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Falcon – WordPress Optimizations & Tweaks

Falcon – WordPress Optimizations & Tweaks

By Anh Tran
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Description

Falcon is a lightweight WordPress plugin that helps you speed up your site, harden security, clean up bloat, and fine-tune how WordPress works — without a heavy stack of separate tools.

Toggle only what you need from a clear settings UI. Export and import settings to reuse the same setup across sites.

Features

Performance

Make pages load faster and cut unnecessary front-end work.

  • HTML page cache — serve static HTML and skip WordPress, themes, and plugins on cache hits
  • Disable Heartbeat to reduce server load
  • Remove ?ver= query strings from CSS/JS for better browser caching
  • Disable emoji scripts and styles
  • Remove jQuery Migrate on the front end
  • Load selected CSS files asynchronously to reduce render-blocking

Security

Reduce common attack surfaces and protect your content.

  • Limit login attempts (block an IP after 3 failed tries for 1 hour)
  • Hide detailed login error messages
  • Force login to view the site
  • Disable the REST API for unauthenticated requests
  • Disable XML-RPC
  • Restrict upload file types (including WebP and AVIF when enabled)
  • Comment spam protection with a simple honeypot
  • Block common AI crawlers via robots.txt
  • Use scheme-less asset URLs to avoid mixed content warnings

Cleanup

Strip unused markup and keep the database lean.

Header

  • Hide WordPress version
  • Remove shortlink, REST API link, adjacent posts links, feed links, RSD link, and WLW manifest link

Admin

  • Use the site icon on the login screen
  • Hide update nags
  • Remove default dashboard widgets
  • Remove admin footer text and the WordPress admin bar logo

Frontend

  • Disable embeds
  • Clean up menu item classes and IDs
  • Remove Recent Comments widget CSS

Database

  • Clean revisions, auto drafts, trashed posts, spam/trashed comments, expired transients, orphaned meta, unused terms, and optimize tables

Content

Control the editor, comments, media, and publishing behavior.

Editor

  • Disable the block editor (Gutenberg) and use the classic editor
  • Disable post revisions
  • Disable texturize (smart quotes and auto formatting)

Comments

  • Disable comments site-wide
  • Remove the website field from the comment form

Media

  • Disable thumbnail generation
  • Disable big image scaling
  • Disable EXIF-based image rotation

Publishing

  • Limit front-end search to posts only
  • Disable self pingbacks

System

Site-wide controls for maintenance and WordPress internals.

  • Maintenance mode (customize the message with maintenance.php in the active theme)
  • Block external HTTP requests
  • Disable application passwords
  • Disable auto-updates
  • Disable WP-Cron (use a real server cron instead)
  • Remove privacy tools from the admin menu

Email

Cut noisy notifications and send mail reliably.

Notifications

  • Disable admin email verification prompts
  • Disable update notification emails
  • Disable new user emails to admins
  • Disable password change/reset emails

Delivery

  • Change the default from name and email address
  • Send WordPress email via SMTP

You might also like

If you like this plugin, you might also like our other WordPress products:

  • Meta Box – A powerful WordPress plugin for creating custom post types and custom fields.
  • Slim SEO – A fast, lightweight and full-featured SEO plugin for WordPress with minimal configuration.
  • GretaThemes – Free and premium WordPress themes that clean, simple and just work.
  • Auto Listings – A car sale and dealership plugin for WordPress.

Screenshots

Installation

Go to Dashboard | Plugins | Add New and search for Falcon. Then install and activate the plugin.

FAQ

Where do I report security bugs found in this plugin?

Please report security bugs found in the source code of the Falcon – WordPress Optimizations & Tweaks plugin through the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Program. The Patchstack team will assist you with verification, CVE assignment, and notify the developers of this plugin.

Reviews

The plugin I didn’t realize I needed

December 22, 2025
This plugin is simply great. It’s lightweight, unobtrusive, replaces a bunch of other plugins, and makes a site noticeably faster and cleaner. Definitely deserves more attention and installs!

Great!

December 9, 2023
Finally, after manually disabling all that stuff I don’t need in my Themes and wondering why it didn’t work half of the time, I can finally rely on a simple but powerful plugin. Thanks!

Good plugin except…

November 17, 2023
Firstly I would rate this plugin with 5 stars. However I found an issue in the Assets tab section for : Cleanup nav menu item ID & classes It was enabled by default. So mega menu pages and mega menu drop down was not working. I had to disable manually and my menus are working perfectly. I would advise the developer to disable it by default so that majority customers don’t need to fix their menu not working issues.

Nice!

November 20, 2020
Simple and works! I’m using it in all my sites. Thanks!
Read all 10 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Falcon – WordPress Optimizations & Tweaks” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“Falcon – WordPress Optimizations & Tweaks” has been translated into 2 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Falcon – WordPress Optimizations & Tweaks” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

2.11.0 – 2026-07-12

Highlight

  • Database cleanup: Clean revisions, drafts, trash, spam, expired transients, orphaned meta, unused terms, and optimize tables. (#26)
  • Limit login attempts: Block an IP after 3 failed logins for 1 hour. (#25)
  • Allow .avif uploads when restricting file types. (#24)
  • Customize maintenance mode via maintenance.php in the active theme.

