- 1) Performance test
- 2) Benefits of Removing Unused CSS
- 3) Seven plugins will automatically remove your unused CSS from the Website
- 4) Process of Removing Unused CSS (manually) from the website:
- 5) Install the Asset CleanUp plugin and start unloading stylesheets
- 6) The drawback of removing unused CSS manually:
- 7) (Advanced Method) How to reduce unused CSS completely
-
8)
Log in to your cPanel and upload the file
- 8.1) Step#1- Log in to your control panel (cPanel)
- 8.2) Step#2- Select your Server
- 8.3) Step#3- Head over to Web Application and choose your root folder
- 8.4) Step#4- Open File Manager
- 8.5) Step#5- Scroll down and find and open the wp-content folder
- 8.6) Step#6- Create a new folder or use the existing folder
- 8.7) Step#7- Create a .css file inside the combine-assets (change if needed) folder
- 8.8) Step#8- Open the file and paste the extracted CSS from your code editor
- 9) Install Code Snippets plugins and enqueue the stylesheet
- 10) Unload all the stylesheets using the Asset CleanUp plugin
- 11) Recommended Links for further improvements-
Many people are unaware of the amount of unused CSS that is loaded or injected onto their pages and posts by their themes and plugins. However, a quick test of your site using Google Page Speed Insights (PSI) or any other lab testing tool will reveal that a large amount of CSS is being loaded.
Removing unused CSS in WordPress and Elementor is a tedious process and it can end up breaking your layout and messing up your design if it isn’t done right.
Performance test
According to Google PSI reports, this page can potentially save over 60 KB which is huge, Your’s site may differ. The bigger your site is the better you can save.
Before the optimization (No optimization)
After the optimization (with the Asset CleanUp plugin)
Reduce page weight by 20% after unloading stylesheets with Asset CleanUp
After the optimization ( Chrome Extension with Asset CleanUp Plugin)
This question always comes in Facebook groups.
How do we remove unused CSS from the Elementor website?
Before I discovered this method, I was using Remove unused CSS from the web.dev article to identify unused CSS it was great for smaller stylesheets. But if your website is built with Elementor or any page builders things can be complicated and the size of stylesheets is getting bigger.
Am I right?
I think the answer is true.
That is why I wrote this tutorial to help you solve these problems that are recommended by Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI).
Before you start implementing it on your site, you might be asking yourselves, what are the benefits of removing it?
I want the same answer too so that is why I asked the question a while ago on the WP Speed Matters Facebook Group and this is what I got.
Benefits of Removing Unused CSS
The second point might be incorrect because removing unused CSS wouldn’t fix Rendering Blocking resources, it will surely reduce page weight & HTTP requests.
Answers are still there and If you want to learn and improve your site performance, I highly recommend joining WP Speed Matters Facebook Community. You will be going to love it, just by browsing & you will learn tons of advanced stuff from the archive.
This step-by-step article is complicated and long to read
People are lazy and do not want to follow all the processes listed below and want to do it automatically (convenient), So here are some of the 3rd parties plugins you can test on your website.
If you have another plugin you want me to include. Please don’t hesitate to do it.
Seven plugins will automatically remove your unused CSS from the Website
When you enable the features, make sure you test them carefully even dynamic injected CSS rules because it tends to break style and sometimes missing styles.
WP Rocket
WP Rocket removes the BETA-mentioned enhancement in version 3.12. Get more details in the changelog.Swift Performance
Swift Performance allows you to remove unused CSS automatically under advanced settingsRight now Swift Performance (free and Pro) has the option to remove unused CSS automatically from the website because the last time I activated the feature all my hover effects, and pseudo-elements were broken. ( You need to test it thoroughly).
To access this feature. Follow these steps-
- Enable Advance view otherwise, it wouldn't show up by default.
