How To Optimize Images With Short Pixel: Improve Website Performance

When it comes to optimizing your blog for best performance, there are a wide variety of things to do to your blog. The first thing that you might want to do is lazy load your images helping to increase page loading. What this does is as the visitor scrolls down the page, the images start to load thus increasing the loading speed of the current post.

The 2nd way to optimize your blog is using the Autoptimze plugin. Those 2 methods alone is not enough, I have found a fantastic way to optimizing your images with a plugin that is better than the WPsmushit and the Lazy Load plugin. I’d like to introduce you to the Short Pixel plugin that I am completely satisfied with and I’d like to talk about this plugin a little more in this blog post and show you real stat’s on what I saved on this blog.

My Current Image Score

I went from having a zero since I was not optimizing my images to a 91 with this plugin. I consider that success but there are some images that didn’t optimize when I ran this plugin. I need to figure out why or just delete the images and upload them again. A tip for you in which I found out by error is when you are done optimizing all of your images, if you are using cloudflare, purge all cache from your cloudflare account then all cache from any caching plugin you are running. Rerun GTmetrix and the score will be different.

Short Pixel Features

To give you an idea what this plugin can do for your blog, first read through the following features.

• 24hr support directly from the developers
• compress JPG, PNG, GIF (still and animated) images and PDF documents
• optimize thumbnails as well as featured images
• featured images can be rescaled before being optimized. No need for additional plugins like Imsanity
• CMYK to RGB conversion
• skip already optimized images
• easily test lossy/lossless versions of the images
• great for photographers: keep or remove EXIF data from your images
• no file size limit
• works well with both HTTPS and HTTP websites
• it is safe to test and use the plugin: all the original images can be restored with a click
• Bulk’ optimize existing images with one click
• 40 days optimization report with all image details and overall statistics
• works great for eCommerce websites using WooCommerce plugin
• Use the same API Key on many sites (including multisites)
• compatible with WPengine hosted websites and all the major hosting providers
• compatible with WPML and WPML Media plugins
• receive 100 free image optimization credits each month.
• images that are optimized less that 5% are bonus

Short Pixel’s has multiple payment plans including a free plan that offers 100 optimize images a month. I strongly suggest you try the free plan and take notice of the saved bandwidth from those 100 optimized images with this plugin. If you was impressed like I was, I went ahead and got 20,000 credits for 20,000 images. Continue reading to see WPOutcast’s image stats.

All Plans + Pricing

The plans are very affordable and using the “one-time” fee plans is what you should be using if you are serious about optimizing your images and increasing your blog’s performance.

WPOutcast can upload a few more images

Notable Features

One feature I just love is the restore backup feature. For some reason if you need to or want to restore certain images back to their original version, you can do this with one simple click. Before I show you an example, you will have to select this option in the plugins settings page in your admin dashboard like so:

Recommended Settings

Last set of instructions:

There is an advanced section but I’d suggest you just leave everything default on there. Or read their documentation if you want to see what you could do in this section.

Now that the settings are what they should be, navigate to your media tab in your WordPress Admin Dashboard and click on the restore backup button. Notice the percentage of the image that was optimized as well.

Short Pixel Helps With Shared Web Hosting

Are you on Shared Web Hosting? If so, you may have run into an issue once and awhile with running out of bandwidth. Never join a web host that was its unlimited bandwidth because it’s not unlimited as there is a cap. Hundreds of websites are hosting on one server which is for shared web hosting and if one website use’s a ton of bandwidth, it affects all other websites on the server which could be slow loading blog or blog offline. Do your web host a favor and use the Short Pixel to save on bandwidth.

Pro Tip:

• Gain lost disk space + Speed with a Powerful Database Cleaner plugin.

After doing the bulk optimize feature and waiting for 2 hours to finish, I have a lot of images and here are some of the stat’s on what this plugin did for this blog.

The option to remove the backup images is also in there. If you click on the button for the backups to delete them, they will disappear and not your optimized images. It’s safe to delete the backups and that saves you Hard Drive space with your web hosting plan. Had to repeat that because I’ve done it and the images are still optimized on the blog.

• Most Important Task: Free WordPress Backup Plugins – SafeGuard Your Content

Live Look At Optimizing

If you are bored and want to sit at your PC screen and watch each image get optimized you can do this. I did this for a half hour and don’t know why either.

While the images are being optimized, you can still use your blog, navigate around the admin dashboard, write blog posts…etc but leave the screen above open in your browser. Open up your blog in a new window, login and use the blog. That’s what I did.

Another picture because I love pictures

Short Pixel just finished optimizing my images but in the other blog window I was updating stuff on the blog and had to re-run the bulk optimize feature to optimized the images that it missed. This plugin is easy to set up, very easy to optimize images and over-all I am happy that I found this plugin.

You will have to create an account on their official website in order to fully activate the plugin. You can also view detailed reports through your account and easily buy credits for more images. Only buy what you think you will need to save money.

I can help improve your GTmetrix score in a half hour for $50. Keep in mind I will do what I can within the time limit. Depending on your blog it will be a little improvement or a huge one. I will also provide some tips that I would do that I didn’t have time for. Email me and provide a link to this blog post so I know you read this post and want my help.

If this blog post has helped you, please consider sharing it online with your friends. Optimizing images is very important and don’t miss out on doing this on your blog.