Title: Falcon – WordPress Optimizations & Tweaks Author: Anh Tran Published: December 29, 2015 Last modified: July 12, 2026 --- Search plugins ![](https://ps.w.org/falcon/assets/banner-772x250.png?rev=3424481) ![](https://ps.w.org/falcon/assets/icon.svg?rev=3052547) # Falcon – WordPress Optimizations & Tweaks By [Anh Tran](https://profiles.wordpress.org/rilwis/) [Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/falcon.2.11.0.zip) [Live Preview](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/falcon/?preview=1) * [Details](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/falcon/#description) * [Reviews](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/falcon/#reviews) * [Installation](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/falcon/#installation) * [Development](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/falcon/#developers) [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/falcon/) ## Description **[Falcon](https://wpfalcon.pro)** 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](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/performance/)󠁿 Make pages load faster and cut unnecessary front-end work. * [HTML page cache](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/performance/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](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/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](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/cleanup/header/)󠁿 Strip unused markup and keep the database lean. **[Header](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/cleanup/header/)** * Hide WordPress version * Remove shortlink, REST API link, adjacent posts links, feed links, RSD link, and WLW manifest link **[Admin](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/cleanup/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](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/cleanup/frontend/)** * Disable embeds * Clean up menu item classes and IDs * Remove Recent Comments widget CSS **[Database](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/cleanup/database/)** * Clean revisions, auto drafts, trashed posts, spam/trashed comments, expired transients, orphaned meta, unused terms, and optimize tables #### 󠀁[Content](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/content/editor/)󠁿 Control the editor, comments, media, and publishing behavior. **[Editor](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/content/editor/)** * Disable the block editor (Gutenberg) and use the classic editor * Disable post revisions * Disable texturize (smart quotes and auto formatting) **[Comments](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/content/comments/)** * Disable comments site-wide * Remove the website field from the comment form **[Media](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/content/media/)** * Disable thumbnail generation * Disable big image scaling * Disable EXIF-based image rotation **[Publishing](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/content/publishing/)** * Limit front-end search to posts only * Disable self pingbacks #### 󠀁[System](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/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](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/email/notifications/)󠁿 Cut noisy notifications and send mail reliably. **[Notifications](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/email/notifications/)** * Disable admin email verification prompts * Disable update notification emails * Disable new user emails to admins * Disable password change/reset emails **[Delivery](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/email/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](https://metabox.io) – A powerful WordPress plugin for creating custom post types and custom fields. * [Slim SEO](https://wpslimseo.com) – A fast, lightweight and full-featured SEO plugin for WordPress with minimal configuration. * [GretaThemes](https://gretathemes.com) – Free and premium WordPress themes that clean, simple and just work. * [Auto Listings](https://wpautolistings.com) – 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](https://patchstack.com/database/vdp/9e5fc06c-9bf1-4893-92b9-2cac4d0f24f0). The Patchstack team will assist you with verification, CVE assignment, and notify the developers of this plugin. ## Reviews ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/7770c002fed22f4652bf0cd081b2f17046590134a1296bc6df09af5c73a377ce? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[The plugin I didn’t realize I needed](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/the-plugin-i-didnt-realize-i-needed/)󠁿 [wiegertschouten](https://profiles.wordpress.org/wiegertschouten/) 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! ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/a2dd6eb715580c2b6afbd2e7fe0736846a0cd88525fa03d820b1235d02389f4a? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Hàng Việt Nam chất lượng cao!](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/hang-viet-nam-chat-luong-cao/)󠁿 [David Ha](https://profiles.wordpress.org/hathaihaojp/) August 16, 2024 Plugin hoạt động hiệu quả – nhiều tính năng tối ưu cần thiết cho website mà không bị lỗi. Điểm 10 chất lượng! ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/3b0d41417fd811227f83f8c5b2169b3387aa4eca18fbed1b76e61a9aca92ffa5? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Make your wordpress blazingly fast](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/make-your-wordpress-blazingly-fast/)󠁿 [3xploiton3](https://profiles.wordpress.org/3xploiton3/) July 17, 2024 Removed Unused Asset ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9493757460697cdfdf2d9084526a97f78323e3e82e6264a00e06cb996b9f2fca? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Great!](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-16025/)󠁿 [mundeee](https://profiles.wordpress.org/mundeee/) 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! ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/19b9c1cd28a5dc758050f1944247d9ca2492bb9d820da76a636bc4cb57769108? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Good plugin except…](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/good-plugin-except/)󠁿 [jahabar](https://profiles.wordpress.org/jahabar/) 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. ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/86fe8f3a0c9c4f15c339746414d4deeb12b07fa926c23e54bcfbfd54e44cbb51? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Nice!](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nice-3712/)󠁿 [gahia](https://profiles.wordpress.org/gahia/) November 20, 2020 Simple and works! I’m using it in all my sites. Thanks! [ Read all 10 reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/falcon/reviews/) ## Contributors & Developers “Falcon – WordPress Optimizations & Tweaks” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin. Contributors * [ Anh Tran ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/rilwis/) * [ eLightUp ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/elightup/) * [ truongwp ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/truongwp/) * [ Van Quyen ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/paracetamol27/) “Falcon – WordPress Optimizations & Tweaks” has been translated into 2 locales. Thank you to [the translators](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/falcon/contributors) for their contributions. [Translate “Falcon – WordPress Optimizations & Tweaks” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/falcon) ### Interested in development? [Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/falcon/), check out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/falcon/), or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/falcon/) by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/falcon/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=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](https://wpfalcon.pro/features/cache/) (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 * Version **2.11.0** * Last updated **2 days ago** * Active installations **2,000+** * WordPress version ** 6.7 or higher ** * Tested up to **7.0.1** * PHP version ** 7.4 or higher ** * Languages * [Chinese (Taiwan)](https://tw.wordpress.org/plugins/falcon/), [English (US)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/falcon/), and [Vietnamese](https://vi.wordpress.org/plugins/falcon/). * [Translate into your language](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/falcon) * Tags * [admin](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/admin/)[Optimize](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/optimize/) [performance](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/performance/)[speed](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/speed/) [tweaks](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/tweaks/) * [Advanced View](https://scn.wordpress.org/plugins/falcon/advanced/) ## Ratings 5 out of 5 stars. * [ 10 5-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/falcon/reviews/?filter=5) * [ 0 4-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/falcon/reviews/?filter=4) * [ 0 3-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/falcon/reviews/?filter=3) * [ 0 2-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/falcon/reviews/?filter=2) * [ 0 1-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/falcon/reviews/?filter=1) [Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/falcon/reviews/#new-post) [See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/falcon/reviews/) ## Contributors * [ Anh Tran ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/rilwis/) * [ eLightUp ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/elightup/) * [ truongwp ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/truongwp/) * [ Van Quyen ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/paracetamol27/) ## Support Got something to say? Need help? [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/falcon/)