Allegations made by a competitor

So in your response that you linked to you said this only happens when the first option is checked and somebody purposefully enters in the scripts they want to do this to. However, the same developer who initially brought this up put out a video showing that this also happens when another setting is checked.

So, uh, is this true? And if so, why is it doing this?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Anonymous User 13711045.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Anonymous User 13711045.

@davidanderson the weak point is in the video linked by @thekendog

The interaction with page-speed tools ONLY appears in “Defer selected Javascript files” feature’s description. You should ALSO add it to “Defer all the Javascript files”, which also interact with page-speed tools.

The job can be done with a slight change to the UI. There at least are 2 ways:

1. Don’t make that description disappearing when switching between option;

2. Include the interaction with page-speed tools to both feature’s description.

That’s a switch of what’s being talked about.

The competitor made a public allegation that WP-Optimize *deliberately* intends to *deceive* PageSpeed-like tools, and that this is a reason to abandon us as evil and buy their products instead. A leading WP news source was induced to run two articles framed under this framing, and Twitter users were induced to begin suggesting that the plugin should be cancelled.

We have refuted that comprehensively. Now the competitor apparently wants to make it seem that judging part of the UI confusing (rightly or wrongly) is the same thing as all that.

I have no problems with users with genuine questions about the user interface. In my programmer’s view, WP Optimize and every plugin needs years and years of work to improve an almost limitless list of issues. And we’re grateful for everything highlighted with genuine motives for improvement. Every maintained plugin’s changelog has lots of changes to improve things month after month. We will look at the UI as part of our normal development processes (and you can consider that issue lodged in our task tracker to be looked at). But we’re not going to get sucked into a public spat on the basis of a “bait and switch” with a competitor like that under the way it’s been framed. His allegations were dishonourable.

Since, as I say, the issue you’ve raised will be looked at as a normal development item and we’re not up for anything more than that, I am marking this topic as resolved, and thank you for your interest in the products we try to produce.

David

Though as a final word, for what it’s worth, our lead JS developer says that it’s just perverse of the competitor to claim that you wouldn’t expect the radio button marked “all” to do the same as what the radio button for only ‘some’ (individual entry) does. He compares it to complaining that your car breaks at 300 mph whereas the manual “only” says it shouldn’t be driven at 150 mph.

So you went scorched earth in your blog post and comments on here about Gijo and WP Tavern and said that it only happens when a specific setting is checked and specific files are manually input and the label clearly says this. Okay, I agree. Now, when presented with the fact that another option essentially is cheating page speed scores and excluding ALL files and it doesn’t have a label explaining what it does that the user should just expect it? Huh?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Anonymous User 13711045.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Anonymous User 13711045.

(Deleted my reply, because really I think my immediately preceding reply already addressed that, and I don’t want to waste people’s time. “All” is normally understood to be a superset of “some”, but whether or not that’s so, that’s a far cry from the allegations that were made).

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by David Anderson.

From your blog post, a quote from Peter Wilkinson…

To “cheat” the tools, you need to manually add the JS files you want to asynchronous load to a setting that clearly has the label “Use this if you have a completely independent script or would like to exclude scripts from page speed tests (PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix…)

And here you say…

Summary: Gijo achieved the result that he did by using a clearly labelled expert feature with explained possible use cases to do something else.

…but that’s not true? All he did was check a simple radio box that had no label explaining the possible use cases.

Regardless of the UI discussion, the whole crux of the argument was that the plugin is purposefully cheating page speed scores. Well, it is. Based on what you have said, the user should expect it to do this and therefore are knowingly cheating on page speed scores when they select this other option, which again, is different from the one you went all in on in your blog post.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Anonymous User 13711045.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Anonymous User 13711045.

@davidanderson your lead JS developer can be the best in class in their own field, but that missing label is a matter of UX, not JS.

We have option A and option B, mutually exclusive.

You can’t simply assume the user reads that label on option A, then switches to option B, then remembers the label even if not visible anymore, then “understand” the disappeared label on option A applies to option B too.

Just ask a UX specialist if a decent level of accuracy and consistency is there.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by masvil.

I’m a Wp-Optimize user and not to defend, but what a post on twitter I almost confirm is 99% inaccurate. Defer js is indeed recommended from various web speed testing tools and it’s legit, almost all other plugins do. In Wp-Optimize itself it is an option and not forced. And when I test, the js also loads fine. Hopefully my answer as a user can provide enlightenment, and hope this is not a bad market strategy from competitors.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by sonisitez.

@sonisitez deferring JS wasn’t the issue. Please read up on everything completely. The scripts aren’t being loaded at all on page speed testing sites when certain options are configured.

The problem is that 0(or 1 that is jQuery) scripts are loaded “only” for speed testing tools. And there’s 0 mention of this in the “Defer all JS feature”
I tested it and here are my findings.
PS. I’m not a competitor to wp optimize, and don’t have affiliations with anyone involved.
https://quvor.com/does-wp-optimize-really-cheat-pagespeed-scores/

I have no idea who is right or wrong here because I have no idea about this kind of codes.
As a user, I try all different types of settings to try to get the best speed results without really knowing what those settings do. Im sure I’m not the only person to do this.
I have really good results on google page speed tests with 100 on mobile and 100 on desktop.
Does this mean those scores are not true scores ?
i would like to know this answer because the settings for me to get those top speeds are those that say cheating was involved.
I guess I’m a noob when it comes to website code and even when it says Defer all JS
I would expect the plugin I’m using to be a real speed increase because I believe that that setting is the best setting to use for better speeds.
This is all really confusing and I would expect when a plugin has that option then it must be a genuine way to speed your site up.
If I use any other option in the settings other than Defer all JS then my speeds on tests fall to around the same as other plugins similar to this 1.
so my questing is why have that setting there in the first place if it really doesn’t work how it should ?