How to Safely Test NitroPack's Ludicrous Mode

NitroPack’s Ludicrous mode can be suboptimal for some JavaScript-heavy websites. Here’s how you can safely test this preset without affecting your visitors’ experience:

(If you’ve disabled the JavaScript in your browser, enable it before performing this check)

1. In your NitroPack account, go to Settings and turn on the Safe Mode. 

This mode disables NitroPack for your site and lets it optimize only separate (test) versions of all pages. You can access these test pages by adding ?testnitro=1 to any URL. (e.g., https://yourwebsite.com/?testnitro=1).

While the Safe Mode is active, your website is up and running, with visitors landing on the regular URLs (which aren’t optimized by NitroPack).

You can access a test version of any page by adding ?testnitro=1 to its URL.

2. Once the Safe Mode is enabled, switch to Ludicrous, save your settings and purge the cache from the Dashboard.

All changes from switching to Ludicrous will take place only on the ?testnitro=1 URLs.

3. Open the test pages you want to check in Incognito/Private mode and refresh them a few times.

You should definitely check your test homepage, product and checkout pages (for eCommerce stores), or popular articles (for publishers). 

• https://yourwebsite.com/?testnitro=1
• https://yourwebsite.com/products/?testnitro=1
• https://yourwebsite.com/checkout/?testnitro=1
• https://yourwebsite.com/blog/post1/?testnitro=1

Important Note: Elements generated via JavaScript can be negatively affected by the Ludicrous mode, so make sure to test them thoroughly.

4. Make sure you’re looking at an optimized version of each test page.

You can see which pages are optimized in the “Optimizations” panel. It’s also useful to check whether NitroPack is serving the optimized version of each test page by following the instructions in this article.

5. Lastly, if everything looks and functions as it should, you may decide to upgrade your live site to Ludicrous. You can do that by:

• Turning off the Safe Mode;
• Saving your settings;
• Purging the cache.

On the other hand, if you want to keep your current settings and not upgrade your live site to Ludicrous:

• Switch back to your previous mode;
• Disable the Safe Mode;
• Save your settings.