ShortPixel Plugin Review: 22 Ways This Wonderful Free Plugin Will Help You

Are you aware a slow-loading site could seriously ruin your chances of getting search engine traffic to your blog or website?

You know you need graphics to capture the interest of potential visitors.

Are you aware this amounts to 65% of the population? It’s true. Most of the population consists of visual learners who learn by looking at pictures.

However, if you have pictures, they slow the loading speed of your site. These are the consequences:

• Google won’t show your website to their search engine users.
• People trying to access your site will hit the back arrow and go elsewhere due to impatience waiting for your site to load.
• This will tell Google, even more, you have an undesirable site and again your visibility in the popular search engine will drop.

ShortPixel is your solution. This freemium WordPress plugin will make sure your site loading time isn’t affected by your website graphics.

This article will give you more information about ShortPixel, explain why it’s the right image compressor plugin for you, and offer a tutorial describing how to use this plugin.

What is ShortPixel?

ShortPixel is a free WordPress plugin that compresses your photos for you so your site isn’t slowed when your photos and graphics load.

Bloggers can use this WordPress plugin to optimize and compress all the images from their Media Library without affecting the picture quality.

This plugin uses minimal resources and works well with any shared, cloud, VPS or dedicated web hosting.

It can optimize any image you have on your website even the images that aren’t listed in your Media Library. For example, Short Pixel can optimize images you keep in galleries like NextGEN.

This Romanian-based company offers an affiliate program. You will receive 50% as an affiliate.

ShortPixel definitely offers a popular plugin. All these people can’t be wrong: ShortPixel has over 50,000 active installations.

Why You Need ShortPixel

According to Name Hero, WordPress does not optimize for speed. Therefore, you have to take steps to ensure your site’s loading time isn’t slowed.

Using ShortPixel is one of those steps since this plugin solves the problems that will cause your site to load slowly.

If you recall the old way of doing things, you remember people use to go into PhotoShop to compress the size of their images or hire expensive developers for that task.

There is no need to do either. ShortPixel compresses your photos and graphics for you. This will result in your site’s loading speed being unaffected.

The company is so convinced you need their ShortPixel image compressor, it actually offers you a free test.

These are the results of my test. Why not perform your own?

This is the URL where I went to perform my free test. Replace my blog’s URL with your blog’s URL:

https://shortpixel.com/image-compression-test/site/https://www.mostlyblogging.com/.

Benefits of Installing the ShortPixel Plugin

1. This is a WordPress plugin. You don’t need to worry that the plugin is untested and your WordPress site will break.
2. The ShortPixel plugin is free to try.
3. This plugin is user-friendly. It took seconds to install, change settings, and activate.
4. ShortPixel is an automation tool. New images are automatically resized. You do nothing after the initial setup.
5. Since the plugin is frequently updated, it won’t be out of date.
6. The folks over at ShortPixel are friendly. They respond right away if you need assistance. It’s true: They offer 24/7 tech support.
7. The ShortPixel Plugin is compatible with Retina displays.
8. The plugin is also compatible with plugins that watermark.
9. The quality of your photos doesn’t change as a result of the optimization process. Before and after shots of the same image are shown in the screenshot below.
10. This plugin is also compatible with all major hosting providers.
11. ShortPixel works great with NextGEN gallery, Foo Gallery, and any other galleries and sliders.
12. Both lossy and lossless images are available.
13. Do you have an E-commerce website that uses the Woo Commerce plugin? No problem with compatibility!
14. Glossy image compression is available too. This feature makes this the perfect plugin for photographers.
15. You can use ShortPixel to shrink the size of both photos and PDFs.
16. The ShortPixel plugin is used to compress jpeg, png, and GIFs (including animation).
17. Your past and future images are compressed.
18. Are you still at an http site? No problem! This plugin will work on your site as well as https.
19. What if you have more than one blog? Not to worry! You can use the key that is generated when you sign up for multiple blogs.
20. Your featured images, as well as your thumbnails, will be compressed.
21. What if you don’t want your image optimized? No problem! You have the option of leaving these alone.
22. Suppose you change your mind? All your original images can be restored with one click.

