Images Larger AFTER “optimisation”

Hi @yknivag

Sorry about the confusion!

The problem is happening because WebP format image is larger in some of these cases than the original format image.

You can use this helper plugin in order to stop converting images to WebP if they will be larger than original format.

You can delete existing WebP by following this doc and generate missing WebP again (it will create the smaller ones only and will skip larger ones with the helper plugin). This will not affect your quota.

Let me know if you need any further assistance, I am happy to help.

Best Regards,
Marko

Hi @wp_media

Thank you for your quick response.

I’m sorry but this shouldn’t need a random extra plugin that you expect me to download from an unknown Dropbox account. It should be part of this plugin.

The fact that it isn’t part of this plugin and the fact that you this additional plugin is not listed in the WP directory tells me that either, the helper plugin doesn’t meet the requirements to be listed or that you want to keep it as hidden as possible to make as much money as possible charging people to make their site slower.

This is a fundamental bug in your plugin and should be fixed here.

This plugin doesn’t “optimise” anything, it appears just to be a way of selling your service whether it is needed or not and whether or not it improves performance.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by yknivag.

Hey @yknivag

We are sorry to hear this.

Transparency is one of our values, and we are taking it seriously. So we owe you some additional information as there are few things that have probably made a confusion.

First, it is true – this helper plugin is from my personal Dropbox (Marko from WP Media) as we need to update the list of helper plugins. You can find more information about our helper plugins (and see some of them) here (in our GitHub repository).

We had to make a decision when we implemented WebP feature and when we noticed some WebP images are getting larger.

We could skip these from the optimization and that would probably make another sort of confusion to some users (questions like “Why not all WebP files are generated” would arise). So we decided to go this way and to provide a helper that will fix the problem.

We are completely open to change this, and your feedback is highly valuable for us. I can assure you we will consider this for the future and do our best to make a decision that will be good for all.

The fact that it isn’t part of this plugin and the fact that you this additional plugin is not listed in the WP directory tells me that either, the helper plugin doesn’t meet the requirements to be listed or that you want to keep it as hidden as possible to make as much money as possible charging people to make their site slower.

This is wrong. This helper, as well as our other helpers are not listed in WP repository simply because these are helpers. These are quite minor and very specific features related to Imagify (in this case) so there is no benefit to have them in the Repo.

Also, we have a huge list of helpers for WP Rocket and these are all publically visible on our GitHub.

I have shared this link to this public forum. So it’s quite easy for everyone to take a look at it. We have quite good reputation in WordPress ecosystem to do this kind of actions (slow down users websites intentionally to earn money).

Hope that makes more sense. We are happy to help further with the issue you reported, of course.

Best Regards

I’m sorry but I really don’t understand the basis of your response.

Why create a “helper plugin” at all? Why not just add this essential code directly to this plugin and add a setting for “Create webp for all images” or “Create webp only when they would be smaller”?

You use the word optimise no less than 12 times on the plugin page an yet this plugin actually made most of my images bigger and doubled the page load time. That is a very strange definition of “optimise”.

Given that the plugin does not (and indeed cannot) work as advertised without the additional code, I really don’t understand why that additional code isn’t in the plugin. I can’t see any rational reason for not including the code that makes your plugin do what it is supposed to do, unless it doesn’t meet the WP standard or there is some ulterior motive. If a function is essential for a plugin to work it should be in that plugin, not in an extra plugin that you don’t mention unless people ask why this one is broken.

Incidentally with this extra plugin in place, is my allowance still used up by the process when the image isn’t optimised because optimisation would make it bigger?

Hey @yknivag

Thanks again for your feedback, we highly appreciate it!

While there is no intention on our end to hide anything, we are aware of negative points this solution is producing.

I have shared your feedback with the rest of our team, and we will definitely take a closer look at this and make necessary changes in the near future.

Optimized images in original format can not be larger than the originals (as we prevent it by default), this is a problem with WebP format only. Your quota would be taken as usual, having that in mind.

I will update this thread with further information as soon as our team brainstorm the idea and make new decision about the process reorganization.

Best Regards,
Marko

I think the complaining about the helper plugin here is a little over the top, considering it is literally 1 line of code. Granted it should be linked from plugin’s official git hub for reliability but that’s a moot point.

Literally, this is the only code mate:

add_filter( 'imagify_keep_large_webp', '__return_false' );

Nothing to freak out about.

But also because it IS one line of code, the fact that it isn’t merged into the plugin is quite perplexing.

I mean what would that take, about 60 seconds to merge into the main plugin and make a commit?

Hi @qwik3r!

This is Joseph from Imagify, and I’ll gladly assist you here!

Thank you for your thoughts on this as well, as we definitely appreciate hearing all viewpoints!

The decision not to include this by default was because without users knowing about this functionality in advance, it could lead to confusion when some images end up not having WebP versions created. In many cases, users wouldn’t know why this was occurring.

But as we have stated, we are taking all of these suggestions into consideration, and we will try to find the best solution for all going forward, and we will update this thread when any decisions have been made and implemented.

Best regards,

Joseph

Hi @wp_media _media ,

I also think that the line of code should be transferred to the main plug-in. I think it’s essential that pictures don’t get bigger. Customers of our web design agency are confused about this. Please transfer the line of code to the main plug-in. You can point out that WebP is not generated if the file size becomes larger or, even better, a checkbox with a selection option. (Turn helpers on or off + Explanation of the function.)

We would be very grateful to you for that.

Thank you <3
Thomas

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Thomas Rinkl.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Thomas Rinkl.

[Addendum] @wp_media ..or are there SEO reasons (google algo) to deliver webp despite the larger file size?

Hi @thomasrinkl

This is Ioanna from Imagify, and I’ll gladly assist you here!

Thank you so much for your suggestions. We really appreciate it.

It is not relying on SEO reasons.

As already mentioned by my colleagues we will take that into consideration so we can find the best solution to this issue. We will update this thread as soon as we make any decisions about the process.

Best regards,
Ioanna