The New Version of Our SiteGround Optimizer Plugin Is a Game Changer for Your WordPress Performance
Table of Contents
Early versions of our SiteGround Optimizer plugin had one single purpose: to connect WordPress with the reverse proxy caching system set up on our servers. Over the years, we have added multiple features like PHP and HTTPS management options that allow even more control over SiteGround’s server environment right from the WordPress backend.
With the new release, not only have we greatly enhanced the existing functionalities, but we’ve also included some of the most popular application-based performance optimizations. Now, our plugin is an all-inclusive performance solution for WordPress sites hosted on our platform.
Our SiteGround Optimizer has always been an invaluable tool in boosting site performance and now we’ve pushed its capabilities even further. Internal speed tests of the new version show an additional 20-30% performance improvement even for well-optimized sites. And when you use the plugin on a site that runs on an old PHP version and/or has poorly-optimized content, the benefit can easily go up to 500%!
Smarter Dynamic Cache Purging
The NGINX-powered full page caching has been a core functionality of the plugin from the start. Now, we have significantly enhanced that feature by improving the cache purge functionality.
Before this release, any time there was a change on your site, even just a new comment on a blog post, the plugin purged the cache for the whole site. This meant that many visitors would see non-cached content, causing slow page loading times. With the new version, we purge the whole site cache only when there are important changes like when you update your WordPress version or install a theme or a plugin.
On all other occasions, we have smart rules to determine which part of the cache to flush. For example, when someone publishes a comment on your blog post, only that post’s URL will be cleared from the cache and regenerated on the next visit. The less your cache is purged, the less times your site will be reloaded.
Brand New Front-End & Image Optimizations
A whole new set of front-end and image optimization features are now part of our plugin. Most of them are well-known and widely used application-level optimizations that make WordPress sites faster. What’s unique to us is we’ve designed our plugin specifically for the SiteGround environment in order to minimize the resource footprint the optimizations cause.
- Automatic image optimization option for new uploads and manual bulk optimizer function for old ones.
- Lazy loading of images that reduces the initial loading time of your pages and is especially useful for long ones with lots of images like the blogroll page.
- GZIP Compression to compress your content before it’s served to the browser and save bandwidth.
- CSS, JavaScript, and HTML minification that improves the loading speed of your site by reducing the size of your resources.
- Remove query strings from static resources to improve the way your content is cached by your visitors and potentially your CDN, if you’re using one.
- Option to disable emoji support to avoid unnecessary overhead by the emoji conversion script.
- Browser Caching Control that automatically adds the necessary rules for your visitors’ browsers to cache your static content longer than the default settings.
Improved HTTPS Traffic Redirect
In the old plugin version, we used to redirect the traffic to HTTPS dynamically, which is not optimal because it adds to the loading time of your site. Although the footprint was minimal, it was still present. In the new plugin version, we have split the process of forcing HTTPS on your site into two steps.
First, we update your database, re-configuring your site to work with your SSL certificate and place a redirect to HTTPS. For the majority of sites, that’s enough. However, depending on the code of your theme or plugins, some resources may not be in the database. In these situations, when your site gets loaded in the browser, you will see the red warning “insecure content” on the page. Our second feature is designed in case there’s content not covered by the first one. The “Fix Insecure Content” toggle will scan for insecure content and dynamically rewrite those for you.
Other Functionality Improvements
Besides the main functionality enhancements listed above, the new version of our plugin has brought a number of smaller but handy improvements to several other areas:
Better Memcached support
We’ve enhanced the Memcached support in the new plugin version. Previously, additional tweaking was required when changing the PHP versions of your site. Not anymore! The Memcached works smoothly with all PHP versions supported by SiteGround. Our improved implementation also allows you to see statistics about which objects are served via Memcached for each page. These stats can be visualized with the help of the Debug bar plugin.
Easier PHP version change
When checking your site for compatibility with the recommended PHP version, we now run more optimized checks that save time and server resources. We also made switching between different PHP versions easier.
All functions available through WP-CLI
WP-CLI provides easy command line site management, but until now, we weren’t using WP-CLI to its full potential. Now, we’ve expanded the commands and you can change every option in the Optimizer backend through your command line.
Sleeker Interface for Single-Site and Multisite
The new version of our plugin introduces a simpler, cleaner look and feel. Its interface is now fully redesigned and written in React, which allows us to better handle processes and perform tasks that can take a longer period of time without stalling or exhausting too many resources for a short period of time.
The Multisite controls allow administrators to perform bulk actions across their network and are now easier to find and use. They are all neatly listed in a single section of the plugin instead of in different places in the general multisite WordPress admin panel.
Other Performance Plugins Compatibility
As SiteGround clients, you know our platform is compatible with all sorts of third-party plugins. That’s intentional. Unfortunately, we see that many performance plugins cannot achieve the most optimal performance results because they are designed to generally work well with multiple hosting platforms, rather than generate the best possible results for a specific platform of which they might not know the ins-and-outs.
That is why we decided to step up and offer an all-inclusive solution specifically shaped to the characteristics of our environment, creating the best possible performance for sites hosted with us.
That being said, as always, it is up to you which plugins to use given that you are the expert in your business objectives. However, should you choose to use a specific plugin that has an overlapping functionality with the SiteGround Optimizer plugin 5.0, we recommend you disable that option in the SiteGround Optimizer interface. Instead of making your site faster, two plugins trying to achieve the same thing may actually make it slower.
NOTE: Whenever you upgrade to or install the new plugin version, we will check if your WordPress is already using another performance plugin that may have an overlapping functionality with the SiteGround Optimizer. If this is the case, the overlapping options in our plugin will be automatically switched off. You will need to switch them on manually if you would like to use them through the SiteGround Optimizer.
For detailed instructions on how to use the new optimization features check out our SiteGround Optimizer tutorial.
Comments ( 259 )
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David Pascoe
Sounds great. Something in the optimiser is breaking ninja-popups though. I get Notice: Undefined variable: POST_CATS in /home/XXXX/public_html/wp-content/plugins/arscode-ninja-popups/arscode-ninja-popups.php on line 1432 When I turn SG optimiser off and go back to Rocket plugin, all fine. Should I raise a ticket?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, update to 5.0.2 and everything will be fine!
Chris
Just updated on my site today and everything working fine. The new SG Optimizer's UI looks more beautiful compared to previous version. I love it! By the way, I'm interesting that SiteGround will implement Brotli Compression along the GZIP Compression which better compression for static files like CSS, JS, Image, or HTML.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the suggestion, will look into it :)
Arby
You really should provide more detailed technical information about your image optimization. I currently use "Shortpixel" and would like to compare the two options.
ARBY
Been 2.5 years but I still would appreciate a reply to this. :)
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, post a thread in the wp.org forum of the plugin and we will happily assist you further.
Ben
I don't believe this new version is compatible with WP Popup Maker for WordPress. My popup now appears in the footer of my site (as explained in Solution 2 of this article https://docs.wppopupmaker.com/article/304-why-is-my-popup-showing-in-the-footer-of-my-site). I didn't have this problem with previous versions.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, update to 5.0.2 it should work fine with it.
Ben
I'm on 5.0.6 now and I'm having the same issue.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, disable all minifications from our plugin. I will look into this in details.
Ben
Disabling the minifications worked - thanks!
