When it comes to website’s speed, images are the most important factor behind website loading time. Google and other search engines give high preference to web pages that are highly optimized for speed.
As a larger number of people have started to use mobile and tablets to browse websites, users hate to wait for websites which take more time to load. Based on current technology trend, it’s better to enhance loading time of website before you lose your customers.
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And hence, it has become a top priority to compress image on your website to speed up and rank your site higher in search engines. There are other excellent articles, shortcodesand plugins for enhancing your WordPress images experience too.
Images are the most important factor behind website load time as they are good for explaining things quickly and can also be used as a content enhancer.
However, having lots of images in your content can slow down the loading speed of your web page considerably. A slow loading website will make you lose your customers.
So, it becomes very critical to optimize images on your website to make sure that your website loads fast for your visitors, and you can achieve higher search engine rankings.
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Today I am going to tell some of the fantastic WordPress plugins that you can use to optimize images on your website and to enhance the overall loading speed of your website.
1. ShortPixel –
ShortPixel plugin is simple to use which comes with a clean interface and useful features. You need to subscribe to ShortPixel to get the API Key and get the plugin going.
Upon subscription, you receive 100 free credits/month. While it isn’t as many as those offered by TinyPNG they should be enough for the average WP blogger. Also, this plugin only counts the images they succeeded optimizing by at least 5%. Otherwise, no credits are charged.
What I felt is missing in the plugin – an option to keep EXIF data in images. Some (photographers mainly) could find this feature very useful.
The plugin also offers a backup and restore solution for the optimized images.
Plans start at 4.99$/month, and one-time packages are also available. You can optimize 10,000 images with $9.99 which is a good bargain especially if you have large images. We recommend you to give it a try.
2. Automatic Image Compression –
What I like about Automatic Image Compression is that they have the option to optimize only certain image sizes, they offer the option to resize the original image (it can lead to great savings), and they have a generous free monthly plan (500 images/month for free).
They didn’t offer any backup option, the optimization results are in KB/MB (it is rather confusing), and there is only the option to optimize the images as lossy.
While testing their plugin I could notice blurry sections on some pictures. While they didn’t look awful, it wasn’t nice for the trained eye either.
Automatic Image Compression has a generous plan. It provides a regular license that costs you $29 which includes 6 months of support and all the future updates.
3. EWWW Image Optimizer –
EWWW Image Optimizer is such a WordPress plugin which helps you in optimizing your images automatically as soon as you upload them to your blog. It can even help you in optimizing the images that have been uploaded previously.
It converts the format of the image files to the one which exhibits the smallest size of the images.
For the format of JPG and PNG, the plugin applies reductions with options. This plugin loads your images faster and helps in the better working of the WordPress website.
If your website loads easily, the visitors will be contented and at peace in viewing what you have for them. In this way, the advertisinghappens automatically & heavy traffic may be observed on your website which can in return make you generate revenue.
The smaller size of the images helps in the maintenance of faster and efficient backups. The best thing about the EWWW Image Optimizer plugin is that it maintains the quality of the image before and after optimization.
The only thing that is changed with this plugin is the size of the image file which is an advantage to the website developer. The optimization has no losses and offers a lot of gains with one small exception of GIF animations.
The cost of optimizing here depends on your choice. Its compress API key will cost you only $0.002/image in which compressed image will be saved on your server. And in Easy IO, the price varies from $5-15/ month with all the features.
4. ImageRecycle –
This plugin is good enough for compressing your WordPress images automatically without depressing the quality of the image. Once installed will automatically compress all existing images and newly uploaded images behind the scenes.
ImageRecycle is one of the best WordPress Plugin, which helps in ranking your site higher in search engines. With the ImageRecycle, the quality of the images remains the same, but the size gets compressed by ten times than its actual size.
The drop in quality does occur, but the working of the ImageRecycle is so efficient that the drop is hardly visible.
With the help of the ImageRecycle, the performance of the website is optimized, and the server never gets overburdened.
The plugin is easy to use as it offers a single click gesture to ensure the image resizing. Each image on the website is optimized one at a time. With its advanced feature of automated smashing the images are automatically smashed and optimized whenever the site gets loaded.
The plugin if flexible and gives control over your website.
The pricing plan starts with $10 for 10000 images, $20 for 30000 images, and $50 for 100000 images. You can contact the sales team for more quota. Apart from that it also provides free trials.
5. Optimole –
Optimole is an advanced feature WordPress Plugin, which has proven to be an effective image optimizer.
The working of this plugin is simple as it involves the resizing of the images and bringing them down to a smaller size along with the maintenance of the visual quality of the image and its resolution.
Optimole Image Optimizer plugin makes use of a different API. With the help of this plugin, some actions can be performed like the optimization and compression of JPG image and strip metadata from the JPG image files.
Other than these functions Optimole is also responsible for the optimization of PNG and GIF file formats of files.
There is one thing that needs to be considered before its use that is the plugin requires the users to register an online Optimole account.
The Optimole free account lets the users acquire a free license for the key. It is advisable to use a kind of optimization plugin at a time.
Apart from the free account, its pricing plan starts from starter plan of only $22.52 a month to a business 5 plan of $423.62 per month. You can also get the custom plan as per your need.
6. Image Pro –
This plugin offers you power to upload, resize, add, and change images instantly.
It provides you options to manage your media content easily. You can easily manage the media collection using this plugin as it offers a way to image search, filter by file type facilities.
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You can drag and drop any image to post and resize it there itself.
7. SEO Friendly Images –
This plugin is for optimizing your images for search engines.
It helps you to get more organic traffic from search engines. It automatically adds alt and title attribute to images.
Alt attribute is the primary thing which is seen by search engines to find images for any keyword. You can use this button plugin with WP Smush.it or Lazy Load plugin for complete solution.
8. Hammy –
Hammy is another WordPress plugin which takes hold of the images on your website and reproduces them to make images that are much smaller in size.
In actual the size of the image is dependent upon the width of your content as the plugin is dynamic and changes the images by it.
Hammy has been proved to be very useful and is effective in using both of smartphones or the desktop computers. Hammy takes the images and produces a large number of smaller sized images. When a user visits the website, Hammy provides the smallest image possible for the view automatically.
It is one of the reasons that it works well on the mobile phones. Hammy makes sure not to make any changes to the database of the user and takes on alternates or images for the original ones.
Hammy WordPress plugin supports the retina and uses 3.5 code of the image. To have an efficient use for this particular shortcode plugin, few minutes are to be provided so that it gets configured correctly before you can start to use it.
Another advantageous feature of Hammy is that filters out the output every time an image is processed, but it generates the image only once.
9. CW Image Optimizer –
As soon as the images are uploaded on our website CW Image Optimizer WordPress plugin starts to optimize your images automatically. The plugin concentrates on optimization without causing any loss and damage to the quality of the website.
CW Image Optimizer plugin uses image optimization programs offered by Linux to reduce the size of the images thereby enhancing the performance of the website. Images that have already been uploaded on the web page can also be resized by the use of this efficient WordPress plugin.
As the CW Image Optimizer uses the lossless techniques to optimize the images that quality of your images before and after the process of optimization remains the same. The thing that changes is the size of the image file.
The Linux optimizer tool that is used by the CW Optimizer is available on the web free. The privacy policies of the plugin are nothing to worry about as the images remain on the server forever.
Apart from the benefit of faster loading and less loss the CW Image Optimizer helps you in utilizing less bandwidth. The size of the images becomes smaller, and consequently, lesser space is occupied by the images on the server. The speed of the website is enhanced manifolds with the use if this effective image optimizer plugin of WordPress.
10. Bulk Resize Media –
WordPress allows you to upload heavy images but its not good for your server and load time of your website.
This plugin automatically resizes huge images and makes sure maximum upload size is respected for all uploaded images. The plugin also works with multi site to allow admins to control the image uploads.
This plugin optionally converts BMP images into jpgs.
It also bulk resizes all existing images for better performance. You can also set max height/width and jpg quality.
- Automatically resizes large image uploads, keeping the maximum size and removing the original huge image.
- Bulk-resize feature to selectively resize all existing attachments.
- Allows configuration of max width/height and jpg quality
- In MultiSite, network admins can control image sizes for the entire system.
- Optionally converts BMP files to JPG.
