Performant Transients

Skildring

This is a utility plugin for backporting a minor performance improvement scheduled for inclusion in WordPress 6.6 to earlier versions.

In WordPress 6.4 the function wp_prime_option_caches() was introduced to allow for multiple options to be queried in a single database call.

On sites without a persistent cache, temporary transients are stored in two options. One containing the transient itself, the other containing the timeout. These are stored as _transient_[transient name] and _transient_timeout_[transient name].

In WordPress 6.6 and later, these options are primed by a single database call using the priming function. This plugin can be used on WordPress 6.4 and 6.5 to backport the functionality.

While a mild improvement on sites making limited use of transients, this can significantly reduce the number of database queries on sites running plugins making heavy use of transients.