts and checkout (including WooCommerce), POST requests, pages with query strings (tracking parameters such as utm_ are ignored), the REST API, wp-admin, AJAX and feeds.
• Purged automatically when you publish, edit or delete content, when comments change, and when menus, widgets, theme, customizer settings, plugins or key site options change. Purge all and Purge this page are in the admin bar. When a comment is anonymised or removed, the saved copy of that post's pages is removed too.
• Browser-caching and compression rules are written to .htaccess on Apache and LiteSpeed (with a backup). For nginx, copy the snippet shown on the Tools tab; the plugin never writes nginx files.
• Exclusions by page address, cookie and user agent. There is no per-post "do not cache" box and no per-language cache.

4. Safety, backups and Safe mode

• A backup of wp-config.php and .htaccess is made before each edit. Edits sit between BEGIN AJPC / END AJPC markers, are syntax-checked, and are verified by asking your own site for a page. If it does not answer normally, everything is rolled back automatically.
• An existing advanced-cache.php from another plugin or host is never overwritten.
• Deactivating the plugin removes all its file changes and the cached pages. Deleting it keeps your settings and backups unless you tick Also delete all settings and backups (off by default).

5. Optimize

Everything on the Optimize tab is off until you choose. Safe minifies HTML, CSS and JavaScript and removes emoji scripts. Balanced adds deferred JavaScript, lazy-loaded images and iframes, and query strings removed from asset addresses. Each preset can be undone with one click, and Turn all optimizations off is always on the same screen.

• Minified copies are written to wp-content/cache/ajpc-assets/. Your theme and plugin files are never edited.
• Deferred JavaScript is dependency-aware: scripts that others rely on (jQuery by default), scripts with inline code attached and anything you list under exclusions keep their normal loading.
• Skipped for logged-in users (unless you choose otherwise), the admin area, page-builder editors, previews, feeds, REST and AJAX. Add ?ajpc-off=1 to any address to see the page without optimizations. The X-AJPC-Opt header shows what was done.
• If any step fails, the original page is sent unchanged.

6. Images

• Compress JPEG and PNG files on your own server with PHP's GD library, on upload or from the Media Library / Images tab. Nothing is uploaded anywhere.
• Before a file is replaced, the original is copied to wp-content/ajpc-backups/images/. Restore original puts it back byte for byte, for one image or all. A file is replaced only if the new one is smaller and passed a check.
• Skipped, with the reason shown in the Media Library: animated images, GIF, CMYK JPEG, 16-bit PNG, PNG with a colour profile, damaged files, files over 5000 pixels or 10 MB, and anything that would not get smaller.
• Optional WebP copies, shown to browsers that accept WebP through WordPress image functions. Optional largest size and camera-data (Exif, GPS) removal for JPEG.
• Memory and time guards: a huge image is skipped rather than risking a crash; long runs continue in small steps. Up to 100 images per run.

7. Database clean-up

On the Database tab you pick what to remove: post revisions, auto-drafts, posts and pages in the trash, comments in the trash, spam comments, expired transients, orphaned post meta and orphaned comment meta. Press Count first: a dry run that changes nothing. Then tick the kinds, confirm that you have a database backup, and press Delete.

Revisions, auto-drafts, trashed posts, trashed comments and spam are removed only when older than the number of days you set (revisions and auto-drafts: at least 1 day). Published content, approved and pending comments, the Media Library and private content types are never touched.

8. Extras

• Heartbeat control for admin screens, the post editor and the public site: Default, Slower (every 15 to 120 seconds) or Off. Off in the editor stops the post-lock updates, the session-expired login prompt and the classic editor's autosave through the heartbeat.
• Clean-up switches: pingback methods of XML-RPC and the X-Pingback header (XML-RPC itself stays on), shortlink, RSD link, WordPress version tag, and a revision limit for new saves.
• Cache preload: visits the home page and the pages found in your sitemap and navigation menus, 1 to 30 pages per minute (at most 500 pages), so they are cached before visitors arrive. Requests go only to your own site, wait while the server load is high, and need the page cache to be on. Preload depends on WP-Cron.
• A dashboard widget with cache and image numbers (counted at most every 5 minutes; administrators only).

9. Privacy and personal data

The plugin collects no visitor data, sets no cookies and stores no IP addresses. Cached pages are stored only for visitors who are not logged in and have no cart, comment or password cookie.

For logged-in administrators it keeps a “notice dismissed” flag (in the user's profile data) and short-lived result messages linked to their user ID. WordPress's Export Personal Data and Erase Personal Data tools include and remove them, and the plugin adds suggested text under Settings → Privacy → Policy Guide.

10. Deactivating and deleting

Deactivate: removes the drop-in, the WP_CACHE line, the .htaccess rules and the cached pages. Your settings stay.

Delete: keeps your settings and backups unless you tick Also delete all settings and backups on the Page cache tab first (off by default). Image originals saved in wp-content/ajpc-backups/images/ are part of those backups.

11. What it does not do

• Multisite networks are not supported.
• The database clean-up has no undo and makes no backup.
• Only JPEG and PNG images are compressed, with PHP's GD library (no Imagick). Images over 5000 pixels or 10 MB are skipped.
• CDN, Cloudflare and host-cache purging, object cache and Web Vitals are not part of this plugin. Cloudflare and Varnish are detected and shown only.
• No before-and-after speed measurement is built in, and this page makes no speed claims.
• The preload depends on WP-Cron.

12. Troubleshooting

"Enable page cache" was blocked

The Setup check lists the reasons. Fix the item (for example deactivate the other cache plugin) and try again. Nothing was changed.

An optimization broke something

Press Undo or Turn all optimizations off on the Optimize tab, or add the script or page to the exclusions. If you cannot open wp-admin, create the empty file wp-content/ajpc-safe-mode.flag.

I do not like the result of image compression

Press Restore original on the image in the Media Library, or Restore all originals on the Images tab. A file you edited after optimizing is never overwritten by a restore.

The preload does nothing

It needs the page cache to be on and Safe mode to be off, and it runs on WP-Cron. If WP-Cron is switched off on your site, use the Run one step now button or your own cron job.

I use a multisite network

Multisite is not supported. The plugin will not enable page caching on a network and the other features were written for single sites only.

13. External Services & Data

Safe Speed Cache does not connect to any external service. It requests only your own site's pages (the setup self-check and the optional cache preload), and image work happens on your server.

The plugin shows two links to 007AJ Performance and Caching (in the plugin row and in one dismissible notice). They are plain links: no request is made unless you click them, and nothing is sent to 007aj.com by the plugin.

14. Support

Email admin@007aj.com. Please include the plugin version (shown under Plugins) and what you expected to happen.

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