The Tool Desk
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What speculative loading does
Speculative loading uses the browser’s Speculation Rules API to identify likely next navigations. WordPress describes the API as one that can “automatically prefetch or prerender certain URLs on the page, which can lead to near-instant page load times.” The browser receives rules describing which links are candidates and how aggressively to prepare them.
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This is a progressive enhancement, not a replacement for ordinary navigation. A browser that understands the API may start work before a click. A browser that does not understand it ignores the rules and follows the link normally.
Prefetch and prerender are different
| Mode | What the browser does | Main benefit | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prefetch | Downloads the target document ahead of navigation. | Reduces the document request and download time after a click. | Consumes bandwidth and some server capacity when the visitor never follows the link. |
| Prerender | Prepares the page more fully and may run its JavaScript before navigation. | Can make a supported navigation feel closer to instantaneous. | More bandwidth, CPU and memory use; analytics, personalization or other scripts can run even without a click. |
For most sites, prefetch is the sensible first configuration. Prerender is an optimization to introduce deliberately, after checking what the destination page and its scripts do when opened speculatively.
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Requirements before you enable it
- WordPress version: native support starts in WordPress 6.8. If the site is older, install the official Speculative Loading plugin instead of assuming core will emit rules.
- Pretty permalinks: core does not emit speculative rules for sites without pretty permalinks. Check the setting at Settings → Permalinks and use a post-name, day-and-name, month-and-name, numeric, custom or other non-plain structure appropriate to the site.
- Visitor state: core’s default behavior targets logged-out front-end requests. A logged-in request normally receives no speculative rules unless you deliberately opt in through the plugin’s controls.
- Test location: evaluate the public site as a logged-out visitor, not only while signed in as an administrator. Caching, cookies and user-specific templates can change the emitted result.
- Browser: Chromium-based browsers such as Chrome, Edge and Opera support the functionality documented by the plugin from version 121 onward. Safari and Firefox ignore the rules without breaking links.
Enable WordPress core support in 6.8 or newer
- Update WordPress. Bring the installation to 6.8 or a later release using the normal dashboard update process or your existing deployment workflow. Back up the site and test the update in a staging environment when your release process requires it.
- Confirm the permalink structure. Open Settings → Permalinks, select a pretty permalink structure, and save only if a change is required. Existing sites should account for redirects and any cached URLs before changing this setting.
- Open a public page while logged out. Use a private window or sign out. Visit a page that contains ordinary internal links to the content visitors commonly read next.
- Inspect the emitted markup. View the page source and search for
speculationrules. In a working core configuration you should find a script element whose type isspeculationrules, along with candidate rules for eligible links. - Start with the core default. Do not switch to prerender merely because it sounds faster. Core’s conservative prefetch setting limits work on links that are never followed and gives you a baseline for monitoring.
If the script element is present, the WordPress side is emitting rules. Whether a browser acts on an individual candidate still depends on its support, its interpretation of the eagerness setting, the link’s eligibility and runtime conditions such as available resources.
Use the official plugin for a settings interface or older sites
The WordPress Performance Team’s Speculative Loading plugin is useful when the site is below 6.8 or when editors need controls in the dashboard rather than a PHP deployment. It exposes mode and eagerness under Settings → Reading → Speculative Loading.
- Sign in with permission to manage plugins.
- Go to Plugins → Add New.
- Search for Speculative Loading, install the plugin published by the WordPress Performance Team, and activate it.
- Open Settings → Reading → Speculative Loading.
- Choose Prefetch or Prerender, then choose the eagerness level.
- Save the settings and repeat the logged-out source and network checks described later in this guide.
The plugin defaults to prerender with moderate eagerness. That combination can improve perceived navigation speed, but it can also perform substantially more work than WordPress core’s conservative prefetch. Treat the default as a starting point for evaluation, not as a universal recommendation.
