How To Ace Google’s Image Page Speed Recommendations With Smush

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Smush has everything you need to optimize your images, as well as a handy repertoire of tools ready to help you smash PageSpeed Insights image-related recommendations.

It’s a simple way to speed up your site, without sacrificing your image quality.

With Smush you can:

  • Compress images in bulk and with one click
  • Automatically resize and rescale your images
  • Enable lazy loading so your server can concentrate on displaying content above the fold
  • Convert your image files to formats that are drastically smaller and much quicker to display.

Over a million installs and more than 50 billion images smushed.

There are four main recommendations when it comes to images, and Smush can answer all of them.

“I had no idea that my page load time was being dragged down by the images. The plugin nearly halved the time it took.” – karlcw

This guide will show you how Smush can help you get your PageSpeed Insights score into the green.

Defer Offscreen Images

You don‘t want to be wasting server resources and sacrificing page speed to load images that are halfway down your page, so deferring offscreen images makes sense for many sites.

When you install Smush, Lazy Load is one of the first features you should check out. Simply enabling it can fix the ‘defer offscreen images’ PageSpeed recommendation.

Smush’s Lazy Load feature comes with more than just an on and off button.

You can choose which image formats you want to include.

Screenshot of the media types, whocing jpeg, png, gif, svg and iframe which can all be excluded.
Maybe you want your JPEGs to Lazy Load, but not your PNGs?

As well as any post types you want to exclude.

Screenshot of the different pages you can exclude from lazy load including the front page, blog and posts.
There’s also the option to add the URL of any specific pages.

Lazy Loading is something that can easily be undone so turn it on, check your new PageSpeed Insights score, and most importantly, check the impact it has on your site.

Efficiently Encode Images

If you want a full and comprehensive guide to optimizing your images, I would recommend checking out this blog, as here, we’re purely focusing on how Smush can help you meet PageSpeed Insights audit requirements. In this section, specifically the ‘efficiently encode images’ recommendation.

Smushing your images prevents your server being clogged up with extra MBs that don’t need to be there.

You can Smush in a variety of ways, with virtually no difference in quality.

Smush on Upload

Automatic compression is on by default and is used to efficiently encode images. It’s a high impact, low-risk feature, which should be used on most sites.

Screenshot of automatic compression showing it enabled and ready to automatically compress images on upload.
You can select whether you want it to apply to all images, or exclude certain sizes.

If you don’t want Smush to automatically compress your photos, there are a few other ways you can manage this:

Bulk Smush

You can use the Bulk Smush feature to scan your site for photos which are in need of attention and smush them all at once.

 

Screenshot of bulk smush showing that there are three images in need of smushing.
Click the button and let the plugin do all the work for you.

Smush Through the Media Library

You can also head to the media library to check whether you have images available for smushing.

Screenshot of an image of a moon in the media library ready to be smushed.
You can smush individually through the media library or select images to be ignored from autosmush.

Smush Other Directories

You’re not confined to just your media uploads – you can also smush non-WordPress images outside of your uploads directory.

Screenshot of the directory smush option showing the navigati9on to the wp-content folder to search for more images.
You can easily navigate through your folders to find the images you want to Smush.

Super Smush

Super Smush is your next port of call if you want to bring your file sizes down even further.

It offers 2X the smushing power compared to the standard method, so it’s handy if you have a lot of images that are soaking up valuable resources.

Even if ensuring your images were properly encoded wasn’t one of PageSpeed Insights audit opportunities, it still makes sense to get rid of any excess bloating, as long as there is no noticeable difference to your images.

Utilize the CDN

Smush also offers a blazing-fast 45 point CDN  (Pro version only) which allows you to serve your images in next-gen formats as well as ensuring they’re delivered to your browser at breakneck speed.

Make your Images Next Gen

Next-gen image formats such as WebP and JPEG 2000/XR can bring your file size down drastically.

Serving your images in one of these formats will save you server resources, as well as meet one of PageSpeed Insights requirements.

With Smush’s CDN enabled, you can serve your images in the next-gen WebP format.

As not all browsers support WebP images, Smush does a super-quick check of the browser, and if WebP images are supported, then great – that’s what’s served to your visitor. If not, Smush can simply serve up a PNG or JPEG to make sure that no one misses out.

