OMNINOGGIN

This post will explain the various options in WP Minify WordPress plugin.

Basic Options

Enable JavaScript Minification

When checked, all JavaScript files will be extracted from the HTML output and be minified and served as one compressed JavaScript file.

Enable CSS Minification

When checked, all CSS files will be extracted from the HTML output and be minified and served as one compressed CSS file.

Enable HTML Minification

When checked, your HTML output will also be minified.

JavaScript files to exclude from minify

You may specify any patterns for excluding any Javascript files from the Minifying process. The entries are line delimited so if you specify:

prototype
wp-greet-box/js
googlecode.com

Then the following Javascript files will not get included into the Minifying process if it’s being enqueued via wp_enqueue_script():

• http://example.com/wp-includes/js/prototype.js
  (matching first rule)
• http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/js/functions.js
  http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-greet-box/js/onload.js
  (matching second rule)
• http://jqueryjs.googlecode.com/files/jquery-1.3.2.min.js
  (matching third rule)

CSS files to exclude from minify

Works the same way as the “JavaScript files to exclude from minify” option except that this field will filter out CSS files.

Advanced Options

Enable Minification on External Files

WP-Minify supports minification of external JavaScript and CSS files by downloading, caching, and feeding them to the minify engine. Although this helps speed things up considerably, there is a good chance that external JavaScripts will not work when downloaded. I wouldn’t recommend enabling this option unless you know what you’re doing and I want to add a bunch of excludes to the JavaScript exclusion list.

Manual JavaScript and CSS Placement

You can specify where you would like your minified JavaScript or CSS files to show up in your source. Just specify the following HTML comments wherever you would like your minified JavaScript and CSS to show up:

<!-- WP-Minify JS -->
<!-- WP-Minify CSS -->

This setting will override default header or footer placements of minified JavaScript and CSS files.

Place Minified JavaScript in footer

If you don’t feel like modify your theme to include the tags above, you may just enable this to include JavaScript in your footer. Moving scripts to the footer is not recommended if you have embedded JS code referring to code that’s been minified

Force all JavaScript/CSS calls to be HTTPS on HTTPS pages

It does exactly what it sounds like.

Debugging by using “wp-minify-off=1″

If you pass, “wp-minify-off=1″ in your URL, WP Minify is effectively turned off.

Combine files but do not minify (Debug mode)

When checked, all Javascript and CSS files will still get merged into one file, but they will not be minified (i.e. spaces removed, etc). Comments will also be added to each line telling you what line number each line is. That way, you can easily troubleshoot any Javascript or CSS errors.

Debug off
WP Minify will embed a URL like the following:

http://omninoggin.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-minify/min/?f=www/wp-content/themes/omninoggin/onload.js

which will return the minified version of the script:

Debug on
WP Minify will embed a URL like the following (notice the &debug=true at the end):

http://omninoggin.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-minify/min/?f=www/wp-content/themes/omninoggin/onload.js&debug=true

which will return the non-minified version of the script:

Show minify errors through FirePHP (Debug mode)

This lets you figure out which script is breaking minify. Check out the tutorial here: Troubleshooting WP Minify with FirePHP

Cache Expiration

WP Minify caches all external Javascript and CSS files that get queued via wp_enqueued_script() and wp_enqueue_style() functions. This setting lets you set the cache expiration policy and also lets you clear the cache on demand.

External JavaScript files to include into minify

This option is only useful if you are NOT minifying external files (see a few options above). You may specify patterns to match any additional JavaScript files to be included in the minifying process here. The entries are line delimited, so you can specify them in the following manner:

file1.js
file2.js
file3.js

WP Minify will search the HTML source and extract/minify the matching JavaScript declarations even if they are external files. For example, if the in your header.php, you declare:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://someone-elses-site/file1.js"/>

And you place “file1.js” in the include box, the script “http://someone-elses-site/file1.js” will be downloaded, cached local to your server, and minified along with other JavaScript files on your server.

External CSS files to include into minify

Works the same way as the “External JavaScript files to include into minify” option except that this field expects patterns to match CSS.

Extra arguments to pass to minify engine

This value will get append to calls to URL “wp-minify/min/?f=file1.js,file2.js,…,fileN.js”. I wouldn’t touch this unless you know the Minify engine API pretty well.