Whenever we think about a nice, attractive blog post, we expect it to contain some relevant and attractive images too. Nowadays, images have become an integral part of any article that is published online.
But using large, high quality images decreases the loading speed of your site’s posts and pages. On the other hand, visitors and search engines like sites that load quickly. So, how to find the balance between these two scenarios?
A quick solution to this problem could be optimizing the images. Optimizing an image means reducing the image size without compromising the image quality. Doing the optimization process on your own could take a lot of time. It is also a boring and slow job. This is not a recommended approach for a smart blogger like you.
Introducing the Smushing Plugins
Luckily, there are some excellent WordPress plugins which can help you in this regard. For this tutorial, I will use WP Smush.it, the free plugin developed by WPMU Dev. Image files usually contain lots of unnecessary information which increase their size. By removing this extra information, WP Smush.it reduces image sizes and provides a faster page loading time for your posts.
In order to use the plugin, download and install it in your website. Activating the plugin will create a new sub-menu titled ‘WP Smush’ under the ‘Media’ menu. WP Smush lets you smush your images one-by-one or all at once.
Smushing Single Images
First of all, let’s see how we can smush a single image. To do that, go to Media > Library from your website dashboard.
To smush an image, click the ‘Smush Now!’ button for that image. This will start the process. Once the process is complete, you will be shown how much space it has saved.
Smushing Bulk Images
In order to smush all of your images, go to Media > WP Smush from your website dashboard. In that page, you will find a notice to upgrade to the pro version of the plugin.
Then, in the ‘Settings’ section, you will find an option titled ‘Auto-Smush images on upload’. Enabling this feature will automatically smush all new images you upload. Click ‘Save Changes’ after enabling the feature. The other two features of this section are available in the pro version only.
You can smush all of your images at once in the ‘Smush in Bulk’ section of the ‘WP Smush’ page. To do that, click the ‘Bulk Smush Now’ button. This will start smushing your images.
The Pro Version
The free version is limited to 50 smushings per request. Therefore, if you have more than 50 unsmushed images, you have to perform bulk smushes again. And when you are smushing 50 images at a time, it may take some time depending on the network speed and server performance.
Another restriction for the free version is it does not allow you to smush images that are larger than 1MB in size. The pro version comes with unlimited image size, unlimited number of smushing, backup of original images, instant support, etc.
Final Words
So, that is how you optimize the images and improve your website performance by using WP Smush.it. Let me know if you have any questions about using the plugin.
And if you use any other smushing plugins in your website, please share your experience with us by leaving a comment below.