Properly-sized Images

Forcing the browser to resize an image before it can be displayed to the user slows down your site and lowers your PageSpeed Insight score. Part of the recommendation is to refrain from serving images that are larger than the version that will be displayed on the visitor’s screen.

Screenshot of the automatic resizing feature showing it currently turned on.
With Smush’s CDN, this is one of the easiest PageSpeed Insight recommendations to solve.

If you want to ensure you’re being completely thorough in the correct sizing of your images, read this blog to find out a few alternative tricks.

Smash PageSpeed Insights with Smush

While many users struggle to improve their web site optimization, Smush lets you boost your page loading speeds by making images easier and faster to load…and it does this all in just a few clicks!

Follow the above recommendations and put Smush to work for your site today. Also, keep an eye on our roadmap for all the exciting new features coming soon to Smush.

WordCamp Denver 2020 Online Features Yoga, Coffee, Virtual Swag, and 3 Tracks of WordPress Sessions, June 26-27

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WordCamp Denver begins Friday this week and tickets are free for anyone who wants to join June 26-27. The event has been running since 2012, but like many other conferences, it is going virtual in 2020, as the pandemic continues to worsen around the globe. Attendees will have to forego the city’s extraordinary landscapes, friendly summer climate, and legendary beer scene this year, but organizers are adapting to make it a memorable event.

In previous years WordCamp Denver has attracted roughly 300 in-person attendees. Sponsor Wrangler and co-organizer Maddy Osman reports that this year the event has 1,696 people signed up and could reach 2,000 by the weekend.

“There were so many challenges that came with flipping to a virtual event — the biggest one being that the WordPress community loves to be physically together and COVID-19 shutdowns have obviously prevented that in a big way, starting with WordCamp Asia,” Osman said.

“Another big challenge for us was preserving a Colorado feel while opening the event up to people across the world. But we have quite a few surprises planned that feature local individuals and brands that I’m excited to share with attendees.” 

Osman said that although the team didn’t sell as many sponsorships as last year, they had no problem attracting the necessary sponsors to make the event happen. WordCamp Central covers the livestreaming costs, which was the most expensive ticket item for hosting the event virtually.

Sponsors will still have the opportunity to connect with attendees and offer their own unique digital swag. Organizers are planning on doing a password-protected swag bag with exclusive offers for WordCamp Denver attendees.

“Even though we can’t hand out fun swag, this is the next best way to make win-win connections between attendees and sponsors,” Osman said. “Attendees who have signed up for a free ticket will be emailed access instructions prior to the event.”

The WordCamp will kick off on Friday with a yoga session hosted by Denver yogi Lauren Moon of Yogiful who will help participants leave behind the stress of the work week. The schedule features three tracks that will run simultaneously: Beginner, Marketing/Content, and Power User/Developer.  Topics span the whole range of WordPress user experiences, from client relationships to creating blocks and understanding React.js.

“We have speakers from all over the US (and some international) but we prioritized speakers with diverse backgrounds and speakers who represent the local community,” Osman said.

“We tried to prioritize sessions that were super actionable and relevant to the current situation that so many businesses are facing – adapting to the COVID-19 economy. In general, when going through speaker selection, we always try to dig deeper than the surface to provide topics that people wouldn’t necessarily find elsewhere.”

The schedule for Saturday morning includes a unique session called “Brew the Perfect Cup of Coffee,” hosted by Fort Collins-based WordPress community members, David Hayes and Ann Pohl. They will discuss bean selection, grind methods, and alternatives to brewing, with a live demonstration. They will also be sharing a surprise offer from local sponsors, where attendees can redeem a free cup of coffee from one of three coffee shops in Boulder, Denver, and Fort Collins. Those attending from further away can redeem a coupon code for $10 off a bag of beans from Harbinger Coffee.

Registration for tickets to WordCamp Denver is still open. The event runs Friday (3-7pm) and Saturday (9am-1pm), June 26-27. It will be hosted on Zoom with live captioning managed by White Coat Captioning.

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Gutenberg Times to Hold Live Q&A on Block-Based Themes and Full-Site Editing

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On Friday, June 26, Gutenberg Times will be holding a live Q&A on block-based themes and full-site editing. The Zoom webinar will begin at 18:00 UTC and last for around one hour, depending on how many questions are asked by viewers.

