The plugin modifies the generated HTML of your website in ways that makes it faster to download and parsed by the browser. Simply put, the changes makes the webpage and resources smaller, and reduces the number of http requests the browser has to make to render the page. The result is a better user experience and higher search engine rankings.

After installing and activating the plugin, combining CSS and javascript files are selected by default so it should start working right away. If you look at your web page and it doesn’t look any different that’s a good sign…maybe. To confirm if it’s working, take a look at the HTML page source. You can do that in most browsers by right clicking on the page and selecting that option. You should see the links to your CSS/Js files removed and replaced by the aggregated file URL in the source that looks like this:
/wp-content/plugins/jch-optimize/assets/wp-content/plugins/gz/63fccd8dc82e3f5da947573d8ded3bd4.css

The combined files are accessed by the browser via a jscss.php file in the /wp-content/plugins/jch-optimize/assets/ directory. If you’re not seeing any formatting on your page it means that the browser is not accessing this file for some reason. View the source of your page and try to access the JCH generated url to the combined file in your browser. You should see an error message that can guide you in fixing the problem. Generally it’s a file permission issue so ensure the file at ‘/wp-content/plugins/jch-optimize/assets/jscss.php` has the same permission setting as your /index.php file (usually 644) and make sure all the folders in this hierarchy have the same permissions as your htdocs or public_html folder(Usually 644).

Simply deactivate or uninstall the plugin to reverse any changes it has made. The plugin doesn’t modify any existing file or code but merely manipulates the HTML before it is sent to the browser. Any apparent persistent change after the plugin is deactivated is due to caching so ensure to flush all your WordPress, third party or browser cache.