Bret Williams
As of updating, my staging subdomain was thrown up live, and after first support contact, fixed, but now the staging sub is no longer accessible with wp-admin. Support not getting back to me. I see you've even thrown up 5.0.3 so I'm guessing you've got your hands full with this misstep. On my live site, not sure if people are messing with it, but offline products keep going online and I have to keep turning them off. What is going on? Suport ticket going unanswered for an hour...
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The problem is caused by the object caching and the fact that you've cloned your sites including the salts during their creation. Sites sharing salts is a very bad idea when it comes to security and object cache usage. I've asked our support team to update your ticket and regenerate the salts on one of the sites in order to avoid such issues from happening.
Alex
Ok, now its time to switch from W3 Total Cache. :) Getting better results with few clicks than with tons of settings before.
Jason
What is the best PHP version to be running at this point?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I would say 7.2 if your site can handle it. 7.1 is great safe version right now until all plugins get to a state where they support 7.2.
Tim Aldridge
Hows does the image optimization of this plugin compare to others such as EWWW Image optimizer?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Ours uses server-side binaries to perform the optimization which should work faster and more resource-efficient than a regular plugin.
Arby
That's great but what are the parameters? Does it do JPEG/PNG/PNG8 comparisons and choose the best? What level of compression on JPG? What does it do with the original images? Some details here would be helpful.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We use optipng, jpegoptim and gifsicle for image optimization!
DVJy
Can I uninstall the Image optimization plugin & use SG optimizer now ?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, you can.
Ronald Segura
After I updated the plugin I can't enable Memcached from my site's backend.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, check if it's enabled in the cPanel. If so, kindly post a ticket in your Help Desk and we will check your particular case!
Dom
First, thank you for providing us with some major improvements, as I tested version 5.0.3 on my site. Many new features look really great and beneficial. A site I manage : diethylstilbestrol.co.uk has 1050 posts and 1142 media items. So, when I removed plugin "EWWG Image Optimizer" to run your new function of "Images Optimization" and "Existing Images Optimization" I was logically told to "PLEASE BE PATIENT, THIS PROCESS MAY TAKE SOME TIME". Well, there seems to be a bug, as it has ran for almost 12 hours and still "not completed", showing a kind of never-ending loop. Can you please let me know what I should do - or if this will be fixed with 5.0.4 ?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
That should be fixed with the last update. We found a bug with certain browsers that fail to render our status updates. Actually, your files should be optimized, just the notice didn't refresh properly. All fixed now though :)
preeth
is it better than swift paid
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Should be. Still working on some real and comprehensive tests which I will publish later on this year.
Pete
Does the minify & combine of CSS and JS bypass plugin scripts? I've just enabled it on a test site and it has not merged anything, but has compressed a single file slightly further than it was.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We do not combine since we strongly believe that everyone should use HTTPS and HTTP2. Minification does work with plugin and theme scripts. We store the minified version in the same folder to prevent relative links from breaking.
David Pasacoe
I see that 5.0.3 is already released and install on my site and it looks like the error is gone and ninja-popups is working with full SG optimising options turned on. Looks like I no longer need WP rocket as you guys do it all. Nice and thanks!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the kind words, we're working hard to fix every incompatibility with other plugins.
Edgar
Important notice of the SG Optimizer plugin: We have detected that there are duplicate functionalities with other plugins installed on your site: Imagify, WP Rocket and we have disabled the following functions of our plugin: GZIP Compression, Browser Caching, HTML Minification, JavaScript Minification, CSS Minification, Images Optimization If you wish to activate them, please do so from the SG Optimizer configuration page. Hi, I love that SG Optimizer has been updated with many improvements, but I have a doubt due to the message that throws me with problems with other plugins. What should I do? SG Optimizer will be a good substitute for them?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Generally, for performance sake, it's not a good idea to duplicate functionality - if you're minifying with one plugin, don't minify with another one. Our goal is to have a single plugin to handle all apsects of your site optimization - caching, scripts, images, environment configuration so you don't have to use 3-4 other plugins to achieve all that.
Martin
Will it be better to just use SG optimizer now or continue with WP Rocket as well?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Check out how your site behaves with SG Optimizer only. It should provide you the best performance on our infrastructure.
Marcel
Thanks for this great update. I wonder if I should still be using WP Rocket along with SG Optimizer?!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I would say try how your site performs with SG Optimizer only. It should be the best option for SiteGround customers now!
Cubert
Hi Hristo, Any idea why all of the plug in settings are disabled after I've enabled all of them and restarted my WP dashboard? I've tried deactivating/reactivating the plugin to no avail. Curious! I'd really like to apply each of these features!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
That's super strange. Do you have memcached enabled on that site?
YWMC
After updating plugin, killed several Ecwid scripts and cause other issues. Please confirm when it is safe to update. I had to disabled on all my 100 sites.
Umair
Seems great. Should I now disable HTML, JavaSc, and CSS minifications in Cloudflare and turn them on in the plugin?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Well, just don't enable them in the plugin if you're alrady doing it fine on CloudFlare. It's the same the otherway around, minification is minification, won't change much if you do it in the plugin or at the CDN :)
Brian Rossiter
Thank you so much, SiteGround team! :)
Mike B
Hi, Looks like a great interface. If you use the Siteground frontend optimisation options, what should be done if the siteground linked Cloudflare Auto-Minify options are currently selected? Also, do you know if the plugin plays nice with Divi? Have had issues with other optimisation plugins messing with the page builder etc. Thanks!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Generally, avoid duplicating functionality. If you have minifiication enabled in CloudFlare, don't enable it in our plugin. As for Divi - it should work just fine with it since we monitor all the necessary hooks.
Umair
I was thinking of buying WP Rocket. After the recent Supercacher update, do I still need that, or is SG plugin enough? Can both plugins work at the same time? Also, need to know if I should disable HTML, CSS, and JavaSc. minifications in Cloudflare after enabling them in the Sitegrond plugin?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I would say - check out the results you're getting with our plugin. They should be great :) As for your other question - it won't hurt or break anything, just a general rule is not to duplicate functionality. If you're minifying in CloudFlare, simply disable that in our plugin.
Chris Myers
Thanks this is looks like a great plugin and it is really good to see you guys continuing to develop to keep you and us ahead of the game. I currently use the jetpack functionality for lazy loading and image CDN along with the old SG plugin and cloudflare CDN. Can you give us some guidance as to what we should be using for the optimal setup now. As I can't see that using jetpack and this and all of the Cloudflare will be beneficial and will probably slow it down or cause errors as there is duplication and additional connections. Thanks again, you do a great job!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
That's a great idea for a paper on the best setup on SiteGround. At this point, I would say - try all options and see how they work on your site. As to the CDN, just don't double functionality - if you minify with CloudFlare - do not enable minification on our plugin. Everything else should be fine :)
John Geerts
I have the same issue as Ronald Segura regarding the Memcached. I cannot enable it in WP. It is enable in the cPanel
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Fixed with an update!
Mark Kooijman
The new SG Optimizer Plugin works wonders and is extremely effective for the load time of my webshop Load time 2.00 s. @Pingdom Results: Page size 9.0 KB Load time 2.00 s Requests 38
Dan Whitmore
Could this plugin completely replace WP Rocket Pro - or does that still offer some functionality and optimisations that this plugin currently doesn't?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, I think so. The only thing we don't do is the cache preloading which doesn't make much sense since we use NGINX as reverse proxy and store your content in the server memory for faster access.