The target audience of the event will be theme developers or anyone interested in designing using the upcoming system that relies on blocks to build the entire front end. To attend, viewers should register via Zoom. By registering, Zoom will send viewers reminders about the event and allow them to ask questions to the panel. The session will also be streamed live via the Gutenberg Times YouTube Channel.

Birgit Pauli-Haack, the owner of Gutenberg Times, is hosting the event. The following developers from the WordPress theming community will join her on the panel:

  • Eileen Violini – Design Engineer at Sidetrack Studio and Customer Success Engineer at CastosHQ.
  • Carolina Nymark – WordPress Themes Team representative and creator of the Full Site Editing Course.
  • Kjell Reigstad – Designer at Automattic who works on the Gutenberg project.

“I find the four-people-Brady-Bunch-on-screen format the most appealing and gives people the opportunity to get their questions answered,” said Pauli-Haack.

Friday’s event will begin with a five-minute demo from Reigstad. The goal is to show how theme authors can create a page header and footer by taking those concepts and applying them to a block-based theme. It is an introduction point that theme authors can use in their existing themes without starting from scratch.

The second part of the event will center on answering questions that Nymark often gets from other developers, such as how to put block code within template files. Reigstad will be showcasing demos based on those questions.

“After that, it’s all about the audience questions that I will read and the panel answers,” said Pauli-Haack. “The discussion and demo are all conversation starters. In other Q&As, after introductions, I had my own questions, and then made it all about the audience questions.”

Potential viewers can watch past Q&A events from the Gutenberg Times archive to get a feel for the format.

There is no set direction for the event beyond showing the initial demos. Pauli-Haack wants to put the audience in the driver’s seat and allow the discussion to go wherever it needs to go. The panel is open to exploring all Aspects of building themes with blocks, and it is a good opportunity for theme authors to communicate with developers who are at the forefront of the transition into full-site editing.

“I have the feeling it will be more about how to transition from the old way to the new way and how all the pieces fit together,” she said. “Beyond the demos, there probably won’t be many code examples. We will discuss the resources out there and how to approach them.”

Gutenberg Times is in its third year of sharing information about the Gutenberg project. Pauli-Haack describes it as her passion project. “The goal has been to collect all the fragmented information while Gutenberg was in beta before the release in Dec 2018,” she said. However, the site has continued going beyond its initial phase. Pauli-Haack has been holding live Q&As since 2018 on the site.

How To Migrate a WordPress Website

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If you have a WordPress (or any other type of) website for any length of time, it’s likely you’ll run into the need to move it to a new host at some point. Figuring out how to migrate a WordPress website is one of those site maintenance tasks a lot of people would rather avoid as it can seem unruly, unpredictable, and time-consuming.

And sometimes, it really is all of those things. However, if you plan ahead and have a good set of instructions to walk you through the process, you should be good to go.

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Why Migrate?

Site owners find they need to migrate WordPress sites for a number of different reasons. A lot of the time, it’s a matter of finding a better hosting deal elsewhere. The promise of saving money is always enticing. Another common reason to migrate your site is due to a lack of satisfaction with your current service provider. Whether they offer poor customer service or slow server response times, there are many reasons to switch.

Here are a few more common reasons people decide to migrate a WordPress website:

  • Seeking better site performance. If your site is currently too slow, an upgrade to a new host might be the right call.
  • A need for greater bandwidth. If your site is growing rapidly, migrating to a host that can handle your increased traffic needs is a must.
  • A need for more storage space. If your site is multimedia-heavy, migrating to a host with greater storage capacity might be the right choice for you.
  • More hands-on customer support. If you run an extensive website with a lot of moving parts (customers, clients, accounts, etc), the need for a more responsive customer support team might be more pronounced and necessary.
  • Better pricing. Sometimes, the price tag tells the whole story. If you find a better hosting deal elsewhere, migrating your WordPress site might be your best bet.
  • Expanded feature set. If your current host is lacking in features, you may find you need to migrate to one that offers more.

With the “why” spelled out, let’s move onto the “how.” We’ll cover how to manually migrate WordPress, along with some plugins that will do the hard work for you.

A truck on a street.

How to Manually Migrate a WordPress Site

You will need an FTP client to complete this process. A few options include:

Step 1: Backup Your Site

Before you can move your site anywhere, you need to back it up. This means going through the process of downloading every single file of your WordPress site from a remote location. You will need an FTP client for this. Though I typically use FileZilla for this process, I’ll keep the steps fairly generic. Apply as needed to your chosen FTP client:

  1. Connect to your old site’s server.
  2. Go to the public_html folder.
  3. Select all files in this folder.
  4. Download the files.

