Issue #154 Loop

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Hi, friend. 👋

Welcome to Issue #154 of Loop WP!

Last week, we looked at some reactions from the community and discussed Mary Hubbard’s announcement of WordPress’s new yearly release cycle in more detail.

This week, we examine one of WordPress 6.8’s new features, Speculative Loading, and explain why you might not want to enable it.

Let’s go! 👇

Speculative Loading

WordPress 6.8, the first and only major release of the year, included speculative loading in Core.

🧠 If you aren’t sure what speculative loading is and why I even ask the question at the end of this section, you can read these articles:

• Speculative Loading in WordPress 6.8 (Press Wizards)

• Speculative Loading Context and Default Behaviour (WordPress)

• How it works, caveats and privacy concerns (Kinsta)

The last link is particularly notable (not just because it discusses early implementations) as it discusses potential data leaking issues and exclusion rules that will need to be applied.

🚨 Speculative loading has been around for a while in the form of a performance plugin.

You can still download and use the speculative loading plugin, and you may want to do so as the Core implementation has no UI and can (currently) only be controlled through filters.

The speculative loading plugin will give you:

• Extra control over speculative loading settings.

• A user interface (UI) for those settings.

💡 With currently 74.42% support, speculative loading won’t work in every browser, notably Safari and Firefox.

However, should you leave it enabled in WordPress for those browsers that do support it? 👇

To Speculate or Not to Speculate?

Didn’t read those articles, friend?

✅ No worries, Paul Charlton from WP Tuts explains why you might want to turn off speculative loading in Core, and why it might not be ideal for your site (especially on shared hosting):

🧠 I also have concerns about speculative loading, particularly when it comes to other WordPress plugins and their interactions with Core (for example, WooCommerce).

I asked Brian Jackson from Perfmatters about his thoughts on speculative loading, and he said:

Perfmatters is a plugin that gives you more control over speculative loading in Core, and much more. I’ve been using it on my website for years.

For client sites, I have been using a combination of Perfmatters and WP Rocket.

Both offer prefetch and preload functionality, among other features.

⚡️ WP Rocket’s link preload feature is not the same as speculative loading, so it will be interesting to see whether they introduce support for it similar to Perfmatters.

Concluding Thoughts

🤔 Should you turn off speculative loading or leave it enabled? Well, that depends, friend.

• Are you using cheap shared hosting?

• Do you have lingering concerns about potential data leaking?

• Or worries about potential breaking issues with your website?

🧠 Once you’ve read everything in this newsletter, you can answer those questions for yourself (if they apply) and decide.

✅ I would guess for a lot of people (as Brian said), it would be safe to roll with the Core implementation, but also to:

• Test your website thoroughly.

• Install Perfmatters or the Speculative Loading plugin to gain more control through a UI.

Community Questions

🎉 Hats off to Felix Arntz, who has been one of the main drivers behind this and has answered even more questions from the community:

• Will there be any concerns with pixels and tracking services related to Speculative Loading? - There shouldn’t be.

• How does this work with the core logout link in the main nav for logged-in users? - Smart URL pattern exclusions.

• Why can't it work in admin on link hover? - It’s not that it can’t, but it’s risky.

Speculation…It’s The Way You Make Me Feel

🎶 I don’t know about you, friend, (and I’m showing my age), but when I was thinking about speculative loading, I couldn’t help thinking about “speculation” replacing “fascination” in this classic piece of wonky pop. 👇

Sponsorship Opportunities

🚨 The Google Doc contains all the details if you’re interested in sponsoring the Loop WP Newsletter.

That’s It For This Week 👋

⏭️ Something is stirring in WordPress (again), hard to know what it is yet, but I’m hoping it’s another positive step forward:

Matt has also confirmed that it will be for all accounts, and, of course, there are conditions.

See you next week! 😀

Weekly WordPress News & Tips

This week's excellent and insightful WordPress News & Tips:

• Beta Alert! - Core Framework - 1.8.0 Beta Announcement, BEM Generator, Grid Variables and more! (Core Framework)

• Exciting Times! - 5 Things I’m Looking Forward to at PressConf. (The Repository)

• Minor Release? - Defining Minor Releases for WordPress 6.8.x (Aaron Jorbin)

• ShopShield - The Ultimate Tool For WooCommerce Performance. (Rocket.net)

• Relume is 😎 - 100% Usable AI Web Design Tools 2025. (WP Tuts)

• Replit vs Cursor - From the POV of someone new to AI coding. (Maddy Osman)

• Performance Boost - How to speed up your WordPress admin dashboard (back-end and editor). (Perfmatters)

• Whoops - Developer Advisory -Stripe Payment Gateway 9.4.0 Improvement. (WooCommerce)

• Food for Thought - Can AI Help WordPress Freelancers Make More Money (The WP Minute)

• Disagreement - WordPress Slows to One Major Release Per Year — And Not Everyone Agrees With How It Happened (The Repository)

• AI Services 0.6.1 - This release adds multimodal output, letting you create both text and images using a single model. Other enhancements include PHP+JS code previews in the AI Playground and more. (Felix Arntz)

• Hoverify Replacement? - The BEST FREE Tool for Responsive Web Design Testing - Responsively! (WP Tuts)

If you have a question about this email or WordPress, reply, and I will answer you as soon as possible.

👋 Until next time,