Arby
Jeez SG, test more thoroughly next time! 5 updates in the last couple days, and this morning I saw my site was broken (had to do another SG Optimizer update and then clear cache). Lost me some ad revenue there!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am sorry for the inconvenience caused. Optimization plugins touch pretty much every part of WP and conflicts with other plugins happen. I am afraid that those are really hard to predict before releasing the plugin to public. One of the reasons why we use our own auto update system and not the included WP one - we make backups and restore them automatically after update if we notice such error / white screen.
Jake Ortman
Very cool. It appears this will replace at least a couple of my plugins (Smush, Autoptimize and Really Simple SSL) along with some of what I had WP Total Hacks installed for (possibly -- I inherited the site, so I'm still learning my way around the various plugins that were used).
Jason
Very nice work Hristo, just a quick question - I'm also a WP Rocket user & was just wondering if the compatibility remains between SG Optimizer & WP Rocket with this new release? Have you worked with them at all on any aspects of this update?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
So far, SG Optimizer was only caching solution plus several quick tools like PHP Version switch and HTTPS enforcer and the compatibility between the two was WP Rocket disabling their cache if they figure out ours is running. With the new update, I would recommend that you try and measure how your site behaves with our plugin and new functionality or WP Rocket only. I firmly believe that we've developed the best possible optimization solution for SiteGround customers and that you will no longer need other optimization plugins for your site.
Jason
Thanks Hristo, I will run some tests. So just to throw another spanner in the works, how about https://perfmatters.io/
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks!
Darren
This is a fantastic update, i really hope it means I can drop other optimisation plug-ins. So I have updated to 5.05 and switched everything on... an impressive GTmetrix score of A 95%, but... Yslow is only C (72%) grade. It flags up - Make fewer HTTP requests (F grade): This page has 27 external Javascript scripts. Try combining them into one. This page has 23 external stylesheets. Try combining them into one. I was hoping SG Optimiser would fix this with Minify switched on? is that not the case?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We haven't added scripts combination functionality on purpose for several reasons. First, the cance for it to break something is big, especially for JS files. Unlike CSS, some javascript relies on the order of loading to work properly. In addition to that, with the introduction of HTTP2 on all our servers, it doesn't make much sense to concatenate scripts. In your case, I would ignore that suggestion, most test services are still running on HTTP1. Measure the end result - how faster your site actually is for you and your visitors :)
Darren
Thanks for the explanation, that makes sense. The bottom line is my site loads in just over 1 sec so I guess that’s all that matters.
Frits
Then I'm wondering why in the description for both js and css files it says: "COMBINE and minify". You're right combining these can cause errors. However, I've mostly had great results with the plug-in "Fast Velocity Minify" (which also can combine scripts and caches them). My suggestion would be to separate the 2 (as the above mentioned plug-in does, btw): so: 1 option to minify, another option to combine. Then it's easy to see whether it works or not, and - if needed - turn off the option. Thoughts?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
That will be fixed in the next update, it's an old string from when we tested combination too. We do not combine files because it's way too dangerous (especially JS files) for the majority of users and with HTTPS and HTTP2 it doesn't make sense to combine resources unless you have extremely high number of those.
Viorel
2 years later, looking at my 29 JS files http://prntscr.com/ry2x2j - I believe an experimental, hidden, super arcane concatenation option might be useful so I don't have an overhead by installing a different minification plugin. Is there any chance for you to change your mind on this, please? :)
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Concatenation functionality is coming up later this week :)
Dorian
Hi Hristo, Nice update and congrats for such a great job. One question: did anyone test speed compared to Autoptimize? Also any comments on image optimization feature vs ShortPixel or Cloudflare's Polish? Thanks,
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I plan on performing tests agains pretty much every caching solution out there but they are not ready yet!
Nate
Sadly 5.0.5 took my site down. Sound like from support there are some known issues. Look forward to having it work again! Real time update: 5.0.6 did it too.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Sorry to hear you've had issues. I am sure our support team will assist you with them though.
Andy
Not yet ready for release. Affects all sort of directory perms, had many nightmares with it on .5 and .6 recent releases.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The plugin does not interfere with your files or folders permissions in any way. That must be something else interfering with it and causing the issue. I am sure our support team will assist you with this.
Frederick D.
This looks really great! From reading the comments above I saw that Divi should be supported by monitoring the necessary hooks. It looks like I can discontinue the use of WP Smush and be relieved their annoying messages. I updated one of my sites yesterday to SG Optimizer 5.0.5 and somehow that site got redirected in total to another of my sites. The client was not pleased. In working with Support (which was excellent as always!) we did a restore from the daily backup and all was well again. I was able to reproduce that error by installing SG Optimizer 5.0.5 again and doing a rollback myself. Is it safe to assume that SG Optimizer 5.0.6, available today, has fixed that behavior? This new plug-in will be great since it is tuned to the SiteGround infrastructure. I'm looking forward to using it on all my sites very soon.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The latest version has the issue you've experienced fixed and it's safe to update and use it! Make sure you check out your site after each change you make in order to avoid issues with other plugins.
Frederick D.
All is working very well so far. I can tell there is a speed up in load times already. Sites with a lot of images are taking forever for the 'existing images optimization'. One site has been churning away since 0900 and it's now 1700. Thanks for adding the 'Pause' button. Would it be possible to please add a thermometer or gauge of some kind? That would indicate that progress actually is being made. The spinning circle is nice, but doesn't tell me if there is a hang up or something. I do have wp_cron enabled in the wp_config file too... Thanks!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Can you email me your domain at hristo.p [at] siteground.com so I can look into it?
Dan Austin
Staging area - Running SG Optimizer Version 5.0.6 Attempting to optimize my images... WE ARE OPTIMIZING YOUR IMAGES, PLEASE BE PATIENT, THIS PROCESS MAY TAKE SOME TIME. has been running for 15 minutes for a media library that has about 50 images. Should it take this long? I have MEMCACHED turned on. Can I push this to production if the optimization has not yet completed?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, clear your browser cache and refresh or update to the latest plugin version. Depending on the number of images, that process may take a long time. Post a ticket in your Help Desk if issues occur.
Craig Rosenfeld
I had problem where your plug in was shrinking the size of embedded YouTube videos (it made the embedded videos look like a long, thin banner, instead of 800x450 which is what I had the embed code set as) ... .. Is this fix addressed in the latest version? Also, I use Autoptimize along with W3 Total Cache, in addition to your SG Optimizer, but since I had the shrinking YouTube video issue, I had to 'roll back' my site to a previous days version and keep an old version of your plug in.... I am now hesitant to update to your latest version due to the shrinking size of embedded YouTube videos ... Are all issues fixed? ... Can I remove Autoptimize and W3 Total Cache and just use your SG Optimizer? Or should I wait for a more stable version? (I asked this in Support tickets and I have been given contradicting answers)
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
That looks like an issue with the CSS minification. Try disabling that functionality and it should work fine. We've fixed everything reported so far. In addition, I would suggest that you do not duplicate functionality and leave only our plugin if you are using all of its options. If you prefer using different one for something like image optimization for example - make sure that functionality is turned off in our end.
Ian Buck
Just so you are aware, the new version of the plugin conflicts with Caldera forms. If both are activated it produces a 504 error.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for reporting this, we will look into it.