- Go to Optimization - Styles - Enable Disable Full CSS
RapidLoad Power-Up plugin for Autoptimize
It is an addons for the Autoptimize pluginPerfmatters: Remove Unused CSS
In Version 1.9.2,Perfmatters Remove the Unused CSS BETA tag, and a Huge thank you to Massimo Villa for the update and for providing me the image.LiteSpeed Cache - Unused CSS removal
If you're using LS Cache or LiteSpeed Cache, you can achieve the same thing but it is much slower than other premium plugins.Process of Removing Unused CSS (manually) from the website:
Step#1 Get a baseline Performance score
To optimize our website, first, we need to get a performance score on this page, later, we can compare both the picture.
In this process, we are going to optimize the singer template, that I got from Envato Elements Plugins.
Accordingly, to Google PageSpeed Insights, I can save over 60 KB of CSS, but your CSS size may differ from mine.
Step#2 Open Chrome Developer tools & start capturing coverage Tab
For example, if you combine or merge CSS in your performance plugins then it is not easy to identify which CSS is in use or not, there are 2 ways to solve this issue –
- Remove page or post from caching this is one of the most common and the safest way. After you optimized the post or the page was re-added again. or if you’re using HTTP/2 Protocol, do not combine your stylesheets in the first place.
- By adding ?nocache or any string to the end of your URL to bypass cache. (This might serve uncached version and old data or it might not serve either) (Not all the plugin supports this)
Step#2(A) – Right-click anywhere to open Inspect Elements
Watch the video properly, it covers tills #3 Identify Unused CSS problems from the Coverage tab.
One of the easiest ways to open Developer tools is by right-clicking on any place with your mouse and clicking Inspect to open the Dev tools Inspect Elements panel.
Step# 2(B) – Click the Customize and Open DevsTools Menu (3 dots) in Chrome Dev Tools
Step# 2(C) – Coverage Report
You can access the “Coverage Report” by clicking or hovering over the “More Tools” option.
- Click the 3 dots (Customize and Dev tools)
- More tools
- Coverage report to start capturing network activities
Then, click the reload button and start capturing coverage.
I have tested this page without enabling Improved CSS Loading Elementor’s features in the settings tab. That is why the CSS size is huge. This is specific to Elementor’s users only.
Disabled:
UPDATE: Improved Asset & CSS loading features are stable and you can enable them on every website. If it breaks follow my article on why Elementor Menu is broken.
After I Enabled the features the page Size relatively reduced a lot compared to the disabled but there are still lots of unused CSS that can be removed (see the Red color).
Step#3- Identify Unused CSS problems from the Coverage tab
Click the reload button to start capturing coverage. Next to the URL Filter on the right side, there is an option to choose from, from there choose filter coverage by type to CSS.
So it will show only CSS files.
The red color of the bar indicates unused bytes and the greenish color indicates used bytes.
You will get all the information like shortcuts, tips everything from Chrome Dev tools Coverage.
Step#4- Test before you start removing it
Testing is crucial, We figure out which stylesheets are not in use from the usage visualization panel above but we can’t be 100% sure whether the file we’re removing is not going to break our style.
To safely remove with confidence, we have to head over to the Chrome Dev tools – Network Panel and then right-click on the stylesheet you want to remove (100% one), then click the Block request URL this will open the request blocking tab (shown on the picture below) which lets you block requests you don’t want to load and then refresh the page and see if it doesn’t break. You do this process over and over.
TIPS: The request Blocking feature is also available in the Webpagetest and it is currently in Beta Stage.
Block Request URL features in Chrome Dev tools
Request blocking panel showing which CSS or JS will be blocked when the next page load
Install the Asset CleanUp plugin and start unloading stylesheets
We have already figured out which stylesheets can be removed 100% safely with request blocking and coverage reports in Chrome Dev tools. Now we need to install this plugin so we can remove unused CSS and JavaScript code from the entire website or per page/post basis. You can do the same thing with other asset management plugins too.
Now go to the page/post you’re removing and toggle the “Unload on this page button” to unload CSS from loading or “unload site-wide” (be careful though this will remove the stylesheet everywhere).
Removing unused JS
This CSS method can be applied in removing unused JS too but it is tricky and it can break your site functionalities because of dependencies.
