Velocity Forge – Core Web Vitals, Page Speed & Performance

Velocity Forge measures Core Web Vitals on your own site, from your real visitors: LCP, INP, CLS, TTFB and FCP. Every measurement is stored in your own database. The measuring script is served from your site, nothing is loaded from a CDN, and no field reading leaves the site.

It does not stop at the number. A slow interaction is reported with the control that was hit, and whether the time went on a busy main thread, on your own handler or on the repaint afterwards. A slow first paint is reported with the element and the file it loaded. Two cards on the Monitoring screen list the ten controls that cost the most interaction time and the five elements that delay the first paint, each with the file and the plugin behind it. A figure is shown only once an element has at least three measurements.

When an update slows the site down, the plugin tells you what changed. Before an update replaces any file it takes a snapshot of the scripts and stylesheets your front page loads, and afterwards the regression row names the assets the update added, removed or resized. You can set budgets for LCP, INP, CLS and TTFB, and the site owner gets an e-mail when a regression lands.

The changes the free plugin makes are small and reversible. It adds LCP hints to the detected hero image (fetchpriority="high" and a preload), decoding="async" to images and lazy loading below the fold, and speculation rules for prefetch and prerender with a cart, checkout and add-to-cart exclusion that cannot be switched off. Safe Mode disables all of it in one click, from the admin bar as well, and a recovery drill lets you test the escape hatches on a day when nothing is wrong. Velocity Forge is not a page cache: it recognises seventeen caching and optimisation plugins and stands aside where their work overlaps.

Free

• Core Web Vitals collection from real visitors (LCP, INP, CLS, TTFB, FCP), 30 days of history by default, up to 365 days if you ask for it in Settings
• Element, file and plugin behind each slow measurement
• Trend chart of the 75th percentile over 30 days, with the same numbers in a table
• Regression monitor with an asset difference after updates, and an e-mail to the site owner
• Performance budgets for LCP, INP, CLS and TTFB
• LCP hints and lazy loading, speculation rules
• Page profiler: audit single pages or batches of up to 50 URLs of your own site
• Asset inventory: every script and stylesheet handle with its owner
• Database health: autoloaded options, expired transients, overdue cron, and the heaviest autoloaded options with the plugin that wrote them
• Cache plugin coexistence
• Safe Mode, rollback manager and recovery drill

Pro add-on (separate plugin, not part of this download)

• The Optimiser: asset rules (defer, async, delay until interaction, dequeue, preload, preconnect), critical CSS, WebP and AVIF image conversion, autoload and transient cleanup
• Rules that take themselves back when real visitors measure a regression
• Regression alerts to Telegram, Slack or your own webhook
• CSV export of field data
• AI Performance Advisor, which reads your field data and returns an ordered plan without applying anything
• Scheduled lab audits through your own PageSpeed Insights key, which also check the Total Blocking Time budget

The free plugin’s own requests all go to your own site. Details are under External services.

Documentation: https://velocityforge.app/docs/

External services

Field data from the beacon is stored in your own database and is never sent anywhere by this plugin. The separate Pro add-on, if you add it, lists its own requests in its readme.

This free plugin’s own performance work does make HTTP requests, and every one of them is aimed at your own site: the page profiler fetches the pages of this site you audit or batch-scan (a URL on another host is refused), the regression monitor fetches your front page after you update a plugin or theme so it can compare the assets before and after, the asset inventory sends a HEAD request to each script and stylesheet your pages load from this site to read its size (assets served from other hosts are listed without one), and the recovery drill makes a real loopback request to your own secret panic route when you press its button. None of them is aimed at us or at anyone else.

The code also names some third-party hosts — js.stripe.com, paypal.com/sdk, www.google.com/recaptcha, challenges.cloudflare.com and the chat widgets of Intercom, Drift, HubSpot, Crisp, Tawk.to, Zendesk and Olark. They are match patterns, not services: a script from one of them that is already on your pages is recognised and left alone, so payments, captchas and chat keep working. This plugin never connects to any of them.

Telemetry. This free plugin sends no telemetry and has no switch for it. With the separate VelocityForge Pro add-on installed, Settings shows “Share anonymous usage signals” and “Also include sanitised error context”, both off by default, and Pro sends nothing until you turn the first on. When the last Forge plugin or add-on on a site is deleted, everything Forge stored on the site is removed, on every site of a network (the statistics settings and the install ID included); a plugin’s own content follows its own “delete data” setting. While another Forge product stays, only the deleted one’s own share goes.

Bundled libraries

• web-vitals 4.2.4 by Google Chrome, licensed Apache-2.0 (compatible with this plugin’s GPLv2-or-later). This is the script that measures LCP / INP / CLS / TTFB / FCP in the visitor’s browser. It is bundled with the plugin and served from your own site — it is not loaded from a CDN, and it makes no request of its own. Source: https://github.com/GoogleChrome/web-vitals

The Pro add-on

The Pro add-on is a separate plugin with its own readme, and the requests it makes are described there. This plugin makes none of them.