Naga
I am hosting images outside the WP installation in subdomain like "img.domain.com". Looks lazy loading doesn't work on this situation and try to create static files files from subdirectory like "domain.com/img/....". This makes 403 error for all images and blocked on the site. Hope you can check and ensure it works on all scenarios.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for reporting that. Please keep the Lazy Load off for now, we will fix that in the upcoming updates :)
Naga
Do you have any update on this? As of now it seems not working. When i see the source, the plugin tries to put the combined JS/CSS to subdirectory like "domain.com/img/". WordPress has a default upload path that you can define. Every plugin out there uses this path, except SG Optimizer.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
That's just not true, we properly get the upload folder option of each website and use it for our assets. As for the issue you're commenting under it has been fixed long ago too. Please, post a thread in the WP.org forum for the plugin and we will dig deeper into your particular case.
Giac
SG Optimizer seems a great solution but unluckily I was not able to activate all its functions, between them the one we'd like to use is Memcache. Once we activate it on the plugin (after doing it on cPanel) we see the cpu load going skyrocketing...we disabled some plugins but the issue remains... once disabled again in cPane clearly the site gets back to normal ops... any hint on how to proceed?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Some plugins don't play well with object caching, how's site performance with Memcached disabled?
Giac
They are ok, I was trying to activate it to as that functionality was particularly helpful... guess we'll have to troubleshoot deactivating plugin and crashing the site several times... was hoping for a magic trick :-)
Donnie
I have the latest update to SG Opt. Memcached randomly turns its self off. It's happened several times over the last week or 2. I'll turn it on, then at some point a day or 2 or 3 later I'll notice it's off again. It's been turned on in c-panel the whole time.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for reporting this, I will look into it!
Donnie
You're welcome.
Andy Salt
I'm having the exact same issue. Did you find a solution?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Issue is fixed with the latest update. If you continue experiencing it, please contact our support team.
Larry Levenson
Hey SG -- lots of my fellow multisite developers use SG hosting and there is a big conversation (and a lot of confusion) on the WPMUDEV discussion of SG Optimizer vs Hummingbird. Perhaps you could chime in there and clarify some things as well as add an additional blog post here. Thanks for at least checking it out! Larry
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I would love to, but it's a private forum.
Andy
It looks like SG Optimizer is a fantastic tool. I have just some problem when using the CSS minification (The primary colour settings are no more recognised) Is there anything that can be done about it?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Switch that off and keep the other optimizations. Can you mail me your domain at hristo.p [at] siteground.com so I can look into it and see what we can improve?
airpress
Where in cPanel can I find and enable Memcashed?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
It's in the SuperCacher tool!
Orjan
Is there any plans to add support for excluding URLs in the Lazy Load Images feature in a future version of this plugin? Currently we have to disable the feature for the entire site as we have two URLs containing some javascript photo galleries that break when lazy laod is enabled.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
That's great feedback, we will discuss it on our next dev meeting and add it to the roadmap. Definitelly sounds like something worth doing. Excluding HTML elements from it, class, IDs or file names. We just need to do some thinking on it but definitelly a great suggestion!
fadz
is this best working for all types of hosting package?coz i dont have d memcached and dynamic cache enable in my hosting package and im currrently with wprocket pro
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The Dynamic Caching and Memcached are only supported on GrowBig and above accounts. StartUp plans can use the rest of the functionality without any issues.
Abby Buzon
Hello, Can you tell me what SG Optimizer does for Startup/Reseller plans? I was told by support that it doesn't do anything other than for HTTPS. Is that still true with this new version? If that statement was not fully correct, can you explain what the benefits are to the plugin for Startup & Reseller plans? Thank you!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Someone got mixed up from the customer care team. Actually, the plugin does a lot for your website even on StartUp plans without Dynamic caching. It adds functionality for Leverage Browser Caching, Gzip Compression, Image Optimization, HTML, CSS, JS Minification and Lazy Load for your images. All this combined should give you great performance boost.
Ral
Excellent new plug inn, quick question, with the new SG Optimizer, do I need to activate the Cloudflare features ( Free version ) I have got everything enabled at SG Optimizer is that enough? again thank you for the new plug inn,
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
CloudFlare is a great CDN and provides additional layer of performance optimization so both should work just fine together!
Arien
Big fan of SG! However the SG optimiser unfortunately does not work on my website. After having tried several settings it resulted in much longer loading time for my webshop. Also in backend(!) it slowed down when I wanted to see my shop. Have contacted support desk but did not get a satisfying reaction. I do not doubt the quality of the plugin, but it must be something in my website that is conflicting somewhere...Maybe in a few months I will try again.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, update the SG Optimzier to the latest version and disable other performance plugins. It should work faster than everything else!
matt hurts
İ have migrated my sites to siteground WP hosting and this is the best hosting of all.
Zoni
What would be great is to have the option to enable and disable the optimizer features like minifying CSS on separate pages like how WP Rocket has it. Because from my experience some of my pages get affected badly from these features and I don't want to disable for all of my pages. Keep up the great work, the image optimization feature is great!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the suggestion, we will consider adding a box to each post type that allows you to exclude all optimizations from this item.
Jordi
Does the plugin also include optimization of images to modern image formats such as webp
Angelina Micheva
Hi Jordi, We have already considered the SG Optimizer to support WebP format and our plan is to include it in the future versions of the plugin.
Keyur
Is this still in consideration because we are still in mid-2020 and no update of this feature?
Mike
Really waiting on this feature...
yash
There is no such option i.e. webp support. I checked in new version
Marina Yordanova Siteground Team
You can activate it though the checkmark "Generate WebP Copies of New Images". We have written about it in this blog post https://www.siteground.com/blog/even-faster-wordpress-sites-with-our-sg-optimizer-plugin/
Grace Chan
I have the warning below. What do I do? "Important warning from SG Optimizer plugin: We have detected that there is duplicate functionality with other plugins installed on your site: Really Simple SSL. Please note that having two plugins with the same functionality may actually decrease your site's performance and hurt your pages loading times so we recommend you to leave only one of the plugins active."
Angelina Micheva
Hi Grace, The message you have seen alerts you that you have a plugin with functionality matching the SG Optimizer. In such cases keeping both of them active may result in slower loading time for your website. As the SG Optimizer is a complete performance solution we recommend to disable the other plugin and take advantage of the full benefits of the features in our plugin. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have about using the plugin we're available 24/7 via the Support Center in your client area.
Brian
That's not a solution (and rather bad advice). Really Simple SSL is a very well tested plugin with over 2 million active installs and a 5 star rating. When I turn off the option to use https in SG Optimizer there should be no conflict, therefore, no error message.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
If you're using the SG Optimizer and forcing SSL there's absolutely no need to use the Really Simple SSL plugin. In addition to that, we've intentionally split the HTTPS config into two parts - configuration and enforcing. The second part is necessary only when there are some hardoced resources in your theme or plugins(what Really Simple SSL actually does). The error message is shown after the initial installation / update to the new version and you have to dismiss it. Once you do that, you will not see it again.
Ronald
I am using the SG Optimizer in combination with the classic editor plugin. When I update content via the classic editor then after the editor is reloaded it shows the old (cached) content. After I press the Purge SG Cache link the classic editor shows the updated content. I have excluded the /wp-admin/ part from caching but this does not help. Do you know what can cause the content of the classic editor to be cached and how I can disable the caching of the classic editor? Thank you.
Angelina Micheva
Hi Ronald, It is best to submit a ticket with regard to this issue so our techs can replicate it and investigate what is causing the problem. They are available 24/7 via the Support center in your client area.
Ben Tran
I have amember script installed, and SG Optimizer breaks this. How can this be fixed? As I temporarily stopped using SG Optimizer. Thanks,
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, open a ticket in your Help Desk with detailed instructions on how to recreate it on our end, my colleagues will forward it to me and we will see what exactly is causing the issue.
