Customize Posts vs Smush – Image Optimization, Compression, Lazy Load, WebP & CDN

This is a feature plugin intended to implement #34923: Introduce basic content authorship in the Customizer. The goal for this plugin is to be able to expose the editing of posts and pages in the Customizer, allowing you to edit post data and postmeta for any number of posts, and preview the changes before saving them for others to see. This plugin was birthed out of the Widget Customizer feature-as-plugin project which was merged into WordPress Core: as widgets (in 3.9) and nav menus (4.3) can now be managed in the Customizer, so too should posts and pages be editable in the Customizer as well. Did you know that changing the featured image actually makes the change live even before you save the post? This is very surprising/unexpected behavior. The only way to truly preview a change to a featured image is to use something like Customize Posts. Likewise, did you know that changing a page template cannot be previewed from the post editor? When you change the selected page template, the change will not show up when you preview the page (see #11049). However, in Customize Posts you can preview changes to the page template just by changing the dropdown selection, and then you can see what your page would look like with the new template after the preview refreshes. Most other changes to metaboxes containing data that gets saved to custom fields (postmeta) also get written when clicking the Preview button. The Customize Posts plugin provides a framework to edit postmeta in the Customizer with a live preview of the changes. (Fixing this underlying issue of incorrectly persisting postmeta when doing a preview is captured in #20299.) As much as possible, the previewing of changes in Customize Posts utilizes the selective refresh capabilities introduced in WordPress 4.5. Not only does this mean it is faster to preview changes to posts and postmeta, but it also allows you to shift-click on an element to focus on the corresponding control in the Customizer pane. For example you can shift-click on the post title in the preview to focus on the post title control’s input field, or shift-click on a featured image to focus on the control’s button to open the media library. Development of this plugin is done on GitHub. Pull requests welcome. Please see issues reported there before going to the plugin forum. (This Customize Posts plugin is not to be confused with 10up’s Post Customizer.) Demo Videos The following are listed in reverse chronological order. The first, more recent videos, show more polish. [2016-04-28] New features in 0.5.0. [2016-03-28] Previewing post from Post Edit screen. [2016-03-05] Opening a draft post in the Customizer to preview title wrapping. [2016-03-04] Demo featuring the WP visual rich text editor (TinyMCE), including the insertion of images from the media library. Post content can be edited in the Customizer and previewed in multiple contexts. For example, this allows you to preview how a Read More tag will appear when the post appears on a post list page, and you can navigate to the single post to continue previewing subsequent paragraphs. You can expand the editor into a full-screen mode to focus on writing and then quickly preview the changes on the site by toggling the editor. You can make changes to as many posts as you want, but none of the changes will go live until you hit Save & Publish: everything is previewed so there is no “save and surprise”. [2016-03-03] Demonstration of integration with Customize Setting Validation (#34893) to gracefully handle failures to save due to post locking and concurrent user editing: [2016-03-01] Demonstration of hooking into edit post links so that they actually work in the Customizer and expand the section to edit the given post (as opposed to the link doing nothing at all when clicked), as well as shift-clicking on the title and content (needs better discovery UI, see #27403):

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.