PAGE 1 – What happens when you upload an image to your WordPress website
PAGE 2 – What the default WordPress Media Library Settings mean to low performance
PAGE 3 – How to change the WordPress Media Library Settings for faster performance
PAGE 4 – Results of change and how the EWWW Image Optimizer recognizes it
When you upload a picture into the WordPress Media Library on your website, by default WordPress will save up to 4 different sizes of the same image. This means that though you uploaded only 1 image, WordPress is saving 4 images all at different sizes.
WHY IMAGE OPTIMIZATION IS IMPORTANT
When doing the Google PageSpeed Insights the one common culprit to slower website speed are the images saved and used on your website. If you are using a plugin like the EWWW Image Optimizer you will notice that after you optimize an image it will say how many sizes were compressed, see image below.
These sizes indicate how many images WordPress has saved in your Media Library. So when you optimize an image you are actually optimizing all 4 images. What are these 4 images and why are they created by default in WordPress?
In the top image above it said that 4 sizes compressed, reduced by 6.2%, for a total size of 9.4 KB saved. But what does that really mean? In the above image you can see the 4 image sizes that were compressed, and when you add their final savings, 5.6 KB + 2.6 KB + 731 B + 402 B, you get 9.4 KB.
Now fortunately before I upload images to my Media Library, I always reduce the size in Microsoft Paint. For this particular image it was already down to a memory size of 74.4 KB before EWWW optimized it by 7%. But there are 3 other image sizes WordPress has saved that were also optimized.
Nowhere on my website do I use these other sized images, so these 3 duplicate images of different sizes are taking up space in my Media Library and contributing to a less efficient overall website performance. How can this be easily resolved, especially if I have no intentions of using the other sizes of the image I uploaded? Read on.
NEXT UP = Why the default WordPress Media Library Settings contribute to slower website performance
Reply
That is an interesting problem you are having. Once you get that image fixed, let me know if having only one sized image instead of duplicates, makes a difference. I would like to know.
You will however probably have to do another fetch as Google of that particular post and wait a couple of days to see if the change in the image has fixed the problem or not.
Ralph
Also do the images added in the new Content feature take care of size automatically or do they need to be fixed too.
Thank you for this training, Robert. Wish I would have known this before I had so many images. :)
As for images already uploaded there are no up to date plugins I know of that will cleanup the unwanted image sizes in your media library.
So going back and deleting then uploading the image again will fix the issue, but could take some time depending on how many images you have.
For me this is a process I will take my time with because it is not something that needs to get done right away. This is more of a cleanup that can happen over the course of time.
As for all future images you upload, just upload images that are pre-optimized to a size close to how you will use it in your website.
Then if you have the EWWW Image Optimizer installed, or another similar plugin, the image you upload will be further optimized automatically before being saved in the media library.
Did I answer your questions enough?
Anyway, I'd like to add a well-known and recommended plugin to my current site as a test to see how it works in removing 2/3 (not actually of course) of my Library. I really don't care what happens to this site version as it will be replaced in a week or so.
