WP Smush Pro is a fast, simple and powerful plugin for compressing images on WordPress. It compresses every byte of your images to save you as much space and bandwidth as possible.

It's also compatible with single and multi-site WordPress installations as well as BuddyPress. In a multisite network, you can choose to enable WP Smush Pro across all sites or per site.

Today, I will share with you some tips that will help you make better use of this tool.

Tip # 1: eliminate image redundancies

When you upload an image to your site, WordPress resizes automatically and creates a few copies in different sizes. For each image, a large image, a preview and a thumbnail are created.

Some plugins and themes such as those with "slider", for example, also create resized copies in addition to those offered by WordPress.

This means that you can multiply the number of images in your media library by at least three. For example, if you have 100 images listed, counting the resized copies, you will really have at least 300 images.

The more images you have, the more it drains the resources of your site. Eliminating as many of these extra copies as possible is a great way to reduce the load on your server, and WP Smush Pro can help reduce those as well.

The best part is that it all happens automatically and you don't have to do anything else more. All of your images and resized copies are all compressed and optimized to save you as much space as possible.

You can see how many images you have for an attachment by clicking on the " Smush Stats When viewing the attachment details page for an image in your media library.

Details of a wp smush image

Tip # 2: Break down barriers and "smush" everything

Most of the time, the theme images are uncompressed and this can take a heavy toll on your site. Google PageSpeed ​​Insights often reports that theme images need to be compressed and corrected immediately to improve your PageSpeed ​​Insights score by several points.

WP Smush Pro compresses only images downloaded to your media library, so theme images are often excluded from the compression process. However, that does not mean that you can not " Smusher Â»Still all the pictures of your theme.

The first step is to download those images that are included in your theme. In cPanel, go to " Files> File Manager And then search for the images. Usually, you can find them under "/ wp-content / themes / your-theme / images /", or a directory of the same name in your theme folder.

Download the images from your theme folder to your computer by clicking the Select massive selection button, and then the download button at the top of the page.

Massive selection of wp smush cpanel image

Send the images you just downloaded to your media library by going to " media> Add new Â».

Click the " select images And choose the theme images you have just downloaded to your computer.

Send wordpress media files

Once the images have been added successfully, must access " Media> Library "And click on the" Smush Now For each of the images you downloaded to compress them.

All you have to do now is download the compressed images to your computer and you can now return them to the theme folder.

Tip # 3: Regenerate your thumbnails

Sometimes an error occurs with thumbnails for uploaded images that prevents Smush from working normally. The data relating to your images may be missing, corrupted or incomplete.

One of the reasons for this could be the fact that you installed an SSL certificate, but forgot to replace all your image links to reflect the change in your HTTPS URL.

Another possible factor could be that Smush was unable to complete the compression due to an interruption related to reaching the limit of resources depending on your server configuration.

In such cases, Smush can not optimize and compress your images, but regenerating your thumbnails solves the problem. You can use the plugin « Regenerate Thumbnails To automate this process.

Tip # 4: Eliminate Anything That Interferes With Performance

If you upload larger images to add to posts, pages, themes, sliders and more, and a plugin or theme is set up to regenerate those images to a much smaller size when uploading loading in the browser of a visitor, this creates a performance bottleneck.

It's a duplicate job for your server with few results.

Google Insights PageSpeed, H , WP Checkup et GTMetrix do not recommend this behavior because it decreases the performance of your site.

To remedy this, you need to upload images with the exact dimensions for the plugins and themes that intend to use them on your site. Resize your images before uploading or use the WordPress editor to resize images if you've already uploaded.

Alternatively, you can use WP Meuch Pro to resize your large images allowing retaining the options of the original images. You can also choose to use the plugin Regenerate Thumbnails to refresh the miniatures of WordPress.

That's all for these tips on WP Smush Pro, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them.