Marge
Hi this is still not compatible with aMember pro. Is there any possibility of addressing the compatibility? I have been using an alternative cache plugin, but the dynamic cache will break some of the applications. This means each time I make changes in the application (Beaver builder), I need to log into Siteground to clear dynamic cache.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, open a ticket in the plugin's forum and we will look into it: https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sg-cachepress/
sam
Lazy loading is great! Is there any option to exclude certain images from lazy loading? Our website contain tabbed content and images inside these tabs are not displayed when switching between tabs. User must start scrolling in order to display images.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, we plan on adding advanced mode with the ability to exclude ceretain HTML elemets from lazy loading :)
SAM
Hristo, could you please give us an approximate ETA on when this will be implemented? We are currently testing third party plugins and would love to wait if the feature is coming soon.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Not right now but in few months it should happen.
Andrew
I really don't understand what the new version does because when I configure all the options including css and js minification the results in google speed tests remain the same? No improvement at all. When I try using autoptomize I do get slightly better results.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The reason is that Google Pagespeed test bypasses our caching. Check your site speeds with your browser's dev tools -> networking tab and measure your actual loading times :)
Haamed
Hi, great plugin, I like it so much, and I just want to mention when I activate CSS or JS minify my website will broke, somehow it doesn't work with astra theme or even wpocean wordpress theme. Have you notice this before?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Some themes have issues with minification of CSS, JS or HTML. Check which ones work for your site and just keep the ones that cause issues disabled. Unfortunatelly, not every theme and plugins combination can be minified without problems. Some designs are simply structured in a way that doesn't work well with minification processes.
Alexander S. Kunz
Hello, thanks for the update and the new functionality - it's terrific what SG does for WordPress users. I have a question about the image optimization: does it strip the metadata from the images? I would like to keep my EXIF and IPTC metadata, most importantly the copyright information, in tact. EWWW image optimizer has a setting for that so I'd like to know what SG does. Thanks!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We strip that data off images but it's a great idea to add an option to keep it. Thanks for your feedback, it's highly appreciated!
John Nadeau
Hi Hristo, Alexander Kunz posted a question back on January 5th, 2019: "I have a question about the image optimization: does it strip the metadata from the images? I would like to keep my EXIF and IPTC metadata, most importantly the copyright information, in tact. EWWW image optimizer has a setting for that so I'd like to know what SG does." You had replied: "We strip that data off images but it's a great idea to add an option to keep it. Thanks for your feedback, it's highly appreciated!" I think the plugin version at that time was around 5.0.2, and of course it's up to version 5.3.6 now. Before I pull the trigger and utilize your "Existing Images Optimization" function, just curious if the option to keep the the data was added at anytime and is included in the latest SG Optimizer ?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am afraid not yet. Generally, EXIF and IPTC metadata should not be part of your design images. Unfortunatelly, it's a bit tricky to distinguish images used in the design and such as content so if you want to keep that information, please don't enable this optimization.
James Swearingen
EXIF and IPTC metadata is important. The people who use it, use it for a reason. Other plugins allow you to keep exif and metadata, it cant be that difficult. So now, we have to disable SG optimizer and get a differnet plugin? How does that make sense? Not happy.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Pretty much every plugin that "saves for web" strips that data. This said, if you need it, you can keep this optimization disabled and upload the images already optimized. We will check the possibility of adding such option but I can't provide you with an ETA so I'd recommend checking on the changelog for new versions :)
John Nadeau
I've been following your Changelog and appreciate all of the improvements you've made! I noticed that the "ShortPixel Image Optimizer" does provide an option of keeping the EXIF Data, so perhaps that's an option for those that wish to maintain the data.... until if/when SiteGround folds this feature in :)
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
It is not in our roadmap to be honest since most people don't want EXIF data in their web images but I will consider it with the team since it's not really difficult to implement.
babyuser
Hello Just setting up the new plugin and have a couple of suggestions/ requests. I am sure your image optimiser is brilliant. But I had a bad experience with another plugin and am not keen to use it without some sort of trial. It would be great to be able to test it on a couple of images and retain the option to not use it on specific images. Also the memcacher is not available on multisites. I don't think this is a plugin issue per se, but it limits the usefulness of the plugin and makes me wonder what I am missing out on? babyuser
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for your feedback, we constantly improve our interfaces and the functionality of the plugin and we will definitelly take it into consideration for future updates. However, note that Memcached does work for Multisite. You just have to enable it as Network Admin since it is option that's on or off for the entire site.
Ben
I have just removed the functional (but super annoying and sometimes resource hungry) WP Smush, and enabled the Image Optimization settings in SG Optimizer. There was little information i could find as to weather SG Optimizer will the same or similar job as the free version of Smush, but its one less plugin to update, one less button, and one less annoyance. I did however click the button under "Existing Images Optimization" and was greeted with a "We are optimizing your images, please be patient, this process may take some time." This is great, but theres a couple of suggestions i would like to make to this.. First of all, some form of numerical feedback would be great. WP Smush provided a great deal of information, including how much space was actually saved, and an overall percentage. While that was pretty, it may or may not be practical in terms of resources/speed, so i understand that not being the immediate approach for SG Optimizer. But something would be nice. Even something as simple as 100+, 50+, 10+ files left to process. Or even a "Still processing, last checked at 12:34pm". Basically, it would be great to know if the process really is still in progress (i notice 2 others had issues with status/feedback), and hasn't stalled. It would be even better to have a rough idea of how long it was going to take, or how much further it had to go. My second suggestion is a little more basic. In WP Smush (at least the free version), "Bulk Smushing" of existing images can only occur if you leave the browser window open. If you closed the window or navigated elsewhere, the process would stop rather than continuing in the background. For everyone who migrates from WP Smush, this is something they are familiar with. It isn't clear if "Existing Images Optimization" will continue running in the background once you start it, or if you need to leave the page open. Navigating away from the page and returning seems to suggest it will. It would be great to have an additional message explaining this, like "You can navigate away from this page. The process will continue in the background". With all that said, this plugin is already far more than it was when we first installed it. We switched hosting providers a few times before landing on siteground a few months ago, and had some initial hiccups with SG Optimizer. It's great to see how far the plugin has come, and very reassuring that updates and features keep coming. Keep up the great work :)
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the great feedback and kind words! We will most definitelly take it into consideration for our upcoming updates!
Techi
Hi There, is your new plugin compatible with the Content builder "Trive Architect" from Thrive Themes?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
It is compatible with all well-written themes and builders. I haven't tested with that combination specifically though.
TECHI
Here is what Thrive Themes says: "ALSO IMPORTANT! Because Thrive Architect is creating lines of code behind each action you take, it’s incredibly important that you disable minification for logged in users! Minification can clash with any plugin, not just ours!" Do you offer such an option to exclude minification for logged in users? When minification is "“is the process of removing all unnecessary characters from source code without changing its functionality”." and SG optimizer is shortening the code for logged in users, then it would destroy the whole website. In 3W total cache there is a switch where it is possible to turn off / on the optimization for logged in users. It would be fantastic, if you took care about this as well for all of us content builder users.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the feedback, we will look into it!
TECHI
Do you have any update if I can use it with Thrive Architect?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Did you try it with the latest SGO update? We've improved a lot of things in 5.1
Stephan H.
Looks great! Any chance to see that kind of optimizer or Joomla ?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
At thist time we don't have any plans to add additional functionality to the Joomla version of the plugin.
