MainWP Blog - optimization

If you’re using the ShortPixel Image Optimizer plugin and want to switch to a different plugin, you should first delete all of the data that ShortPixel is currently using. This will help ensure your new plugin works correctly without conflicting with the old data. To quickly delete all of the ShortPixel data, you will need to be in wp-admin of the site with the ShortPixel plugin still active; Settings > ShortPixel > Tools Original images before optimization are stored in Continue reading the post...

A commonly used spam protection plugin is Zero Spam which has over 30k active installations. To avoid conflicts when switching from the Zero Spam plugin, it’s recommended to remove any remaining data before installing, activating, and setting up the new spam protection solution. The Zero Spam plugin uses a couple of custom database tables for storage; wp_zerospam_blocked_ips Wp_zerospam_log Suppose the custom database tables from the Zero Spam plugin are not automatically deleted when you uninstall it. In that case, you Continue reading the post...

The WP Compress plugin and service cover much more than image optimization now. The WP Compress v6 includes image optimization, serving out site images and assets using BunnyCDN or Cloudfront from Amazon. This means that those assets will be served using solid CDN services, which have multiple PoPs. WP Compress includes deferring CSS and JS files and minifying HTML and CSS files being loaded on the site’s front end. Currently in beta, WP Compress offers critical CSS generation, which will Continue reading the post...

The WebP image format is commonly supported in most major browsers, and in most cases, the images can be smaller than the original JPG format file. WebP images are about 30% smaller than PNG and JPEG images at equivalent visual quality. WordPress 6.1 introduced the WebP image generation feature. But, if you don’t want to use natively, you can easily disable it using a code snippet and the CDN at the edge, such as Cloudflare or the locally generating plugin Continue reading the post...

Some unmanaged hosts provide cPanel on their hosting plans, or you might have some client sites hosted on a VPS with cPanel. cPanel includes many performance options built-in and supported that you may not be aware of. Make sure that server-side compression of assets is enabled in cPanel this will use the mod_deflate module in Apache. You can select to have all content compressed or specify which MIME type should be compressed. Smaller site assets being server-side compressed will improve Continue reading the post...

If you use the Imagify plugin for image optimization on your WordPress website. You may have noticed a change to compression levels being offered in the recent 2.0 update Version 2.0 of the Imagify plugin has new default settings for image compression and smart compression. This new default is similar to the ultra mode, and then if the AI detects enough image quality loss, it would be optimized at the aggressive level. The change was meant to make the Imagify Continue reading the post...

If you are using the FluentSMTP plugin for sending site emails using a transactional email provider such as AWS SES, Postmark, Sendinblue, SendGrid, or SparkPost then the logs database table could cause a lot of bloat on your site. The below database table for FluentSMTP logs could increase to 5-12 GB in size: wp_fsmpt_email_logs You can use the WP-Optimize plugin or phpMyAdmin to check how large the email logs database table is. With the WP-Optimize plugin installed and activated, go Continue reading the post...

The WP Offload SES plugin is used to send site emails using the cheapest AWS SES service. WP Offload SES Lite Plugin for WordPress Below are the custom database tables that the WP Offload SES plugin uses; wp_oses_attachments wp_oses_clicks wp_oses_email_attachments wp_oses_emails wp_oses_failures wp_oses_jobs The database table to check; wp_oses_emails From the WP Offload SES plugin settings, check that you are not storing 30+ days or email logging in your site’s database. The ideal setting for log storage would be between Continue reading the post...

One of the easiest ways to improve front-end performance is to preload the images which contribute to the largest contentful paint (LCP) of the site. To find the images that should be set to preload, test your site using popular performance testing tools, or use the MainWP Lighthouse extension, and navigate to the waterfall results to find the image URL. Head & Footer WordPress Plugin There are a number of ways to preload images by either using a header and Continue reading the post...

Now is the time of the year to clean up WordPress site for better performance and security. One of the easiest ways would be to remove unused plugins and themes. It is very easy for a site to have several inactive plugins on it. This could happen when plugins have been replaced with better-coded plugins, but the original plugins were not deleted on the site. Also if you have been testing plugins on a site for a specific feature but Continue reading the post...