Enjoy the fastest ever image processing times with the latest version of Smush. Spend less time waiting for your images to be optimized with up to 3x more processing speed.
Just when you thought the most popular WordPress image optimizer (currently boasting a 5-star rating and over a million+ active installs) couldn’t get any better… Smush takes it to the next level with version 3.11.
In this article find out just how much time you can save optimizing images with 3x processing speed and see how Smush stacks up against its toughest competitors.
Skip ahead to any section of this article:
You’ll realize how much time you can save and why this award-winning plugin is breaking speed records for image optimization.
Let’s get to it!
What’s New In The Latest Version Of Smush
Our hard-working developers are constantly improving Smush. Here’s what’s included in our newest Smush version.
Parallel Processing Speed
As mentioned in the introduction, the processing speed is now better than ever.
Multiple images are processed in parallel, which makes lightning-fast processing speed a reality for your image files.
Before, images were sent to Smush’s API and were processed one at a time. Now, multiple thumbnails (and originals — if enabled) are processed in parallel for multifold improvement in processing speed.
This saves you tons of time. There are no more waiting long periods for images to be processed.
Recovers Gracefully from API Side Issues
Since Smush makes calls to an external service through HTTP requests, there are always possibilities of things failing randomly (e.g. temporary network issue).
We now have a Retry Mechanism that helps recover from any issues without having to show any errors. That means less time you’ll be dealing with failed optimized images.
Before, if a temporary network issue caused the Smush request for one of the image sizes to fail, it also treated all the other sizes as failures.
Now, in Bulk Smush, it’s no longer a problem. With the retry mechanism in place, it prevents all images from failing if there are issues with only one.
With that being said, let’s take a look at…
Smush vs Other Image Optimization Plugins
We wanted to see how Smush’s speed stacked against a couple of the other most popular optimization plugins. So, we decided to give it a go with speed tests.
As you’ll see — testing is easy to implement. We simply set up a few websites, added some images, installed a plugin to each site, and optimized images.
This can all be done for free, and it’s highly recommended that YOU try it out for yourself. We’d love to hear what results you were able to achieve.
Here’s a breakdown of what we did…
Setting Up Testing
To get started, we set up a WordPress site and created a template so that the site was duplicated. We did this instantly with
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This article was written by N. Fakes and originally published on WPMU DEV Blog.