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[Smush Pro] WebP images in Smush

Hello, 

I need some help/advise for converting WebP images please. 

I’ve tried to use the automatic setup in Smush for the Local WebP, but these do not get applied. I’ve tried to then do this manually, but this is does not work either. 

But if I inspect the live webpage the images are already being converted to WebP as I am using the Smush CDN;

https://875496.smushcdn.com/1945223/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/IMG_20190920_090123-1.jpg?lossy=1&strip=1&webp=1

However, a lot of my images have been added initially as a background – so these are unaffected;

https://premierbites.co.uk//wp-content/uploads/2019/10/IMG_20190920_090952-1.jpg

 

I though it may be easier to just convert my images locally to WebP and upload these to WordPress – however, the file sizes are larger than the JPG files they are replacing and the WebP images do not get smushed either.

 
What can you suggest to make all my images show as WebP??

Is these even necessary, will it make a big difference doing this?
 

Thank you
 
David

Thu, 30 Dec 2021 15:16:04
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  • Art Smith
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    Hello David! I’m glad you are working with Smush Pro as I think it is the best way to get good performance out of your images.

    I have not been able to dig into the webp technology enough nor the plugin’s behavior using it yet… hopefully others will join in with more helpful comments. So I apologize for the largely speculative nature of my post.

    I think you find (if you haven’t seen it yet) this link at Google (who developed webp) to be helpful with regard to how webp works: https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/faq

    I’ve been operating under the assumption that since not all browsers and versions will support webp that the plug-in is actually checking the browser type and version in the background to determine whether to deliver the webp version or the source version on the fly (probably determining with JavaScript). I don’t know for a fact if that’s true so again hopefully someone smarter about the inner workings of the plugins can confirm. IF THAT’S TRUE, I don’t think you would want to use webp as the source image type for your images but rather upload png/jog/gif as you normally would and let the plugin handle the legacy lifting.

  • David Pearce
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    Hi Art,

    Thanks for the info above, this does largely cover assumptions that I have made myself – but it’s good to have those backup by another person????????

    I initially converted and uploaded a WebP file directly just to confirm my server would accept and display them as I can’t get the Local WebP in Smush to work and didn’t know if this was an issue with my server actually accepting them – whish it isn’t.
    But, thanks for pointing out the legacy display as I’d over looked this in my plan to just uploaded WebP for any new images!

    it’s mainly the background image as my site theme uses a lot of these…

    Ta

    David

  • Pawel Pela
    • Ex Staff

    Hello David Pearce and Art Smith (Ambrosia Web Technology) !

    Hope you’re having a good day!

    I’d say WebP is very important, especially as Google pushes the format across the internet and their scores on PageSpeed Insights also take this into account in a significant way. So definitely, if you can serve WebP everywhere, that would be the best option.

    What Art Smith (Ambrosia Web Technology) speculates is in fact correct – it’s actually the browser that sends a header letting the server know that it will accept WebP images. The rules we add check this header and if it’s present, Smush will attempt to serve a WebP version of the image – it won’t change the file name, it will only substitute the underlying image data in this case. For a browser the extension doesn’t matter as it will read the image data and decide based on this which codec to use to decode and display the image.

    David Pearce as you’re experiencing an issue setting this up, we’ll need to take a closer look at your site – for this please enable Support Access like this:

    You can also read more about granting Support Access here: https://wpmudev.com/docs/getting-started/getting-support/#enabling-support-access

    Please be sure to reply here after enabling Support Access, as we won’t receive a notification otherwise.

    Best regards,
    Pawel

  • David Pearce
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    Hello Pawel,

    Thank you for the further confirmation on the deployment of WebP.

    I have granted support access.

    Just to clarify, WebP is being used for images that are severed from your CDN.
    The issue seams to be with background images (that my theme uses a lot) are still being served by my server in JPG format.
    I’m hoping that the Local WebP function in smush would solve this, but I cannot get it to work either automatically or manually.

    I could update my site and replace the background images with regular images and this would hopefully solve the problem if Local WebP will not work.

    Thank you

    David

  • Pawel Pela
    • Ex Staff

    Hello David Pearce !

    I can confirm that in fact the background images are still in jpg format. Ive checked what may be the cause here – doesn’t seem like it’s CloudFlare, maybe some server setup then.

    We’ll need to investigate a bit further and for this some additional credentials will be needed, especially access to the files, but if you can share server dashboard/cPanel/Plesk etc that would be best.

    Would you be able to share those with us? If so, please use the secure contact form:

    Important: Don’t post your login details in this ticket.

    Contact form: https://premium.wpmudev.org/contact/#i-have-a-different-question

    Subject: Attn: Pawel

    Message template:

    - WordPress admin credentials including login URL
- FTP credentials
- cPanel credentials
- Hosting dashboard credentials
- Folder path to site in question
- Link back to this thread for reference
- Any other relevant urls/info

    For WordPress admin you can create a temporary account – please use contact+delegate@wpmudev.org as the email and set a password.

    Please also add the newly created admin account to WPMU DEV >> Settings >> Permissions

    After submitting the details, please reply here as well to let me and my teammates know.

    Kind regards,
    Pawel