Shayan Davoodi
Yes this would be great..
Tom Dupuis
Really love how SG Optimizer is becoming an all-in-one speed optimization plugin. So glad to see the new features Suggestions for next update: -Lazy loading videos/iframes -Database cleanup -Integration of multiple CDNs (with a CDN URL field) Then I can stop paying for WP Rocket :-)
Tom Dupuis
Last thing I noticed Hristo - in order to lazy load Gravatars, you must have the "lazy load images" option selected. But what if I don't want to lazy load images, just Gravatars? From what I see you must lazy load images in order to use the other lazy load functions.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You need to have the main script loaded in order to lazy load Gravatars. Can't enable it just for them.
Joseph
(I'm using GoGeek plan) I've been reading a lot about SG Optimizer and also CloudFlare, but I'm a little confused and need your professional advice @Hristo. 1: Is the free CouldFlare account enough for using it WooCommerce? Because I can't exclude the WooCommerce Pages pages with the free version. /wp-admin /wp-login.php /cart/* /my-account/* /checkout/* /contact/* 2: You mentioned in here that it is possible and maybe a good idea to use both CloudFlare and SG Optimizer together with WooCommerce site. If I exclude URLs in SG optimizer would that also be excluded in CloudFlare? 3: Is it a better idea to use ONLY SG Optimizer and NOT CloudFlare? 4: If used both would that have negative effect on my WooCommerce site? I mean order pages cached, cart pages cached so not ideal. 5: Does Cloudflare save orders made in WooCommerce? Thank you Hristo
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We have many customers using CloudFlare plus SG Optimizer. Actually, unless specified otherwise, CloudFlare will cache only your static content which means you don't need to do any exclusion of URLs whatsoever. For a standard installation you don't even need to do it on your WooCommerce store since the plugin has been designed to work with WooCommerce and will not cache the pages you've mentioned. CloudFlare is a CDN, if you have a local site, targeting your country, I would keep it off. On the other hand, if you're targeting more than one country with it, enabling CloudFlare is a great idea.
Drake
This new version of the plugin is much better, thank you for developing it and maintain it. Regarding CSS and JS combining I understand your point about HTTP2, but sometimes combine some very small CSS and JS created by plugins could be really helpful, if you know what you are doing. Therefore, please consider to add this "advanced" feature in future to have more flexibility. In addition it happened that sometime minification break the functionality of some plugins, and it would be really nice have the possibility to granularity exclude some of them.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
In the upcoming version update we will provide additional functionality to combine CSS files and to defer JS scripts on separate options plus additional optimizations!
Gili
Can't wait for the next version :) An option to defer JS/CSS and combine CSS would be great! thank you for the great plugin.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Both added in 5.1 just some more testing :)
Janice Sullivan
When I go to the cpanel I don't see this option for me in the Dynamic Cache? Is it because I have Cloudflair?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
It's in the SuperCacher tool :)
Chris Hutcheson
I am getting "Bad Gateway 502 - cloud flare error messages rather than my site homepage when using the plugin. Any suggestions? Running the most current version of Wordpress, but can't update to PHP 7.1 because of plugin incompatibility/ Thanks!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, post a ticket in your help desk. Looks like a security plugin blocking the Optimizer requests.
Ying Jae Lin
When will the SG Optimizer be able to support Memcached for WordPress Multisite environment? Any time map? Thanks
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
It already does support multisite. Please, look at the plugin's official WP.org and tutorial page.
Rachel
I just installed this plugin and received the following error message: "Important warning from SG Optimizer plugin: We have detected that there is duplicate functionality with other plugins installed on your site: Really Simple SSL. Please note that having two plugins with the same functionality may actually decrease your site's performance and hurt your pages loading times so we recommend you to leave only one of the plugins active."
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, duplicate functionality is bad. You can delete Really Simple SSL and force HTTPS using the SG Optimizer.
Shannon
Hello, I loved this plugin - it works much better than what I am currently using. However, it seemed like it didn't get along well with the Divi theme. Divi is fairly popular, specifically with those of us who aren't strong programmers. Thank you anyway.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Plugin works fine with Divi, please post a ticket in your Help Desk if you're experiencing issues so we can look into it :)
mark
using latest version of your plugin and my experience has ben good. however, a few questions: 1. i am using autoptime+async javascript. as such, i disabled all sg-optimizer frontend optimizations. do you recommend this setup or should i use ONLY sg-optimizer? 2. currently, i have smush deactivated and sg-optimizer compressing my images. however, as of yesterday [even after purging all caches] it seems as if sg-uptimizer is never going to finish optimizing my site's images. it's been 2 days now.... any thoughts? best,
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
In the upcoming update 5.1 we will introduce Async JS load and CSS combination so you won't need any other plugin! As for the image optimization, please check if you have your WordPress cron enabled. It's designed to work slow but steady in order to avoid extensive resources usage. If it's on, please post a ticket in your Help Desk, so we can look into it.
Angel G Zinsel
Hi Hristo, great job done with the SGOptimizer including image optimization and the rest of new features! Is already supporting WebP format for high WPO like shortpixel does? If not do you have an estimaed date for this release? I have a GOGeek account, but some customers of mine are using GRowBig or even StartUp accounts. Is there a comparative table with which features of SGOptimizer are available in every product? Also, Is Elementor and elementor Pro fully supported? Thx in advance
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We're launching 5.1 with CSS Combination, JS Async load and WooCommerce support for Lazy Load features. WebP requires additional updates on some systems and we've planned to add it in the upcoming updates. It's on the roadmap but won't get into the next release. The Optimizer works on StartUp too, they just don't get the dynamic cache. Thinking in that direction too. As for your other question, yes, Elementor is fully supported.
Rachel
Hi Hristo, My hosting is with SG and I've been told I need to use your optimiser. I have several websites but one is very image heavy and is loading really slowly. I cannot use the 7+PHP because my theme doesn't support those. I used to use Imsanity along with some other optimiser plugins but now only SG optimiser. Can I reinstall imsanity or anything else to get my site working faster again? - it went wrong recently when some change at the SG end was made and I had to change the PHP settings in Cpanel as a result. But now it is really slow and that is a disaster.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
It seems you're duplicating functionality. Could you make me an admin account with hristo.p [at] siteground.com and shoot me an email. I will look into your site and make sure you're getting the best speed out of your theme.
Crystal
Hi Hristo, Thanks so much for this great update and all the information - you have been very generous with your time providing answers to everybody. I would kindly ask that you update your documentation and PDF guide to reflect these new updates. I was not aware of these updates and was using your documentation and PDF guide and so suggested that my client purchase shortPixel and was about to embark on the long journey of the 21 steps when this update does most of this automatically. Thanks, Crystal
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the feedback and the kind words, Crystal! Yes, I will update the ebook soon :)
Daniel Brown
Hi Hristo, Please advise. I enabled all Lazy Load Images on SG Optimizer, but still Google PageSpeed Insights showing error "Defer offscreen images - Consider lazy-loading offscreen and hidden images..." Please advise why still I am getting this error of Lazy Load Images?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You need to look into your Google PageSpeed report and examine the exact issues reported. Images can be rendered by different ways, the test might be reporting false positives, etc.
Daniel Brown
Thank for your reply. I check / test again the site on Google PageSpeed and I see that the error "Defer offscreen images..." appearing only on mobile test. On desktop NO error. It's can be that Lazy Load Images of SG Optimizer, only working for desktop and not for mobile? Please advise.