When the plugin and core overlap
On WordPress 6.8 and newer, core already provides a conservative configuration. Installing the plugin adds a user interface and policy controls; it is not necessary simply to make the API exist. Decide which layer should own the setting in your deployment process so a plugin change, theme change and PHP filter do not compete to produce an unexpected result.
Configure the mode and eagerness in PHP
Developers can use the public wp_speculation_rules_configuration filter introduced in WordPress 6.8. The callback must return a configuration array with a valid mode and eagerness value.
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add_filter( 'wp_speculation_rules_configuration', function ( $config ) {
return array(
'mode' => 'prefetch', // 'prefetch' or 'prerender'
'eagerness' => 'conservative', // 'eager', 'moderate', or 'conservative'
);
} );Place this in a site-specific plugin or another controlled code location rather than editing WordPress core. The filter’s return value replaces the configuration for that request.
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Disable rules for a request
Return null from the same filter when a particular request must not receive speculative loading. This is useful for conditional policies, such as disabling the feature on a specialized response, while leaving the normal front-end configuration intact.
add_filter( 'wp_speculation_rules_configuration', function ( $config ) {
return null;
} );Use that example only where the condition is intentional; an unconditional callback disables the feature everywhere it runs.
Add narrowly targeted rules
WordPress also provides the wp_load_speculation_rules action for adding rules. Use the action to extend the normal behavior for a narrow, well-understood case. Replacing core’s complete rule set wholesale makes future changes harder to adopt and increases the chance of speculating on links that should be excluded.
The internal WP_Speculation_Rules class validates modes and is marked private for core use. Theme and plugin authors should rely on the documented filter and action rather than calling that class directly.
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Choose a safe eagerness level
| Eagerness | When work begins | Bandwidth and CPU profile | Good starting use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | Near an actual click or a very strong intent signal. | Lowest waste; the smallest pool of speculative requests. | Default for a production site and the preferred first test. |
| Moderate | With a stronger signal such as hovering a link. | More opportunities for a faster navigation, with more requests that may never be used. | Sites with good caching and predictable internal navigation after measuring the conservative baseline. |
| Eager | With weak intent signals. | Highest risk of wasted bandwidth, CPU and server work. | Only when traffic patterns, capacity and page behavior justify the extra work. |
Evaluate a setting on four separate axes: how quickly a followed link becomes usable, how much work is wasted on abandoned candidates, what JavaScript does before a click, and whether the destination is safe to request for the current visitor.
Keep sensitive and state-changing URLs out
Speculation is appropriate for ordinary, cacheable content pages. It is not appropriate for URLs whose request changes state, reveals private information or depends heavily on the current user.
- Checkout and cart routes
- Account, login, logout and password-management routes
- Administration screens
- Destructive actions such as deletion, cancellation or subscription changes
- Forms and endpoints that mutate state on a request
- Highly personalized pages where a speculative request could prime the wrong session or expose user-specific work
The official plugin supports path exclusions through a filter. Use that mechanism to express site-wide exclusions instead of relying on a visual convention in navigation menus. Review both pretty and alternate URL forms, including language prefixes, trailing-slash variants and routes generated by plugins.
Opt out an individual link
Add the no-prerender CSS class to a link that must not be prerendered:
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Decide whether logged-in visitors should receive rules
Logged-in traffic is a separate capacity decision. The plugin documents opt-in controls for all logged-in users or for administrators, while administration screens remain excluded. Enabling the feature for authenticated sessions can multiply requests against pages that are personalized or bypass full-page caches.
Before opting in, check server capacity, persistent object caching and the way the site constructs user-specific responses. A speculative request that is cheap for a public, cached article can be expensive for a dashboard-like page. Roll out to a limited group first if the plugin’s controls and your operational process allow it, then watch request volume and cache behavior.
Verify that it is working
- Check the prerequisite state. Confirm the WordPress version, the active plugin if the site is older than 6.8, pretty permalinks and the login state of the test browser.
- Inspect page source. Search for
<script type='speculationrules'>and examine the candidate rules. Absence on a logged-in request or a site using plain permalinks can be expected under core defaults. - Use browser developer tools. Open the Network panel, preserve the log, and load a page with likely next links. Filter requests by the destination path and look for activity before clicking.
