Audio Player Block – Play Audio Beautifully on Any Page vs Smush – Image Optimization, Compression, Lazy Load, WebP & CDN

Give your visitors a beautiful listening experience – add a stylish audio player with playlists and cover art to any post or page, no code required. Get Pro Version | Support Why Audio Player Block? The default WordPress audio embed is plain and forgettable. Audio Player Block replaces it with a polished, customizable player that fits your design – complete with track titles, artist names, and cover images. Add multiple audio tracks to build a playlist, or select a single file for a simple standalone player. Smart play/pause control plays one track at a time and automatically pauses the others, so overlapping audio never happens. Everything is configured right in the Gutenberg editor, and shortcode support lets you place the same player anywhere on your site. Free Features Multiple Audio Management: Easily add or remove multiple audio tracks with full control over your playlist. Track Details Input: Set a custom title and artist name for each track to keep your content well organized. Cover Image & Audio Upload: Upload audio files along with a cover image for a more engaging, visual player. Player Customization: Adjust width and height, and style colors, backgrounds, and hover effects to match your website. Smart Play/Pause Control: Play one track at a time while others pause automatically; click again to pause the current track. Shortcode Integration: Display the audio player anywhere on your website with a shortcode. Pro Version Want more themes and playback controls? Audio Player Block Pro unlocks: 5 Customizable Themes with different looks and settings. Auto Play – automatically start the next song once the current one ends. Loop Mode – repeat the current track when it finishes. Prev/Next Navigation to move through the playlist. Current & Total Time Display for each track. Custom Stop Button you can show or hide. Playback Speed Control options. Download Icon so listeners can save the audio file. Forward & Backward Buttons for skipping within a track. Deep Style Controls: thumbnail border and radius, seek bar height, radius, thumb width, outline and shadow, controls border and hover border, time display radius, artist opacity, waveform colors, and playlist border and radius. How to Use Install and activate the Audio Player Block plugin. In the Gutenberg editor, add the Audio Player Block from the “Widgets” block category. Upload your audio files, cover image, and track details. Fine-tune the design from the right-side settings sidebar. Publish – your player is live! Use Cases Musicians & Bands: Share albums and singles as playlists with cover art. Podcasters: Embed episodes directly in posts and pages. Course Creators: Add audio lessons and narration to learning content. Bloggers: Offer audio versions of articles for on-the-go readers. Did you like this plugin? Do you have a feature request? Please share your feedback with us. ⭐ Check out the Parent Plugin of this plugin- 🔥 B Blocks – Best gutenberg blocks collections for WordPress. ⭐ Check out our other WordPress Plugins- 🔥 Html5 Audio Player – Best audio player plugin for WordPress. 🔥 Html5 Video Player – Best video player plugin for WordPress. 🔥 PDF Poster – A fully-featured PDF Viewer Plugin for WordPress. 🔥 Document Embedder – Best WordPress Document Embedder Plugin. 🔥 3D Viewer – Display interactive 3D models on the webs. 🔥 Advanced Post Block – Best Post Display Plugin for WordPress. Source Code You can find the source code, report bugs, and contribute to the development of this plugin on our GitHub repository: Audio Player Block on GitHub Third-Party Libraries bpl-tools Source / GitHub: https://github.com/bPlugins/bpl-tools License: GPL-2.0-or-later – https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html Purpose: Shared utility library providing admin dashboard components and common Gutenberg editor controls. External Services: The library may connect to bPlugins, WordPress.org, and Freemius services for product data and checkout functionality. See full details: https://github.com/bPlugins/bpl-tools#external-requests–why-they-are-made

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.