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

Recipes, guides, and lists — for creators who care about their craft. Create gives you everything you need to publish recipes, how-to guides, and lists — with correct Schema.org markup, fast page loads, and an editor that stays out of your way. Whether you’re sharing recipes, DIY tutorials, travel guides, crochet patterns, game walkthroughs, or curated round-ups, Create handles the structured content so you can focus on creating. One plugin. Three card types. Full schema support. Recipes — Granular ingredient editing, free nutrition calculator, video embeds, and built-in importers for 10+ recipe plugins How-to guides — Step-by-step instructions with materials lists, photos, and video for any kind of tutorial or guide Lists and round-ups — Showcase links, images, and products with bulk import and drag-and-drop ordering New Independent Ownership In mid-2025, Create was purchased from Mediavine by John-Michael, one of the plugin’s founding developers. Create is now fully independent and continues to be actively developed at Create Studio. Why Create? Fast by default — Lightweight JavaScript and optimized bundling so your cards don’t slow down your pages SEO built in — Recipe, HowTo, and ItemList JSON-LD generated automatically with one-click schema validation Looks like your site — Seven card themes that inherit your fonts and colors, including Editorial and Modern Elegant Ad-ready themes — Optimized card layouts with configurable ad slot placements Gutenberg and Classic Editor — Full block editor support with live preview, plus shortcode fallback Built-in importers — Switch from WP Recipe Maker, Tasty, EasyRecipe, and 8 other plugins without a separate download Free nutrition calculator — Automatic nutrition data powered by API Ninjas Modern editor experience — Keyboard shortcuts throughout the app, simple workflows, and unobtrusive customization options designed for how you actually work Premium Features Upgrade through Create Studio to unlock: Interactive Mode — Turns your cards into a hands-free cooking companion with interactive checklists so readers can check off ingredients and steps as they go Adjustable Servings and Unit Conversion — Readers scale ingredient quantities and convert between metric and imperial Premium themes — Editorial and Modern Elegant card designs Review management — Reader reviews with featured review blocks and response tools Bulk list tools — Paste URLs to bulk-import list items, plus inline bulk editing Products in Lists — Add product items for affiliate placements External services Create connects to the following third-party services. No data is sent unless you use the feature that requires it. Create Studio Create Studio powers nutrition calculation, URL scraping, Interactive Mode/Unit Conversion/Servings Adjustment widgets, dashboard tips and broadcasts, and Premium subscription management. Requests are made when you connect your site or use those features, and may include your site URL, connection token, plugin version, card data, ingredient text, scraped URLs, and account email. Terms of Use — Privacy Policy API Ninjas Nutrition When you calculate nutrition for a recipe, only raw ingredient text is relayed to API Ninjas through Create Studio. Terms of Use — Privacy Policy Amazon Creators API When you add or refresh an Amazon product, Create contacts Amazon using the Associate credentials you enter in settings. Data sent includes the product ASIN or URL and your Associate tag and Creators API credentials. Amazon Associates Program Operating Agreement — Privacy Policy Mediavine video If a card references a Mediavine-hosted video, Create requests that video’s metadata (by slug) for JSON-LD, embeds, and imports. Privacy Policy

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.