I have to work with a WordPress installation that wasn’t mine, and I need to work out some things to optimize performance.
Among other things, I’ve found that almost every single URL, specially for static files, is appended with a query string, and it’s always the same:
- https://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/gfi-150×42.png?e1e0dc
- https://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/healthline-150×42.png?e1e0dc
And so on.
Does anybody know a plugin that can be causing this? I have the following installed, and i can’t find the one causing it or if it’s something else:
- Advanced Custom Fields
- Akismet
- Category Post Widget
- Contact Form 7
- Envato WordPress Toolkit
- Forms: 3rd-Party Integration
- Google XML Sitemaps
- LayerSlider WP
- Ready! Backup
- Ready! Backup PRO
- Redirection
- Remove query strings from static resources
- Special Recent Posts FREE Edition
- Twoot ToolKit
- W3 Total Cache
- Wickett Twitter Widget
- WordPress-to-Lead for Salesforce CRM
- WordPress HTTPS
- WordPress SEO
- WP-PageNavi
You can remove query strings from theme resources (css and javascript files) with this in your theme’s
functions.php
file:As for query strings from plugins, I assume that will be a similar fix in each plugin.
Appending a version number as a URL query string is a common cache-busting solution.
It looks like W3 Total Cache may be the culprit here. Their website says that one of the features is:
According to the author of the plugin, you can disable this feature: