Optimizing Images
Image optimization is a great way to reduce the size of each page load and make your site run faster. Speed optimization guides for WordPress are a dime a dozen and often there are no one solutions fits all situations type of solutions for making a WordPress site load faster, but image optimization is as close to a mandatory aspect of speed optimization as they get. And the best part? We've baked a tool right into our hosting and upkeep service that helps you optimize your images within minutes.
Let's get started!
Seravo Plugin features an option for our customers to optimize images without any third-party plugins. By default, image optimization is not in use. You can opt-in to enable the compression and optimize your images.
With image optimization you can improve your sites performance, especially if you have many large images on your site.
Do not choose this option if you use your website to store images that are used in print or other image processing purposes.
WordPress images in your /uploads -folder are replaced with optimized versions. The process is run during the night and when an image has been processed, it is not processed again.
Optimizing images
If you choose to opt-in, images are optimized by:
- Compressing and optimizing jpg and png -files
- Decreasing the resolution of overly large images on the site according to user given limits.
Compression is done using the open source programs jpegoptim and optipng. PNG images use a lossless compression method where image quality does not suffer from compression. JPG images are compressed to image quality level 90. JPG images are also compressed using progressive compression, which is more efficient and smoother loading than normal JPG compression.
According to given resolution limits, images are scaled down using GraphicsMagick. By choosing suitable image resolution limits, images are scaled down so that the longer dimension matches the given limit. There is no maximum to this limit, so you can present your images in high resolution and optimized. Images will never be scaled down below 500px.
Optimizing other images
If you want to optimize other images on your website, you can use the commandline version, wp-optimize-images.
Enabling WebP images
Images on a website can also be converted into faster-loading WebP images. This requires a plugin and a configuration on the HTTP server. Please refer to our developer documentation if you want to enable WebP images on your site. Attn! Enabling WebP images in our shadow environment may cause the images in the shadow to become broken. In such case, we recommend disabling WebP images on the shadow environment.