Quick question

Hello @gs1623

Thank you for reaching out and I am happy to assist you with this.

The quick answer is – Yes! W3TC will automatically compress the images on upload.
In Performance>Extensions>Image service, you can enable Auto-convert: in the Configuration options.

Thanks!

@vmarko — Thank you very much. I appreciate your quick and helpful response. ??

@vmarko — I’ve looked at the image service, and it appears that it currently only converts images to WebP format. While this is a positive step forward, my initial priority is to compress these images. Based on my assessment, your image service does not currently provide this compression functionality. As a potential solution, I may need to install an additional plugin, such as TinyPNG. I attempted to use Smush on a test site but encountered conflicts with both your plugin and Autoptimize. In order to preempt any potential issues, I intend to give TinyPNG a try.

@vmarko — Update: I have found a highly informative article on your website that directly addresses the majority of my concerns. However, I’d appreciate it if you could confirm whether the following limits still apply to the free version: Hourly limit: 100 | monthly limit: 1000.

Hello @gs1623

Thank you for your feedback and I am sorry about any misunderstanding. When you convert images to webp, you are basically compressing them as the webp conversion can reduce the size up to 95%. However, you are correct and we do not compress images without conversion (compress and still serve as JPEG).

To answer your question about the limits, yes, in the free version there is an hourly limit: of 100 and a monthly limit: of 1000.

I hope this helps!

Thanks!

@vmarko — Thank you; no apology is necessary. You have been incredibly helpful, and I cannot thank you enough for your assistance. I appreciate the information you’ve provided. To be honest, I haven’t delved into WebP in great detail, so my knowledge on the topic is limited. I will test the free plan to start with, and if everything goes smoothly, I intend to upgrade to the pro plan to remove the limitations.

@vmarko — I’m very impressed with your image service, and it does an excellent job of compressing images.

I have just completed a test run, and the image size has been reduced by up to 80% using lossy compression without any noticeable changes in image quality.

The only drawback is that, since the original image is retained and WordPress does not compress enough by default, I could quickly consume a significant amount of my server storage. This could become an issue, especially considering that most of the websites I manage are e-commerce sites featuring 5–10 images per product. Over time, this storage usage could accumulate rapidly.

As a result, I might need to revert back to using my usual image compression service unless you have a solution for this storage concern. Not overwriting the original image is a wise decision on your part. Not all browsers support WebP, and having a fallback image is always a prudent strategy.

Hello @gs1623

Thank you for your feedback.
Unfortunately we cannot do anything about storage space.
W3TC is using rewrite to serve images as webp, and as you mentioned we are not removing the originals.

Instead of using plugins to reduce size, my recommendation would be to prepare images for web before uploading them. In this case most of the images would not be over 200kb

Alternatively, you can give the CDN a chance and serve static assets from the CDN.

I hope this helps!

Thanks!

@vmarko

Thanks for your helpful response.

I’m not currently using an image compression plugin. Instead, I’m manually resizing and compressing images before uploading them. However, this process is becoming time-consuming, so I’m considering automating it. As a result, I may need to deploy a plugin in the near future to handle both tasks.

I will also explore the CDN option you mentioned.

Thank you once again for your helpful responses. I will now proceed from here and mark this post as resolved.