Next, you’ll need to create and download a backup of your site’s MySQL database as well. To do this, you’ll need to go to the control panel of your web host. Most of the time, this will be cPanel. Go to phpMyAdmin and select the database associated with your WordPress site. Click Export and the database will be downloaded to your computer.

If you’d rather have this process be somewhat automated, go to cPanel (if your host supports it) and access the File Manager. In here, you can create a .zip file that contains all of your site’s files and its database for easy downloading. If you’re not super familiar with FTP, this might be the preferred method to use.

Step 2: Upload Your Files to the New WordPress Host

The next step to migrate a WordPress website is to upload your site’s files to the new host. You’ll need your trusty FTP client again. Once connected, you’ll need to go to the public_html folder on this new hosting account. Next, you’ll need to upload all the files from your site – make sure to decompress them first!

Step 3: Upload Your WordPress Database to the New Host

Once the files are uploaded, you’ll need to upload your WordPress MySQL database, too.

To do this, go to the cPanel or other control panel connected to your new hosting account. There should be a section specifically for MySQL databases. From there you’ll need to:

  1. Create a new database. Make note in a safe place of the database name, username, and password associated with this new database.
  2. Go to phpMyAdmin. The new database should be listed. Select it.
  3. Click Import. Then, select the MySQL database file you’d previously downloaded. Upload it and save your settings.

Step 4: Edit the wp-config.php File

Now that everything has been uploaded to the new host, you’ll need to do some fine-tuning to ensure all of the new host’s settings work with your site. This will require using your FTP client again, but this time, find the wp-config.php file.

Once you’ve located this file, you’ll need to modify some code. According to SiteGround, you need to locate this section of code within the file:

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'user_wrdp1');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'user_wrdp1');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'hostname');

Once you’ve located this section of code, you need to replace bits of it with information about the WordPress database you created. Here’s what you need to replace:

  1. Change the database name, if necessary
  2. Set username to your database’s username
  3. Set password to your database’s password
  4. Swap out hostname for localhost or a custom name provided by your host

Save the changes you made. In a lot of cases, this will be the last step you need to take. Your site should now be up and running on the new host.

Step 5: Update the DNS

In some cases, you’ll need to update Domain Name Server or DNS information on your new host. This will ensure that when someone types in your site’s URL, they wind up on your actual site and not a blank page. This is common practice when you’re switching domain servers, hosting plans, and hosting companies.

According to WPEngine, you’ll need DNS info about your new host and access to the registrar from whom you bought your domain name in the first place. Specifically, you’ll need:

  1. CNAME record
  2. A NAME for your site.

Input this info in your domain registrar account. This can sometimes take up to a few days to complete processing.

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Plugins for Migrating WordPress Sites

If all of the above sounds like a lot of work, you can rely on plugin-based solutions to do the heavy lifting for you. These plugins are sometimes referred to as “cloning” plugins but for our purposes, we’re considering them all methods of migrating WordPress websites.

Now, you will still likely need to adjust a few settings on your new site server manually, but these plugins will definitely take care of the backing up, exporting, and importing processes.

Duplicator

Duplicator WordPress Plugin

The Duplicator plugin makes it much easier to migrate WordPress by streamlining the process. It works by making click-of-a-button copies of your site’s files and database. Then you can download all of this information in a handy .zip file with minimal effort.

All-in-One WP Migration

All-in-One WP Migration WordPress Plugin

Another great option is the All-in-One WP Migration plugin. This one allows you to make backups of your site’s content and database as well and import this information over to your new host, all from within the plugin.

WP Engine Automated Migration

WP Engine Automated Migration WordPress Plugin

Our last recommendation is the WP Engine Automated Migration plugin. This one copies your files and WordPress database and allows you to upload them to your new site server with ease. So long as you have your hosting account details on hand, the plugin will handle much of the site migration process for you. Just note that this plugin only works with the WP Engine hosting provider.

Migrate Your Site Now

Whether you decide to migrate a WordPress site manually or you opt for the plugin route, you hopefully now have a stronger understanding of what the process entails, how it works, and what you need to do to prepare. Again, it might seem like a lot of work on the surface but the end result is often well worth it when you end up with a better home for your website.

Best of luck!