As mentioned in our previous preview blog, we have been hard at work developing a new image compression tool for the latest WP-Optimize 2.3.0 (free + paid) release. Our image compression service is an easy to use and handy imaging tool that allows you to quickly and easily optimise, compress and resize images on your website.
How the image compression option will look in WP-Optimize
As unnecessarily large website images can cause frustratingly slow website loading speeds, we identified the need for a new image compression tool within WP-Optimize. Large images can impact on a websites user experience, bounce rate and SEO performance, but with our new image compression options you can improve these factors without compromising quality.
How Image Compression Works
By using the best-in-class Lossy and Lossless compression techniques; WP-Optimize can offer massive savings in image file size and saves the new compressed file in your image library.
If you have a lot of images on your website, you can also use our bulk editing option to compress as many images as you want at the same time – or even set-up ‘Auto-Compress’, which enables you to set WP-Optimize to automatically compress your images as and when they are uploaded.
In order to achieve big savings and increase speed, WP-Optimize gives you the option of choosing either Lossy or Lossless image compression. When using image compression methods, you may find that there may be a slight loss in image quality, but rest assured it will hardly even be noticeable. The Lossy compression method can achieve greater space savings when compared to Lossless, but Lossless compression allows you to keep file data and the original image quality.
For more information on the difference between Lossy and Lossless compression and what kind of results you can expect with WP-Optimize, be sure to check out our in-depth recent blog on this subject.
WP-Optimize doesn’t limit you and will let you work with your favourite kind of images, allowing you to compress NG, JPG, GIF, BMP and TIF pictures up to 5mg in size. Our image optimisation service even allows you to backup your original files so you can quickly restore them in case you make a mistake or need the original full quality image.
You can also be assured that should you wish to remove the WP-Optimize plugin for whatever reason, your compressed images will remain unaffected, allowing you to keep all your new and original content and maintain full control over your website.
Be sure to let us know any feedback comments you may have in the comment section below.
I’m a paying user of both UPD and WPO, and install both on many client sites. I’m actually disappointed to see this direction you’re taking WPO… I see this as “scope creep” and it’s adding features I don’t want. We already use Shortpixel for image optimization, and it’s an excellent service.
We switched from “Optimize Database After Deleting Revisions” a couple of months ago, specifically because WPO had some additional database optimization features (I love the ability to find and remove unused tables!). But now the new image optimization feature will interfere with our other setup.
The big problem at the moment for me is that when viewing an image’s details, it adds the image optimization tools to the edit page — which will confuse my clients (since we also have Shortpixel available). At the very least, I’d like to see a way to disable this Image Optimization feature completely (perhaps with a constant in wp-config.php?).
I think plugins should focus on core competency, and not expand to try to do “everything for everyone.” Let the image optimization tools be handled by plugins that focus exclusively on that.
Otherwise, it looks like we’ll be going back to the other plugin. :(
Thanks for your comment and feedback.
I agree that businesses or plugins should try to focus on quality of features, not quantity – this is an excellent point. We agree we should not add any feature if we’re not confident it’s at least as good as alternatives out there.
We want to be the best in the world at this. It’s taken us about 18 months to perfect this feature, and we’d only launch it if we thought it would match or exceed alternative offerings. We think that having free, unlimited and flexible image optimization is well within our aim to make sites fast and efficient and has been welcomed by many as many other services have limits. We want to offer more than any other service for free as standard.
You can be confident that by adding this feature we’re not diverting our focus from improving the database optimisation part of the plugin. We have multiple developers on all aspects of WP-Optimize and it will get better and better in all areas.
However, your point on disabling the feature so it’s invisible to those who don’t want it is valid – I’d like to adopt this idea and we’ll work on it.
Finally, please be assured that this feature uses APIs and the smushing is done in the cloud, so very little code is needed within the plugin itself – so it doesn’t bloat the size of your site, it won’t interfer with other smush plugins and there’s no real disadvantage in having it, but just gives choice and a free service to the many who do want it.
Thanks Joe.
I’m not so worried about the code bloat, as much as the feature bloat — and the potential confusion it’s going to cause my clients. We manage hundreds of sites, and our users aren’t necessarily “tech savvy” (which is why they hire us!), so I’m always trying to keep things streamlined and un-confusing. :)
Yes, valid point – we’re working this right now for those who want to make this feature invisible and disabled for those who don’t want it and it’ll be out soon. Thanks for the feedback.
The issue over a metabox for compression when a different plugin has been chosen for compression is a valid concern, and somebody has been assigned to make it possible to make that metabox not appear.
Personally I also agree that plugins should do one thing, well, and dislike feature bloat. In the case of WP-Optimize, our vision for that one thing is WP website optimization, not just one sub-department of it. An end user shouldn’t have to learn that there are several sub-departments of optimization, and learn how to use 10 different tools. We want WP-O to be the best at all of them.
Thanks; I definitely see where you’re coming from on that. Do you have a public roadmap available for WP-O?