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

Speed Auditor helps WordPress site owners identify performance bottlenecks in real-time while browsing their site. It generates a downloadable technical report that pinpoints critical elements for Core Web Vitals and structural efficiency. Speed Auditor now includes a powerful Visual CLS Highlighter. Stop guessing which elements are causing layout shifts; activate the real-time radar from your Admin Bar to see problematic elements highlighted with red boxes as you browse. Main Features: * Visual CLS Radar: Activate a real-time toggle to draw red boxes around elements causing layout shifts. Perfect for catching unstable ads, images, or jumping text. * **Visual Performance Signal: Real-time color-coded icons (Green/Yellow/Red) in the Admin Bar based on LCP optimization status. * Technical Knowledge Base: New guide under Tools > Speed Auditor to help users understand metrics like DOM depth, LCP, and Media Latency. * **Technical Glossary: A new built-in guide explaining HTML tags like , , and specifically in the context of CLS and performance. * Accurate LCP Identification: Detects the Largest Contentful Paint element and validates its optimization. * Structural DOM Audit: Breakdown of nodes by zones (Header, Content, Footer) and maximum nesting depth analysis. * Media Latency Monitor: Identifies the slowest loading images on the page by measuring real-time transfer duration. * Dynamic Reporting: Generates a .txt report with a smart filename including the page slug and date for easy tracking. * Privacy Focused: Works entirely in the browser using the Performance API. No data is saved to the database. * Translation Ready: Fully compatible with WordPress internationalization (i18n) standards. Update Notice 1.2.0 Maintenance update ensuring full compatibility with WordPress 7.1. 1.1.10 This update ensures full compatibility with WordPress 7.0 and fixes security escaping notices found by the official Plugin Check tool. 1.1.9 Major Update. New visual tool! You can now highlight elements causing layout shifts (CLS) directly on your site from the Speed Auditor menu. Visualize your Layout Shifts! This version adds a real-time radar to catch elements that hurt your CLS score. Essential for sites using AdSense or dynamic content. 1.1.8 This version improves the technical report with actionable tips to help you move from an Orange/Red icon to a Green one by optimizing your LCP elements. 1.1.7 This update ensures audit accuracy by disabling reports and color alerts within the WordPress admin area. 1.1.6 This version introduces a new Technical Guide under Tools > Speed Auditor to help you understand your reports. 1.1.5 This version adds a real-time visual traffic light system to your Admin Bar.

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.