Tutorial

1. Go to https://shortpixel.com/.  Click “Free Sign Up.” Make an account and click “Sign up.”
2. Go to your email and click the link you were sent. You will see a key in your email. Copy the key and paste it where prompted. An alternative is going to your dashboard and clicking “plugins/add new” and searching for ShortPixel.
3. If you want ShortPixel to compress all the images on your site, click “Save bulk images” within the plugin settings. Otherwise, just click “save.” If you choose “bulk images” it may take some time for the plugin to compress all the images on your site. Click “Start Optimizing.” Don’t close your browser.
4. After installation, you will be taken to the settings page. I kept the default settings with one exception: 

Notice: I checked “Resize large images to a maximum of 1024 X1024.” The reason is as follows: I know that a graphic of this size will fit on both Twitter and Pinterest. I want my graphics to post with my links. They can if they have a maximum of these dimensions.

How ShortPixel Works

• The ShortPixel WordPress plugin sends the images to ShortPixel’s cloud servers (either automatically when you upload an image or when you use the bulk optimization option).
• The cloud service does the crunching based on the settings you’ve chosen in the plugin’s settings panel.
• The plugin pulls your image back from the cloud service into your site’s WordPress Media Library, replacing the existing version that’s there (you can choose to keep the original, untouched version as well).
• The ShortPixel plugin dramatically optimizes your images.
   Look at these stats: The ShortPixel plugin optimized this image by almost 90%!
• Already optimized images are left untouched.

Testimonials

• The Have Camera Will Travel blog agrees using ShortPixel is valuable. This is a credible testimonial. A photography site like Have Camera will certainly need many photos and can’t risk them slowing down the site.

According to the blog, “Faster websites keep visitors happy and Google happy. And if you want to cut to the chase, that translates to better SEO, better search rankings, and more traffic.” ShortPixel is the blog’s choice for photo compression in order to maintain the benefits of a fast-loading website.

• The WPBlog agrees the ShortPixel plugin is invaluable. The blog calls it a “must-have plugin.”

“The ShortPixel image optimizer offers a solid service with an intuitive workflow. It is simple to install and use, solving all image optimization needs of WordPress users. The image compression is very effective, optimized images being a lot smaller in size, without compromising the picture quality.”

• WPColt gave the ShortPixel plugin 4.8 out of 5 stars:

“ShortPixel is a serious image optimization tool. It gives you the freedom and the power to take control of your images and improves your website speed significantly. Not to mention that it’s very easy to use. Using ShortPixel today will help you increase your traffic, boost your WordPress performance and preserve your website images quality.”

• The Shout Me Loud blog calls the ShortPixel plugin one of the 6 best image compression plugins out there.

Pricing

The free plan starts with 150 images being compressed each month. You can pay a monthly fee for more image compression. The more you pay, the more discounts the company gives you.

ShortPixel has various pricing plans. The company offers four monthly plans and four plans were you can pay a one-time fee.

Takeaways

You receive the following benefits by compressing your image size:

• Google loves fast loading sites so by using the ShortPixel plugin, your SEO improves.
• When your SEO improves, your traffic improves.
• When your traffic improves, your sales improve.

Busy bloggers like you have other things to think about besides image compression. Let the folks over at ShortPixel worry about compressing your image size while you go off and do what bloggers do best– create valuable content and network with your readers.

This is an “install-and-go” plugin you don’t have to think about after installation.

Readers, please share so other people know about the value of this free plugin for your site.

Which plugin do you use to compress your photos? Are you already using the ShortPixel plugin? I look forward to your views in the comments section.

The ShortPixel plugin is a free blogging tool. For more free blogging tools,

click here to get your own downloadable PDF of my 123 free blogging tools list.

This was a sponsored post, but the opinions contained herein are my own.

Related Post:

How to Set Up Accelerated Mobile Pages For WordPress

Source:

Have Camera Will Travel