Wordpress Configuring the Heartbeat Control

Wordpress Configuring the Heartbeat Control

Installing the Heartbeat Control plugin

First, log into your WordPress admin dashboard.


Within your dashboard, hover over Plugins and click on Add New.


On this page, enter Heartbeat Control into the search box At the top and press the Enter key on your keyboard to perform the search.


As you have searched for the exact name of the plugin, it should be the first result that appears. To install it, click on the Install Now button.


WordPress will now handle the download and installation of the Heartbeat Control plugin. Of course, be sure to click on Activate Plugin when complete.

Configuring the Heartbeat Control plugin


Now that you have the Heartbeat Control plugin installed, you will need to configure its settings. To access the settings page, hover over Tools on the left side menu bar and click on Heartbeat Control.


Once on the settings page, you will notice 2 different dropdown boxes. The first box will allow you to disable the WordPress heartbeat on the entire site or on specific locations. Depending on your needs, you may disable the WordPress heartbeat completely, or only allow it on specific locations such as on the post edit page.


The second box allows you to determine how often the WordPress heartbeat API will make a request. For example, on post edit pages it makes a POST request every 15 seconds. This can be modified within the heartbeat frequency dropdown to delay it up to 60 seconds between requests which would cut down server resources caused by admin-ajax requests by 75%.

Once your changes are made, click on Save Changes.

Congratulations! You have now modified the behavior of the WordPress heartbeat API to use less resources on the server. If you have any questions about this plugin, we will be happy to answer them.