Advanced Access Manager – Access Governance for WordPress vs Smush – Image Optimization, Compression, Lazy Load, WebP & CDN

Advanced Access Manager (AAM) introduces Access Governance for WordPress – a systematic approach to securing your site by controlling who can access what, when, and why. Most WordPress security plugins focus on external threats like malware, firewalls, and brute-force attacks. AAM addresses the root cause of the #1 WordPress security risk: broken access controls, excessive privileges, and misconfigured roles. Instead of reacting to attacks, AAM helps you design security into your WordPress site. What Access Governance means in practice Mitigate Broken Access Controls. Ensure roles, users, and permissions are correctly configured to prevent unauthorized actions and privilege escalation. Eliminate Excessive Privileges. Identify overpowered users and reduce access to critical functionality, admin areas, and APIs. Secure Content by Design. Control who can view, edit, publish, or delete posts, pages, media, taxonomies, and custom content types. Govern Access with Policy. Define access rules using JSON Access Policies — portable, auditable, and automation-friendly. Build Custom Security Logic. Use the AAM PHP Framework to create advanced, programmatic access controls tailored to your application. Key Features Security Audit. Detect risky role assignments, misconfigurations, and compromised accounts. Granular Access Control. Manage permissions for any user, role, or visitor with precision. Role & Capability Management. Customize WordPress roles and capabilities beyond defaults. Admin & Menu Control. Restrict dashboard areas and tailor the admin experience per user or role. API & Endpoint Protection. Secure REST and XML-RPC access with fine-grained controls. Modern Authentication Options. Support passwordless and secure login flows. Developer-Ready Framework. Extend WordPress security using AAM’s powerful SDK. Ad-Free & Transparent. – No ads, no tracking, no bloat. Built for Security-Conscious WordPress Users AAM is trusted by 150,000+ websites to deliver enterprise-grade access control without unnecessary complexity. Whether you’re a site owner, agency, developer, or security professional, AAM gives you full control over WordPress access — by design. Most core features are free. Advanced capabilities are available via premium add-ons. No hidden tracking. No data collection. No unwanted changes. Just security you can reason about, audit, and trust.

Compress images, optimize images, and enable image lazy load automatically with the powerful Smush image optimizer to keep your WordPress site fast, without losing quality. Smush makes it easy to optimize images, compress images, and deliver images faster across your entire WordPress site. This all-in-one image optimizer automatically reduces image file sizes, enables image lazy load, and serves modern formats like WebP and AVIF, all without breaking image quality or adding extra work. Whether you’re running a blog, store, or portfolio, Smush helps you optimize images at scale and keep your site fast with a trusted WordPress image optimizer. Trusted by 1+ Million Sites | 4.8/5 Star Rating Get everything you need to optimize images and speed up your site. Smush works out of the box with no complicated setup – just install and let it handle the rest. Compress images without losing quality Reduce image file size automatically while keeping your images sharp and clear. Smush is an easy-to-use image optimizer which let’s you compress images using both lossless and lossy compression, giving you the best balance of quality and performance without extra work. You can also compress images outside the media library using Directory Smush, making it easy to optimize images stored in theme folders, plugins, or other directories on your server. Lazy load images for faster pages Enable image lazy load across your site so images load only when needed. This image optimizer improves initial page speed and creates a smoother experience for visitors without extra configuration. Serve WebP and AVIF images automatically (PRO) Convert images to WebP and AVIF and serve them automatically to supported browsers. Smush helps you optimize images using next-gen formats to reduce file size and improve load times across your WordPress site. Deliver images faster with an Image CDN (PRO) Serve images through a global image CDN to reduce latency and improve load times for visitors around the world. 119 global CDN servers Up to 500 GB of bandwidth Faster image delivery based on visitor location Improved performance for image-heavy and high-traffic sites Automatically resize and fix image dimensions (PRO) Eliminate common PageSpeed warnings and improve layout stability with automatic image sizing. Smush dynamically resizes images to perfectly fit their containers, regardless of original size, helping fix the “Properly size images” warning in Google PageSpeed Insights. It also automatically adds missing width and height attributes to your images, improving rendering speed and reducing layout shifts. This helps you meet the “Ensure images have explicit width and height” recommendation without any manual work. Optimize your entire site, automatically Smush works across your whole site as a powerful image optimizer to optimize images as you upload them and maintain performance over time without manual work. Optimize images automatically on upload Compress images in bulk or individually Works with your existing media library No need to re-upload images Enable image lazy load across your site Convert images to WebP and AVIF Deliver images with an integrated image CDN Automatically resize and serve correctly sized images Optimize images outside the media library with Directory Smush Built for performance Smush improves page speed and overall performance by reducing image weight and improving how images are delivered. Reduce page load times Improve user experience Better performance for image-heavy pages Supports image lazy load and preload images (PRO) for faster perceived performance Works with your existing setup Smush is built to work with your current WordPress setup, including popular themes, page builders, and plugins. Compatible with Gutenberg, Elementor, WPBakery, and more Works with WooCommerce stores No need to change your workflow Easy to enable and configure Designed to be simple You don’t need to be a performance expert to optimize images with Smush image optimizer. Works out of the box Simple settings when you need them No technical knowledge required Safe to use on any site Why choose Smush? There are plenty of image optimization plugins, but Smush focuses on making it easy to optimize images, compress images, and improve performance without complexity. As a leading WordPress image optimizer, Smush gives you powerful optimization tools without the technical hassle. Trusted by over 1 million WordPress users Built specifically for WordPress Regular updates and improvements Backed by the WPMU DEV team Get started in minutes Install Smush, activate it, and start to compress images, optimize images, and enable image lazy load right away. This easy-to-use image optimizer helps most sites see improvements immediately without changing how they upload or manage images. About Us WPMU DEV is a premium supplier of quality WordPress plugins, services and support. Learn more here: https://wpmudev.com/ Don’t forget to stay up to date on everything WordPress from the Internet’s number one resource: WPMU DEV Blog Hey, one more thing… we hope you enjoy our free offerings as much as we’ve loved making them for you! Contact and Credits Originally written by Alex Dunae at Dialect (dialect.ca, e-mail ‘alex’ at ‘dialect dot ca’), 2008-11.