High-resolution images have their benefits, unnecessarily uploading large files can adversely affect the speed of your WordPress websites. Images are one of the few multimedia components that make your website attractive. So, you have to optimize most of these components to ensure that your website speed doesn’t suffer.
Website is simply one of the concerns with unoptimized images. When you optimize your WordPress images, it, in turn, improves the user experience. Visitors are put off by websites that take too long to load and leave quickly. When your speed increases, your bounce rate improves as well. It will also help you save money on your WordPress upgrades. Optimizing images ensures that you won’t need to purchase additional storage unnecessarily. With optimized images, your website can rank better on google. Websites that load quicker get a preference over the slower loading websites.
So, let’s explore the three ways in which you can optimize images for WordPress websites.
1. Compress Your WordPress Images with Plugins and other Softwares:
One of the quickest ways to optimize images on WordPress is to compress them. Compressing images includes minimizing the file size while maintaining the quality of the image. In order to maintain the quality of the image, you have to perform lossless compression. With lossless compression, your images will not lose any data. Lossless compression packs data into smaller file sizes, usually half of the original file, making it easier to store data or transmit it. You can decompress the compressed file and recover the original image file without any data or quality loss.
Lossy compression, on the other hand, results in data loss. The compressed file cannot be restored to its original form after compressing it via the lossy method. It also affects the quality of the image.
The compressed images load quicker and thereby improve the website’s speed. You can use Image compression plugins to optimize your images with this technique.
Listed below are two of the best image compressor plugin for WordPress:
i) Tiny PNG:
One of the most commonly used WordPress compression Plugins, Tiny PNG, comes highly recommended. Upon installation, it will optimize individual images in your media library. Users can also manually do bulk image optimization of the existing image in your WordPress media library. It also automatically optimizes every new image you upload to your WordPress site. TinyPNG supports the following image formats: JPG, WEbP, and PNG.
ii) SMUSH:
Another highly recommended Image Optimizer, the Smush WordPress plugin, helps you compress and resize the images on your WordPress website. It does Lossless compression on an individual as well as bulk images. It is also an effective Image resizing tool, which we’ll shortly discuss. It can compress GIF, PNG, and JPEG files. The pro version has additional features that you should check out.
You can also try other Image Compression plugins such as Robin Image Optimizer, Image Optimization by Optimole, and WP Optimize.
2. Resize Your WordPress Images:
Image optimizer tools usually cover resizing as well. But you have to actively set it up for resizing as well. For this, you have to first install one of the free plugins. We’ll talk you through the installation process for Smush.
- You have to be logged in to your WordPress account to install Smush.
- Once you have logged in, you can navigate to the Plugins section on your dashboard.
- After clicking on plugins, you can select the add new plugins option.
- Use the search bar to search for: Smush Image Compression. The results will include the Smush plugin. Click on the install now button.
- Once it is installed, you can activate the plugin.
- After the plugin is activated, you can access its features, such as Bulk Smush and Resize. While the Bulk Smush section is easily viewable, you need to go to the Tools section to find the Resize option.
- In tools, you’ll find the Image Resizing option. Enable it to automatically resize all your large images to a specific width and height set by the plugin. You can also set a personal image size with the link provided.
You can also resize images with other WordPress plugins, including TinyPNG.
WordPress also offers you the option to set image pixel dimensions. This way, you can resize images with a click of a button. For this to work, you have to set your preferences for the different image sizes: Thumbnail, Medium, and Large.
You can set it up through your WordPress dashboard. Go to the Settings. Then Select Media. Here you can make the necessary changes and save the setting.
3. Remove Unnecessary and Unused Images from the WordPress Media Library:
When you first start a website, you don’t realize the amount of media you’ll end up uploading to the website. The media, especially the images you upload, are stored in the WordPress media library. Not only do these images take up unnecessary space, but they also slow down your Website.
Websites that deal with products and services have to usually create new landing pages or advertisements supported by complementary images. These are usually high-quality images that take up a lot of space. Once the advertisement or landing page has run its course, it is usually deleted or replaced with another. It means an additional burden to your already stretched media library. It also means upgrading your WordPress package for more storage space, which might be an unnecessary expense.
Instead, you should spend a little time cleaning up the obsolete images, making space for newer content. Before you delete anything, get a local backup, so if you end up deleting an important image, you have the chance to recover it.
Go to your WordPress Media Library. You can navigate to it by selecting the Media option from the Dashboard and then clicking on Library. You can go through the images and delete the ones that are no longer necessary for the functioning of your website. You can also bulk select and delete.
You can also use Media cleaner plugins to help you clean your media library.
i) Media Cleaner
With the help of this Media Cleaner plugin, you can easily delete unused media and broken entries from your media library. The media cleaner is powered by a Database cleaner that ensures that the website will continue to work properly after the images are deleted. The plugin will also remind you to back up your data before making permanent changes to your website.
ii) DNUI (Delete Not Used Image):
DNUI isn’t as widely used as Media cleaner but is a good alternative to media cleaner. It detects the images that aren’t used and are simply taking up space in your media library. You can then delete those images and make space for new uploads.
Final Word
Optimizing your websites with these three methods should do the trick and have your website running smoothly in no time. However, there are more techniques that can help you speed up your WordPress site. The #1 is buying reliable web hosting. To purchase web hosting from Bluehost, check out these Bluehost Coupon Codes to get a discount.
Consider the WordPress websites that use a content delivery network. These websites can use the CDN to distribute copies of images to edge servers across the world. Then the edge server will deliver these images to the nearest visitors. Suppose a WordPress website running a CDN is being hosted on a US server.
This WordPress site has used CDN to distribute copies of its website content across the world. So, visitors from Asian or African countries will have a seamless experience. When they load the website, they will receive the copies from the edge server.
For more tips on speeding up your WordPress website, you can also refer to our guide: 7 Tips to Speed Up Your WordPress Website in 2023
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