GF No Duplicates vs Smush – Image Optimization, Compression, Lazy Load, WebP & CDN

Gravity Forms already has some built-in duplicate submission prevention techniques, including the No Duplicates setting for a field in your form, preventing the same field value from being used multiple times for the same form. Using this setting is a rock solid approach to avoid duplicate submissions, but it requires having a field in your form that you can consider as a source of unique data per submission. This add-on helps using the same idea, without requiring having a field to enable the No Duplicates setting, by dynamically adding a hidden input with a random token to the form, and checks the POST request received for this token value to prevent duplicate submissions. This will stop identical POST requests from being accepted for entry creation, like the ones that some browsers will send when the browser back or refresh buttons are clicked or when browser tabs are restored in mobile devices. Limitations If for any reason the visitor manually fills the form with the same information, and submits it again, blocking this visitor’s behavior is not within the scope of this plugin functionality. To put in another way, the add-on is intended to block automated resend of the same POST request data, it doesn’t block submissions voluntarily initiated by the visitor. If your site is still receiving repeated POST requests created before enabling the add-on, therefore not containing the token field, you would still receive duplicates for these entries. There’s no way for the add-on to be able stop duplicates for requests created before enabling the add-on. How it works: When the add-on is enabled a hidden input with a random token as value is added to each form dynamically in the front-end. When a POST request is received and handled by Gravity Forms, GF No Duplicates checks if this POST request has the token and if its value was used already in an existing entry for the form tied to the POST request. If the token parameter exists but is empty or there’s any form entry where the token value was used already, GF No Duplicates stops the submission. The form is replaced with an error message, which contains a link to the form page, suggesting the visitor to click the link to start a fresh new submission. Requirements PHP 7.0 or higher. WordPress 4.9 or higher. Gravity Forms 2.5 or higher. The page where the form is embedded must be excluded from cache (if you use any caching plugin or server cache, see note below). Usage Install and activate it as you do with any other plugin. Enjoy! Optionally, you can customize the duplicate submission message shown to users from the settings page or using a filter (see the FAQ). Note about Caching The add-on functionality relies on a random token generated dynamically, so for obvious reasons caching the page where your form is embedded would prevent the add-on from working as expected. This is not a limitation of the add-on but the expected if you’re serving a static version of your page, which is the only reason to cache a page, you shouldn’t never cache pages where you expect dynamic data. Most caching plugins provide you a way to exclude URLs from cache, this is for a reason, use it. There are some web hosting providers using cache at server level and not providing their customers with an interface to exclude URLs from cache (e.g. WP Engine, Kinsta, …), you can still ask your host support staff to add the exclusion for you. You can also use Fresh Forms for automated cache exclusion if you use any of the embedding methods and caching plugins supported (see Fresh Forms description for more details).

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.