Other changes

  • Reorganize settings into grouped tabs with sub-tabs.
  • Polish settings copy and option descriptions.
  • Add a documentation link in the settings tabs bar.
  • Fix cache clearing when an approved comment is inserted.
  • Harden cache cleanup and request URI handling on PHP 8.

2.10.1 – 2026-05-12

  • Fix serving the same cache for URL with and without query string
  • Clear cache only when a comment is approve

2.10.0 – 2026-04-18

  • Add new security module: Comment spam protection. Enable it under Security tab.

2.9.3 – 2026-01-21

  • Improve check for not caching search result pages

2.9.2 – 2025-12-23

  • Allow to upload WEBP images if enable restrict upload file types module
  • Fix PHP warning when deleting cache dir

2.9.1 – 2025-12-19

  • Fix not creating cache dir after cleaning

2.9.0 – 2025-12-19

  • Cache module (HTML page cache): A lightweight yet powerful caching module to improve page load times and reduce server load by caching full HTML pages. Just enable it in the General tab and you’re good to go.
    • Recommended for standard blogs and brochure-style websites.
    • Not recommended for highly dynamic or eCommerce sites.
  • Settings export & import: Export your plugin settings to a file and import them on other sites to quickly reuse the same configuration.

2.8.6 – 2025-10-20

  • Remove admin bar item when disable comments

2.8.5 – 2025-02-06

  • Search posts only: exclude admin and rest API requests
  • Do not enable “No Gutenberg” and “Search Posts Only” by default
  • No Gutenberg: remove support for post types

2.8.4 – 2024-11-22

  • Fix not showing site icon in the login page
  • Fix security for sending test email

2.8.3 – 2024-05-17

  • Disable XML-RPC methods
  • Fix: activation error on ajax request
  • Update fix word disable detailed login errors

2.8.2 – 2024-03-17

  • Add a link to the settings page in the plugin meta row
  • Auto redirect to the settings page after activation

2.8.1 – 2024-02-28

  • Add options to change default email from name and address
  • Add more AI bots to the block list

2.8.0 – 2024-02-20

  • Add SMTP configuration
  • Add maintenance mode
  • Add block AI bots option
  • Add force login option

2.7.2 – 2023-12-11

  • Fix not loading email options
  • Fix remove dashboard widgets not removing welcome panel

2.7.1 – 2023-12-07

  • Add options for no emails when a new user is registered and users reset their passwords
  • Fix error when disabling all features. Closes #17.

2.7.0 – 2023-12-07

  • Update hook for disable core update email notification
  • Fix removing update nag not working
  • Add a new security tab with options to disable login errors and restrict upload file types

2.6.0 – 2023-12-03

  • Update the plugin style

2.5.0 – 2023-09-18

  • Add: Disable comments
  • Add: Remove website field from comment form
  • Add: Search only posts
  • Add: Disable replacing text with formatted entities like smart quotes, dashes, ellipses, etc.
  • Add: Disable scaling down big images
  • Add: Disable automatic image rotation based on EXIF data
  • Add: Disable thumbnail generation

2.4.1 – 2023-08-14

  • Remove classic theme styles for button blocks
  • Remove Jetpack widget

2.4.0 – 2023-08-02

  • Add asynchronous load CSS

2.3.0 – 2023-07-11

  • Disable cron
  • Disable auto updates
  • Block external requests
  • Fix missing current ancestor class for menu

2.2.0 – 2023-01-18

  • Cleanup nav menu item ID & classes
  • Disable privacy tools
  • Remove application passwords

2.1.0 – 2022-12-27

  • Add disable XML-RPC
  • Add disable Gutenberg
  • Add disable REST API
  • Add a set of admin tweaks
  • Organize features in tabs and update styling

2.0.5

  • Update compatibility tag

2.0.4

  • Fix missing vendor folder

2.0.3

  • Remove jQuery Migrate in the WordPress admin as well

2.0.2

  • Fix PHP warning when blocking self-pings
  • Fix textdomain

2.0.1

  • Fix auto-deployment

2.0.0

  • Re-add settings page
  • Update disble embeds module

1.3.1

  • Update compatibility with the latest version of WordPress
  • Fix not working with WP-CLI

1.3.0

  • Remove settings page
  • Do not use jQuery from Google CDN for better compatibility
  • Remove support for loading CSS async

1.2.4

  • Add option to use latest version of jQuery
  • Add option to exclude static resources from removing query string

1.2.3

  • Downgrade jQuery to 2.2.4 for better compatibility

1.2.2

  • Fix: File name case-sensitive

1.2.1

  • Fix: Load PHP file using absolute path.

1.2

  • New: Load CSS asynchronously (and selectively).
  • Fix: No error in the login page.
  • Requires PHP 5.4

1.1.1

  • Fix not loading file for media.

1.1

  • Remove Jetpack devicex script.
  • Requires PHP 5.3.

1.0.3

  • Update jQuery to 2.2.4

1.0.2

  • Use jQuery from Google CDN

1.0.1

  • Sets scheme-less URLs for JS and CSS files, e.g. removes ‘http:’ and ‘https:’ from URLs.

1.0.0

  • Initial release

Meta

Ratings

5 out of 5 stars.

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