Angelina Micheva
Hi Daniel, Please submit a ticket for this issue so we can investigate in more details the outcome you are seeing. We can also suggest you check the forum of the plugin for discussions on this topic and other users' input about it.
Michael Wells
Recently, our site started to get "504 Gateway Timeout" error messages on the backend when logging in. When "memcached" was disabled in the SG Optimizer plugin the problem went away. Apparently memcache was using too much memory for normal processing of other processes to complete in the 120 second default server timeout delay. Why memcache should create this problem is unclear as a feature that is supposed to speed up delivery is in fact slowing it down. Perhaps there is an incompatibility with another plugin but I do not know how to debug this problem properly. In any case memcache seems incompatible with our site at present. Any ideas?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
That's how Memcached works, if the size of the slab is too big than the memory pool it has available you will get the issue you've described. I would recommend to upgrade on a Cloud account and request our team to configure Memcached as per the needs of your site. It seems that it needs more memory for the Memcached service.
Christian
Hi, great plugin. How to cache SEA landing pages? Each user arrives with a unique gclid parameter. So each URL ist "new" and doesn't hit the cache. How to cut off the query params? Thanks! Christian
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am afraid that at this point we don't support that. It's on the roadmap though and we will be able to exclude global parameteres like the ones for Google ads and Facebook.
Sjardo
Hi! Any updates about the release of WebP support? I would love to serve WebP images, and dislike to get another service into work to support this.
Simon Müller
I am also interested in any news of the WebP support. Would be really amazing to have it built into SG Optimizer!
Don
We are getting an error notification from SiteGround that our current W3 Total Cache Wordpress plugins are not compatible with PHP 7.1 and we are thinking of pivoting to the SG Optimizer. Is the plugin comparable? We are helping an orphan client that no longer speaks with their web designer? We are hopeful that the switch will not cause dramatic issues with the site. Our plan is to make a backup, deactivate W3, and then make the conversion. Would this be the best course of action in your opinion?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You can update to 7.1 safely. We will add W3TC to the exclude list. That aside, I would recommend switching completely to SG Optimizer since it now provides everything you need to optimize your site for best performance.
Ferny
Any updates on the WebP support? Eagerly waiting on the update for this :) Thanks!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Soon, it's in the roadmap. However, I can't give you exact ETA at the moment.
Charlie Sasser
I noticed that WPEngine has a manual way to support webp by manually creating another file with the same name in the same WP directory and then asking support to create a NGINX rule to pick the webp version if it is compatible with the requesting browser. See article at https://wpengine.com/support/webp-image-optimization/ . I use both WPE and SG. Love them both.
Angelina Micheva
Hello Charlie, Thanks for sharing this. We're glad to hear you are happy with our services. Regarding webp we wanted to let you know we're working on that for the SG Optimizer and it's in our plans to include it in future releases.
Charlie Sasser
@angelina | On an individual account can SG create a NGINX rule if we manually create a .webp version of the image in exactly the same WP directory with say the exact name as a png file like example.png and example.png.webp so the rule will pick the .webp version if the client browser supports .webp?
Angelina Micheva
At the moment it will not be possible to do that on your SiteGround account. Instead, you can add htaccess rules to check whether there is .webp version of the image and use it in the place of the generic file. As mentioned previously we aim to include this in future releases of the plugin and thus make it available for our customers.
Ward
Has there been any testing to determine if SG Image optimization works better / worse / same as Imagify, Smush, and others. I like the idea of consolidation but only if there's a benefit. if there's no testing done, can you elaborate on the different processes used so we know SG method vs Imagify/Smush/etc.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We've selected what we believe are the best optimization services and use them in the most efficient way. I havent tested against other free and paid services but image optimization is pretty much established technology and there isn't anything that the above mentioned plugins can do signifficantly better.
Matt Williams
This is a great little plugin. It does all the things that GTMetrix wants EXCEPT it does not do "Defer Parsing of Javascript." Any chance this well be added?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
It does :) Please, update the plugin to the latest version and check the Frontend Optimization tab.
John Nadeau
Hi, Just a few more questions: 1) Were you able to run your comparisons on your Image Optimization feature vs ShortPixel or Cloudflare's Polish and/or others? 2) Do you have a pre-test feature to see what an image looks like before/after optimization? 3) After Optimizing prior images, does your plugin generate a report of pre/post image sizes? Even an overall total of MB before and MB after would be interesting. Thanks!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am afraid the answer is no to all the questions. However, we're working in that section and soon there will be a lot of updates regarding image optimization!
John Nadeau
Hi, Just noticed Version 5.3.8 came out with "Improved image optimization process". Can you elaborate here, or point to a link? Thanks, John
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The optimization used to stall in certain cases which we fixed. This is a maintenance release, we hope to launch a new major update with tons of new features in the first couple of weeks of January. Will probably write a blog post about it too.
John Nadeau
That's Great! Where can we sign up for alerts about your new blog posts? Thanks.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We will redesign our blog soon and you will be able to do that!
Gary Brett
Hi there, using Sitegrounds excellent features such as supercache & SG optomizer but no so great reports from GTMetrix & Pingdom. I then Installed autoptomize plugin and shaved 3 seconds off the load time and 94% score which is great. Only downside is every day I have to manually clear the autoptomize cache as its too big. Thinking of replacing that with WP Rocket, my question if I may, why is there such an increase using external plugins as opposed to Sitegrounds own. Where possible Id like to use your own but page speed is stopping me at the moment?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
There is nothing in Autoptimizer that you can't do in the SG Optimizer plugin. Check out the latest improvements we've added to it, especially in the frontend tab. Last but not least, use the cache test functionality in SG Optimizer to make sure that your caching is properly set and working.
Sean
Maybe this has already been answered, but with over 200 comments I might have missed it. After creating a staging site I noticed all the SG Optimizer settings are off, yet they are still on in the live site. My first question is about automatically optimising new images uploaded to the staging site, will they still be? Also, when I push the staging to live, will the settings now be on? I'm guessing they will still be because of the way your staging system works.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
If your account is migrated to Site Tools, everything will work fine. On cPanel though, I am afraid that you cannot optimize the images on a staging environment.
Ghita
Hii, Great pluggin, offer all we need to improve our website speed, but i have an issue, all the changes in the settings that i did are gone when i leave the SG Optimize page settings, is that normal ?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
No, it's not. This means that there's something (usually a security plugin) that blocks the WP Rest APi from working properly since we're using it for our interfaces. Please, check if that's the case and if not, kindly post a thread in the WP forum so we can look into it: https://wordpress.org/plugins/sg-cachepress/
Sean
I have the same issue. Currently trying to disable some of the min settings to see what is causing an issue with loading certain pages over mobile LTE connections. Then I purge the cache or click on something else, the settings are reverting back.
Marina Yordanova Siteground Team
That's indeed strange. Please post a thread in the WP forum and the plugins team will look into it: https://wordpress.org/plugins/sg-cachepress/
Samir
Hi all. I installed the SG optimizer plugin and its working good, site is faster. But i'm now trying to rotate static images on my site by switching filenames on the server via a cronjob. For example, my WP code references an image URL domain.com/pic.jpg. Then on the server (cpanel) I have a cronjob that changes that file - renames the file pic.jpg to picold.jpg, and puts another file picnew.jpg to pic.jpg. But the change doesn't get reflected on my site. any guidance on this?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You can add another line in your script once you finish the manual modifications - "wp sg purge" to clear the cache because our plugin can't know if something outside WordPress has applied the change so it doesn't purge the cache. Hope that helps :)
Ishan Lalwani
Hi Hristo, SG optimiser is conflicting with smush, do I need to uninstall Smush, only SG optimise is enough?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, we provide image optimization so you don't need a separate plugin for that functionality.
