This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

Heartbeat Control

Description

Heartbeat Control by WP Rocket allows you to manage the frequency of the WordPress heartbeat API in a few clicks.

The WordPress Heartbeat API is a great feature that provides real-time communication between the server and the browser when you are logged into your WordPress admin panel. It uses the file /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php to run AJAX calls from the browser. By default, AJAX requests are sent every 15 seconds on post edit pages, and every 60 seconds on the dashboard.

This is indeed helpful; but if you usually leave your WordPress admin open for long periods (for example when you write or edit posts), the AJAX requests from the API can pile up and generate high CPU usage, leading to server performance issues and even hosting account suspensions.

With Heartbeat Control by WP Rocket, you can easily choose to limit or completely stop the activity of the WordPress Heartbeat API. You can also add rules for specific locations only (Dashboard, Frontend or Post Editor).

To learn more about WordPress performance optimization and make your website faster, join our WP Rocket Facebook Community!

Related Plugins

  • WP Rocket: Best caching plugin to speed-up your WordPress website.
  • Lazy Load by WP Rocket: Best Lazy Load script to reduce the number of HTTP requests and improves the websites loading time.
  • Imagify: Best Image Optimizer to speed up your website with lighter images.

Screenshots

  • Heartbeat Settings
  • Modify Heartbeat frequency precisely

Installation

  1. Upload the plugin folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
  2. Activate Heartbeat Control on the Plugins page.
  3. Adjust any settings within Settings > Heartbeat Control.

FAQ

How do I change my settings?

All options are located within Settings > Heartbeat Control.

Why would I want to change the default heartbeat intervals?

If you commonly leave your WordPress admin up for long periods of time, especially while writing or editing a post, the repeated POST requests can cause high resource usage. To avoid this, the heartbeat can be modified or even disabled to lower your server resource usage.

Where do I report security bugs found in this plugin?

You can report any security bugs found in the source code of the site-reviews plugin through the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Program. The Patchstack team will assist you with verification, CVE assignment and take care of notifying the developers of this plugin.

Reviews

June 17, 2024
Hi, I started to use your extension after the end of Clearfy plugin. And it does the job, but I have problem 3 times with new article not saved. When I work on article, I often open many tabs and sometime, my browser, Firefox, block and I need to close it and reopen it. Normaly, I can find a backup of the article on wordpress, but 3 times recently, the article had completely disappeared. It’s terrible when you spend time on an article, sometimes more than an hour, to then discover that there’s nothing left, that all the work has to be redone. I deactivated heartbeat on the dashboard and on the site, and kept it only for the editor. I’ve changed the editor to 20, I imagine it’s 20 seconds, but will that be enough? When I’m working on a new article now, I save it when I think of it, but sometimes I forget, like today. What else can I do to make sure that the plugin doesn’t prevent Wordpress from saving automatically? Thanks a lot!
February 8, 2024
I was suffering from 8-10 second delays between page loads. I tried everything I could think of to track it down, and neither tech support at Elegant Themes (DIVI Theme) nor my web hosting company Inmotion Hosting could find anything wrong as to the cause. Finally, I thought I’d try this this plug-in on a whim to see if the Heartbeat API was the cause. It was. I simply disabled the Heartbeat API on the front end using the Heartbeat Control plug-in and my pages were loading how they should without page caching in a fraction of a second. Later applied it to disable the back-end admin dashboard Heartbeat API and set the post editor heartbeat to 62 seconds (as many things seem to run on the exact minute). Simple to use interface, quick and convenient. This is an essential plug for WordPress.
July 13, 2023
Much appreciate this plugin which allows me to have more control over optimizing my site – and for free.
January 5, 2023
Ancient plugin, untested, produce errors as soon as you activate it: The plugin generated 630 characters of unexpected output during activation Also has errors on it’s dashboard menu, trying to ping wordpress.org resulting in 404 error. Old bad, dangerous. Remove it from your site and WP repository.
Read all 69 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Heartbeat Control” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“Heartbeat Control” has been translated into 11 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Heartbeat Control” into your language.

Interested in development?

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

Changelog

2.0.1

  • Fix PHP warnings & deprecated notices

2.0 – 2019/11/04

  • Revamp the settings page.

1.2.5

  • Fixed issue caused by previous version deployment.
  • Added hbc_disable_notice hook to force dismissal of update notices.
  • Additional documentation added.
  • Minor standards adjustments.

1.2.4

  • Updated CMB2 to 2.4.2.
  • Bumpted “tested up to” version.
  • Fixed a bug that occurred if no locations were selected.
  • Minor standards adjustments.

1.2.3

  • Added composer.json and composer.lock that were missing.
  • Updated CMB2 to 2.3
  • Translation files generated.
  • Language path and text domain added to plugin header.
  • Bumped compatible WP version.

1.2.2

  • Minor bugfixes.

1.2.1

  • Fixed issue that would cause some users to not see the modification slider.

1.2

  • Added conditional logic.
  • Multiple actions can now be performed.
  • Scripts are bundled and minified.
  • Changes to settings structure.
  • Miscellaneous bugfixes.

1.1.3

  • Readme updates.

1.1.2

  • Bugfixes.
  • Resolves potential fatal error mistakenly pushed to 1.1.

1.1.1

  • Bugfixes.

1.1

  • Rewritten from the ground up for future extensibility.
  • Performance enhancements.
  • Improved UI.
  • Better handling for late calls to the Heartbeat API.
  • New condition settings for filtering on the frontend.

1.0.2

  • Bumped tested version
  • Added donation button

1.0

  • Initial release.