For some reason, If you’re removing JS I would suggest you enable the ‘Ignore dependency rule and keep the “children” loaded’ input box (See the screenshot below) whenever needed. Otherwise, all the child files (frontend-modules and elementor-waypoints) will not load. or If you do not want to load any JS at all, unload jQuery. (Do it at your own risk)
After Unloading stylesheets & JavaScript
Before
Results after unloading CSS with Asset clean up plugin ( picture show – Before and after results)
After
We have saved more than 20 KB of transfer size just by unloading stylesheets with the help of the asset clean-up plugin. If you’re using lots of 3rd parties plugins or add-ons that add styling to your page, then you may be able to reduce more.
The drawback of removing unused CSS manually:
- It is a time-consuming process.
- Removing unused CSS is not worth it if you constantly updating your pages.
- If JavaScript dynamically injects styles or CSS classes are present, then this Chrome extension will fail to extract the used CSS. (I will explain how to include them later)
- Great for smaller websites like single-page websites and landing pages but not for larger websites such as News websites.
- If the style is updated, you must redo everything again from the start unless you use the same CSS class or an ID.
(Advanced Method) How to reduce unused CSS completely
In the next step, we are going to learn how to remove unused CSS completely in WordPress with the help of the Chrome extension.
Step#1- Install the CSS Used Chrome Extension from the Chrome Web Store
After we saved more than 20 KB of file sizes just by unloading stylesheets with the help of the Asset CleanUp plugin, we still have lots of unused CSS remains that can be removed completely.
With the help of the Used CSS Chrome extension, we will remove all the unused CSS, even if there is dynamic CSS injected by JavaScript.
While I was researching how to remove unused CSS from Elementor myself, I stumbled upon StackOverflow channels (If I found the URL I will list it here). The Chrome Extension works 100% on static pages but lacks CSS classes that are dynamically injected by JavaScript like the Laura Brehm Hamburger’s menu pop-up triggering by interacting with it.
Step:2- Extract Used CSS using Used CSS Chrome Extension
After we have installed the Chrome extension. If you’re in Dev tools, make sure you refresh the page. Now open Elements Panel [Follow Step#2(A)] and this will open the DOM tree from there click the HTML tag, this will grab everything, and click the CSS Used tab on the right side of the panel. (see the attachment below for reference)
After you click the CSS used tab, it will go through all the processes and extract the used CSS from the page but the problem with this method is that it misses the Dynamic CSS that is injected by the JavaScript.
To fix these problems, we have to interact with the layout in this example it is by interacting with the Hamburger menu and opening the menu (See it in the next step).
- Open Elements Panel
- Click the HTML tag.
- Click the CSS used Tab next to the Accessibility tag
- Click the Preview button to open in the New tab or click the copy button to copy CSS and upload it to your server.
Step#3- Include Dynamic style, CSS Classes, and IDs to the extracted CSS
To Detect dynamically injected CSS classes or IDs by ‘Used CSS chrome extension“, we need to first interact with the layout itself, in my case, it will be by interacting with the hamburger menu.
Caution: (If you have 1000 posts this method will take you more than a week or more to do which is not a great experience for you who use the Automatic process listed above)
To capture all the CSS, make sure you interact with the page and open it like the opening menu (See the screenshot below) and this is what I did:
- I interact with the Hamburger menu this way Elementor Dialog JS will inject the CSS.
- Click the HTML tag and then click the CSS Used tab to generate used CSS this will include the CSS injected by JS.
- Click the Hamburger Menu (icon)
- On the right side, click the Elements panels
- Click the <html tag in the DOM tree.
- Click the CSS Used, it will scan and generate all the used CSS
- Now, you can copy the code and further optimize it or see the design by clicking the preview button or viewing your website on CodePen.
Step#4- Copy the minified code to your Code editor and save it
By default, the Used CSS Chrome extension will generate the minified code, this will include inline style generated by your theme, plugins, or hardcoded CSS/ manually added CSS. These CSS can safely ignore it unless you have the pro version of the Asset CleanUp plugin.