Angela McCallum
I have a new site on Siteground and when I install the Optimizer it breaks my mobile menu. I ticked off the Javascript options and the problem is still there. On all of my other Siteground hosted sites, I have the Optimizer enabled and I think it is far superior to any other plugin I've used for the same results. But on this one, I can't get the mobile menu to work until I deactivate the plugin. Any ideas why?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, open a thread in the SG Optimizer forum: https://wordpress.org/plugins/sg-cachepress/
Isa Chen
Help, I'm stuck in "Existing Images Optimization". I started the process and the message has been "optimized 0 of 2938 images" for over an hour now, not one image has been optimized. I see from comments here there was a bug some time ago, how do I know if the images have been optimized?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Check out your browser inspect element - Console. There must be some error there for somethiing preventing our plugin from working properly - most likely security plugin or rules. If it is not an easy fix, please post a ticket in the plugin forum(https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sg-cachepress/) with your site URL and we will look into it!
Billy Peake
Hristo, you are awesome. Siteground support is awesome. I wanted to come straight to the source because Google is returning way too many rabbit holes. Is there an official or preferred document or page that gives instructions or best practices on utilizing Siteground Optimizer and Cloudflare CDN together? I have definitely sped up my sites, but I have also been experiencing a lot of 502s and 512s, so I'm curious to see where I should start to fine-tune the configs without sacrificing speed. Thanks!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am afraid there is no such document at this point. By default CF does static caching which won't affect your site load or speed that much when enabled. We're working on providing a full-page caching with a single click on the CF edges which will greatly increase the benefit of using Cloudflare.
Gary Pearce
Cant find where i can convert all images to webp in the SG Plugin
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
WebP is supported only on Site Tools. Once your account is migrated you will see additional options in the SG Optimiezer plugin under the Media Optimization tab.
Vangor
With the SG Optimizer plugin, are we supposed to upload photos to Wordpress straight out of an iPhone no matter if they are 3mb or 10mb in size and let SiteGround and the SG Optimizer plugin handle the resizing and optimization?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
It is always a good idea to upoad already resized images in order to save bandwidth and processing time.
Parham
I am now running the latest version of SG Optimizer (Ver 5.7.5) in Wordpress with Cloudflare enabled. When I use the plugin to purge the cache, does it automatically purge Clouflare cache, or do I need to purge that again separately using the plugin?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, caches are purged together for best compatibility :)
Al
If I enable lazy load it breaks the mosaic tile effect of my blog hiding the "read more" button from the previous post tile. If I disbale lazy load it clears the problem. Can you please advise.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, post a thread in the SG Optimizer support forum at wp.org and we will look into it. Usually, it's some lazy loading from the theme itself that breaks functionality and should be disabled.
Emin
Hi, I am using a security plugin, WP Hide & Security Enhancer, which allows me to hide the fact that I am using WordPress, keeps the hackers and attacked away, this is a great plugin and worked well for years. In fact it works really well with your hosting, however, recently I have had issues with the WebP option. The plugin renames the wp-uploads and wp-content directories to something else so the hackers won't guess its WordPress and access to those folders becomes very hard. You really have to dig deep... The problem is when I want to use WebP by SG Optimizer, I have to set those directories to default names because WebP won't work. It looks like your WebP is configured in a way that it only works with those directories, can you please allow us an option that custom directories can also be used with WebP? That would help a lot. Thanks
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am afraid that this functionality will not work with the way this plugin does things. Disable it, generate your images and enable it again. Or use Wordfence, which performs great without breaking functionality.
Howard
Since SG started server caching, I removed my cache enabler. What compatability problems should I watch for when using Perfmatters and Fast Velocity Minify? Thanks
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I would recommend removing both plugins and replacing them with the SG Optimizer. That will give you the best performance results on our servers.
Bea
Hi there, is there any way I can deal in more detail with render blocking Javascript more specifically in SiteGround as my web.dev results show that SG Optimiser has a load of script that that isn't acutally being executed (Same with Sumo) and it would be good for me to be able to inline what is executed and reduce what isn't. I'm not technical so any thoughts on if this is possible in SG Optimiser or with a compatible plugin would be much appreciated. Thank you!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
SG Optimizer compares the enqueued scripts per page / post type. If other plugin developers enqueue their scripts properly, you won't have unused scripts. However, many just add them on every page and they get into combined Js triggering notice for unused JS.
Ben Bruno
Curious if anyone has seen any issues surrounding the optimizer and permlinks in regards to portfolio pages. Seems that every so often, the pages are there. But clicking the links, "page not found shows" -- however all blog posts, all pages show. Reset permalinks. Good to go for a bit. Then happens again. Today, emptied the SG cache, did not reset the permalinks. Portfolio pages returned. Any ideas?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
That's a problem with your custom post types (Portfolio) links. Probably they are not configured right and reset upon certain actions. I would recommend getting a developer to look at that config.
Kunal
Hey Hristo, while attempting to activate the Generate WebP Copies of New Images in SG Optimizer, Siteground displays the following error. (If you're using CloudFlare or other CDN provider, please keep this optimization disabled and check if you can have WebP enabled by your CDN provider) As siteground is partnered with Clouflare to offer CDN to its users, should I be checking with Cloudflare on this warning or go ahead and activate the feature. What's your suggestion?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
If you want to use WebP do not use Cloudflare unless you really need them. That's a warning coming from our plugin because Cloudflare cache the image response and do not check whether the browser support webp or not while we do. So they can serve webp to browsers that don't support it causing the problem.
Borsan
I have a worpress hosting plan on Siteground, in my website tools or in wordpress i cant find the (use webp) images at all, so i had to try tens of plugins, all sucks and limited to premium features. how can i enable this option on my WP ?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
WebP images are served automatically by the service, you don't need to enable anything. In order to generate the images themselves, you need to use the SG Optimizer plugin. It will automatically make copipes of your original files which will be served to browsers that support WebP instead of the original one.
Shannon
Hello Hristo - The SG Optimizer has so many great features! Thank you so much for adding Lazy Load videos. Our CMS has recently added a dynamic CSS system, loading only the CSS needed to style the website based on the modules and module features used. We don't use all the bells and whistles in the SG Optimizer and it takes up almost 70% of our page load time. Are there any plans for something like this for the plugin? Thank you for your time.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Sorry but I didn't understand what exactly you want us to implement as a feature? Probably you're seeing our assets taking 70% of your loading time because the JS / CSS Combination feature is turned on. In that case all your site resources are combined into one and it's normal to take big part of your loading time since that's pretty much all your site functionality. If there's anything in particular you want to suggest, please use the plugin forum at wp.org :)
Erik
Can you add the option to choose roles for the plugin? As of now, I think it only appears/works for Admins, but it would be nice if we can assign the option to purge the cache for other roes, such as Editor.
Gabriela Andonova Siteground Team
Hello Erik! Thank you for the comment and your suggestion! We have a filter that allows you to control which user roles have access to flush the cache using the Purge SG Cache button. To set it up, you would need to add some code to your functions.php file via your theme file editor. You can find more information about it in this document. If you need further assistance with this, feel free to contact our support team directly.
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