- Test a representative click. Follow an internal link that should be eligible. Compare the timing and request sequence with a fresh private-window visit, recognizing that cache state and browser support affect the result.
- Check the Performance panel when testing prerender. Look for work performed before the navigation and identify scripts that initialize analytics, personalization or other client-side behavior.
- Test exclusions. Confirm excluded paths and links carrying
no-prerenderdo not become candidates. Test both menu links and links rendered inside content or widgets. - Review server telemetry. Watch origin request counts, cache-hit rate, response status codes, bandwidth and application logs after changing mode or eagerness.
- Repeat for authenticated traffic. If logged-in opt-in is enabled, test an ordinary user session and an administrator session separately; do not infer their behavior from a logged-out test.
Troubleshoot common results
No speculation-rules script appears
First check that the request is logged out and that the site uses a pretty permalink structure. On a pre-6.8 installation, verify that the Speculative Loading plugin is active. A caching layer may also be serving an older HTML response, so purge or bypass that cache and inspect a newly generated page.
The script appears, but no network request starts
Confirm that the test browser supports the API and that the link is an eligible candidate. Safari and Firefox ignore the rules, and Chromium-based support documented by the plugin starts at version 121. Conservative eagerness may wait until the visitor shows strong intent, so move the pointer toward the link or click it while watching the Network panel.
Traffic or server load increases
Reduce eagerness from eager to moderate or conservative, and consider prefetch instead of prerender. Exclude high-cost and stateful paths. Check whether a cache miss, a personalized response or a plugin-generated endpoint is receiving speculative requests. Keep the change only if the navigation benefit justifies the additional work.
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Analytics or personalization fires too early
This is a known prerender trade-off because page JavaScript may run before a navigation. Move the site back to prefetch, lower eagerness, or exclude the affected destination. Audit scripts that record page views, allocate experiments, issue tokens or make mutations during initialization.
A link that should be excluded is still prepared
Inspect the final rendered anchor, not only the template source, and verify the exact path presented to the browser. Apply the plugin’s path-exclusion filter for a route family or add no-prerender to the individual link. Clear HTML and browser caches before retesting so an earlier rules block is not being reused.
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Understand performance claims and limits
There is no single percentage improvement that applies to every WordPress site. The result depends on browser support, cache state, page weight, network conditions and whether a speculative request is actually used. A prerendered page can feel dramatically faster for a followed link, while an abandoned candidate produces work with no visitor-visible benefit.
Measure on the site that will run the feature. Record a baseline with the existing cache and traffic pattern, then change one variable at a time: mode, eagerness or an exclusion. Compare navigation timing, cache-hit rate, origin requests, bandwidth and client-side side effects. Do not present a lab result from one browser or one page as a universal WordPress speed guarantee.
A practical rollout plan
- Start on staging with WordPress 6.8 or later and a representative theme and plugin set.
- Use core’s conservative prefetch configuration, or set the equivalent values with the documented filter.
- List every route that can mutate state or expose personalized data and exclude those paths before broader testing.
- Test logged-out navigation in supported Chromium-based browsers and confirm unsupported browsers still navigate normally.
- Review server and analytics telemetry for a meaningful traffic window rather than judging from one click.
- Only then consider moderate eagerness or prerender for selected public content, with a rollback path to prefetch.
- If the site needs editor-facing controls or runs below WordPress 6.8, use the official plugin and document who owns its settings.
Bottom line
For a current WordPress site, enabling speculative loading usually means running WordPress 6.8 or newer, keeping pretty permalinks enabled, and verifying the emitted speculation-rules script while logged out. Begin with conservative prefetch. Move to the plugin’s prerender or moderate settings, or add a PHP configuration, only after excluding sensitive routes and measuring the extra server and JavaScript work. Unsupported browsers continue to work normally, so the feature can be introduced incrementally rather than treated as a requirement for every visitor.
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