You can remove the inline style generated by your theme or plugins because we can’t remove it. Next, un-minify the code with the online free tools or use the prettier VS code and then save the minified file as a .css file format. You can upload the file or copy the code to your server with the help of FTP or by accessing the control panel (cPanel).
Tips: If you’re using Visual Studio (VS) code, you can use a prettier extension to minify by entering F1 on your keyboards using Online tools to minify it, or using the Beautify VS Code extension to un-minify the code.
Log in to your cPanel and upload the file
I use Runcloud as my control panel so my process of accessing the control panel will be different. But our goal is the same, upload the stylesheet to the wp-content folder. In this step, we are going to upload a file or create a .css file in the wp_content folder in the file manager or upload it using the FTP client.
Step#1- Log in to your control panel (cPanel)
Step#2- Select your Server
Step#3- Head over to Web Application and choose your root folder
Now head over to the Web Application area and choose your root. i.e., Domain
Step#4- Open File Manager
Step#5- Scroll down and find and open the wp-content folder
After you open File Manager, you need to scroll down to the end and find the wp-content folder. This folder contains everything like your media, Plugins, Themes, cache, etc
Step#6- Create a new folder or use the existing folder
After we open the wp-content folder there will be an existing folder, if you’re using any Performance plugins like Swift or wp-rocket then there is a chance it will create a folder automatically for you called cache. I am just using it for demonstration purposes only (change it to another location and create a folder instead).
Click the Cache folder and inside the cache folder, create your folder (combine-assets), this is the folder where you will add all your stylesheets or JavaScript.
It is up to you to choose the folder path, you can also choose the WP Content ‘assets folder‘ rather than the ‘cache folder‘.
Step#7- Create a .css file inside the combine-assets (change if needed) folder
Unfortunately, Runcloud does not allow us to upload assets directly through their Control Panel but it is possible through FTP clients like FileZilla. Since the size of the CSS is small. So for me, it is to create a file and copy & paste the minified code.
After you have created a folder ( example – combine-assets), you need to create a file-name.css file that will store our extracted CSS from number #9
Give a file name (for example – file.min.css) and save it.
Step#8- Open the file and paste the extracted CSS from your code editor
Open the file and copy all the CSS ( Ctrl + A and Ctrl + C) from your code editor paste it inside the File editor (laura-brehm.css file) and save it.
Or you can install the File Manager plugin from WP Repository or use FileZilla to upload your file.
After you upload your file copy and paste the code as I did. We need to install the Code Snippets plugin available in the WordPress repository or use a child theme.
Install Code Snippets plugins and enqueue the stylesheet
We have uploaded the stylesheets to our wp-content folder, Now we need to load the stylesheet by using the wp_enqueue style function.
Step#1 – Install the Code Snippets plugin-
Now install the Code Snippet Plugin from the WP Repository and activate the plugin or use the Child Theme function.php file.
Step#2 – Click the Add new Snippet and enqueue the stylesheet-
Now use the wp_enqueue_style function to enqueue (load) your stylesheet.
// I use Code Snippet plugin so opening php tag and closing is not needed
// Change the post ID with respected post ID
// later if you're updating the code, simply update the version from 1.1 to 1.2
function laura_brehm() {
// 1978 is the post type referring to the template page like your-domain.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1978
if( is_page ( 1978 )) {
//Enqueue Stylesheets properly
wp_enqueue_style('laura-brehm','/wp-content/cache/combine-assets/laurabrehm.min.css', array(), '1.0', 'all');
}
}
add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'laura_brehm');
Unload all the stylesheets using the Asset CleanUp plugin
After you enqueue the stylesheet with the Code Snippet plugin. Make sure you check it using the Asset CleanUp options and then click the “Unload on this page” toggle on all the stylesheets to remove/dequeue/unload it.
If you want to exclude some stylesheets like global stuff make sure you click the Ignore dependency rule and keep the “children” This also applies to stylesheets.