Conclusion –
There are lots of plugins available in WordPress repository for optimization of images as well as boost sales by collecting more leads. Choose the one which suits best to your needs.
I would prefer these plugins on top for my WordPress websites, please share which is your favorite plugin for image optimization.
Also, read our related blog post ->
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The Gutenberg block editor has done more to turn the WordPress ecosystem on its head than anything in recent memory. And it has required both web designers and website owners to do some soul-searching.
That might sound like quite a heavy impact for a content editor. But when you consider just how different Gutenberg is from the old Classic Editor, things start to become clearer.
When you think about it, the Classic Editor is, well, just a big word processor in a box. Its lack of flexibility often leads us to bypass it completely and use a page builder plugin instead. While page builders can still do many things that Gutenberg can’t, for rich content creation Gutenberg offers the potential to do much more – and without necessarily needing big, heavy plugins.
Now, those in the market for a WordPress theme have something else to think about. Could a Gutenberg-optimized theme be the best fit for your project?
What a Gutenberg-Optimized Theme Is
A Gutenberg-optimized theme assumes you’ll use the block editor as your main tool for building layouts and creating content.
So, what exactly is a Gutenberg-optimized WordPress theme? An optimized theme will offer features that are designed to help you take advantage of Gutenberg. It assumes you’ll be using it as your primary tool for building page layouts and creating content. As such, you might find:
- Custom blocks that enable new layout or content options;
- Custom styles applied to default Gutenberg blocks;
- Back end editor styles that closely resemble the front end;
This isn’t necessarily a complete listing of potential features. Theme authors may throw in any number of other block-related goodies as well. But it does provide a solid starting point when shopping for a theme.
Why This Is an Important Decision
Like just about every other aspect of WordPress, you have multiple options when it comes to content editing. These days, you can choose to stick with the Classic Editor, use a page builder plugin such as Beaver Builder or Elementor, or opt for Gutenberg.
But when it comes to those last two options, you really are making a long-term commitment. Page builders, even ones that write clean code, are difficult to simply uninstall and move on from. It means reformatting existing content – not a pleasant task on a large website.
Gutenberg is a similar experience. While you certainly can choose to move on to a different editing tool, you’re going to lose some existing formatting (particularly on the back end) during the transition.
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Regardless of what direction you go, it’s critical to choose your preferred editor carefully. In essence, you are making an investment in both building and maintaining your website with this editor for the foreseeable future.
Therefore, you’ll want to consider which option makes the most sense for you – both now and a few years from now.
Disrupting the Status Quo of WordPress Themes
The WordPress theme market has been humming along for years by providing users with alternatives to the Classic Editor. This is especially so with commercial themes, where page builders have been a popular throw-in item.
Sometimes, a theme will include a bespoke page-building tool from the theme author. More often, widely-used options like Visual Composer (now known as WPBakery Page Builder) are packaged in.
The basic assumption here is that people who purchase that particular theme probably aren’t interested in the Classic Editor. They’ll want the ability to create custom layouts, embed media and other slick features with a few mouse clicks. That isn’t something the Classic Editor can easily do, and so page builders have been the preferred method.
While this makes sense, it also can make for a frustratingly uneven experience. Not all page builders are alike and some can be quite proprietary (just try disabling one that uses shortcodes). To make matters worse, some users get stuck with an outdated version of a page builder that came bundled with their theme. This can lead to incompatibilities with other plugins and WordPress itself.
A Different Take on Theme Features and Functionality
This is part of why Gutenberg was introduced into WordPress core. One of its aims is to provide a more standardized way to do these tasks. A way to create content that is more theme-independent, thus more modular. Indeed, this is what blocks are intended to do.
Because this functionality is now available within a default installation of WordPress, it theoretically means the role of a theme changes as well. Now, themes can focus on what they’re good at: taking the content you’ve created and styling it accordingly.
If a theme does include extras for content creation and layout, it can do so through custom blocks. These add to the basics that come with WordPress, allowing users to craft more complex pages. And they can do so using a native editing experience, as opposed to that of a page builder.
That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, we haven’t seen a massive number of theme authors adopt this new methodology just yet.
