[Plugin: EWWW Image Optimizer] Option to use PNGout and to enable/disable programs

Disabling one or more of the tools could be done for example to share gifs which don’t need gifsicle –unoptimize before being editable, to use only PNGOUT or OptiPNG but not both, or general testing reasons. A checkbox to the left side of each plugin filesystem location should do the trick.

A good plugin – or any piece of software – provides good defaults and the necessary options to cover other use cases flexibly. The above guarantees the latter, and for the defaults, the heavier one of those two (PNGOUT, I believe) could be turned off by default to not have support issues “I turned it on and it’s all good but adding an image takes forever”. Those more advanced users who want the maximum compression using PNGOUT or both of them would find the options for these at the plugin settings.

Later, at the point when I manage a site with a huge png traffic, I’ll do more extensive testing with the order of running OptiPNG and PNGOUT. It could be that to cover all options one of them should be run twice (eg. OptiPNG first, then PNGOUT, then again OptiPNG -> now both have been run once after the other). If we reach the point where that is useful, we’ll likely contribute a patch for enabling that and possibly others (eg. to do the processing remotely on another computer), if EIO still then is what we use for optimization.

Automated installation is a very good idea. Ideally the user wouldn’t even need to click anything after Activate to have their images stay optimized.

Some profile settings are necessary to choose between eg. maximum compression (that is, to run OptiPNG, then PNGout, then OptiPNG again with max settings) or a lot faster decent compression (just running OptiPNG once). Siteadmins would then choose their settings depending on their use case:

1. A site with tons of images and loads of bandwidth but not much free CPU would choose lower compression settings.
2. A site with less images and bandwidth but lots of free CPU would maximize any compression settings they can.

If the plugin gets popular with some image-heavy sites, I’m pretty sure someone will write a patch that will let the calculation processes be done on a different computer than where the WordPress is located. The most image-heavy sites will also be the first ones to switch from the automatically installed compressors to ones they compiled themselves to take full use of their CPU’s features.

Good to hear. On our part it’ll take latest until October since we’ll be looking into these optimizations. When that time comes, it’s probably time to take a shot at CloudFlare. It’s might not be for every project, so we might end up using them for some and a more custom solution (eg. this plugin) for others.

They call it Polish, and it’s available in all plans with the exception of free: https://www.cloudflare.com/plans

How does CloudFlare work for you in terms of images? They write that they cache your images. Is that the same as in serving them for you, in other words practically paying for your image bandwidth for you?