The Potential Downsides of Gutenberg-Optimized Themes
While this all sounds a bit Utopian, a theme optimized for the block editor has its drawbacks, too.
For one, even a theme that includes a number of custom blocks is still unlikely to match the power and flexibility of an established page builder. That’s not necessarily the fault of the theme author, though.
Just think of the time it took for the biggest page builders to get where they are today. Gutenberg is still very early on in its lifespan and it will take a while for it to catch up – if it ever truly does. It’s debatable whether that is even a goal of the project.
It also matters how custom blocks are implemented. Ideally, they’ll be part of a separate plugin, allowing you to switch themes without losing anything. If they’re fully baked into the theme, you risk losing access to those blocks if you switch themes again down the road.
Overall, Gutenberg’s relative youth may be its biggest drawback.
Overall, Gutenberg’s relative youth may be its biggest drawback. While the ecosystem continues to grow, it still has some gaping holes that need filled in.
Determining Whether a Gutenberg Optimized Theme Makes Sense for You
So, how do you know if a Gutenberg optimized theme is the right choice for you? A lot of it depends on what you need from your content editor right now, along with where you see your website going in the future.
When Gutenberg Makes Sense
There are a number of instances when going with Gutenberg is a great choice. Take, for example, those who are starting a new website from scratch. If you aren’t necessarily looking to fully replicate a page builder experience, but do want to create some more advanced content, the block editor provides a solid foundation.
Those who want more control over their editing environment may also look to Gutenberg. You get to pick and choose features, while customizing the editor to match your needs. There’s a lot more flexibility here than with the typical page builder.
In addition to any blocks that come with your theme, new ones are being released all the time via the WordPress community. And, if what you need doesn’t exist yet, you can even create your own custom blocks to do the job.
The performance and convenience of a native editing solution is also attractive. Using a Gutenberg optimized theme helps you build a beautiful website without the overhead of a massive third-party plugin. Performance enhancements have been steadily released and the UI is much improved since WordPress 5.0.
Reasons to Hold Off
Of course, this newfangled editor may not be right for everyone. To start, Gutenberg’s default offerings – even when combined with custom blocks from your theme – are not as robust as a full-on page builder. This isn’t really a flaw, as Gutenberg isn’t designed to be a complete solution out-of-the-box.
Still, if you want more, you’ll have to add (or even build) your way up when it comes to features. This could be a major turn-off to those who just want to start out with a full slate of options. That’s the big advantage of a theme that bundles a page builder.
Then there are those who have an existing website that utilizes a page builder. You might prefer the continuity of sticking with that builder when you upgrade to a new theme. Otherwise, a switch to Gutenberg could mean reformatting some content. Sometimes that’s desirable, but it depends on your time, budget and future goals.
What Will the Future Look Like for WordPress Themes?
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It certainly seems like the WordPress theme market has come to a fork in the road. Many authors are still bundling page builders, while some are slowly moving towards Gutenberg. Things are still heavily tilted towards the former, however.
The longer the block editor is around, the more theme authors will look to utilize it.
One wonders how long this imbalance will remain. Gutenberg certainly isn’t going anywhere, as it has a large amount of resources dedicated to its future development. It would appear that, the longer the block editor is around, the more theme authors will look to utilize it.
So, does this mean you should avoid a theme that includes a page builder? Probably not for the foreseeable future.
The page builders that have a strong user base and revenue stream are likely to be around for the long haul. They haven’t gone running for the hills just yet, and don’t appear to be in any immediate danger of doing so.
But it’s not all sunshine. Perhaps the biggest downside of staying with the theme and page builder model is innovation. As WordPress continues to build around Gutenberg, it’s possible that these types of themes become outdated. In addition, theme authors may simply pay less attention to them as they move on to the new way of doing things.
Building with or Without Blocks: An Important Decision
Taking it all into consideration, the most future-proof decision is to opt for a Gutenberg optimized theme. However, it’s far from a requirement at this point in time.
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Both WordPress and its vibrant community are all about providing options. So, if you’d prefer a theme that is geared towards a page builder – go for it!
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Likewise, if you want to take advantage of the latest developments in WordPress, look for a theme that caters to the block editor. The selection may be somewhat limited when compared to more established products, but it’s where things are headed.