Countdown Timer – Widget Countdown vs Smush – Image Optimization, Compression, Lazy Load, WebP & CDN

WordPress Countdown Plugin – Create and embed countdown timers in your posts, pages, and widgets (integrated with WooCommerce and Elementor). Our WordPress countdown plugin allows users to create beautiful and functional timers in just a few minutes. Designed to boost engagement and create urgency, the plugin allows you to easily display beautiful, animated timers for events, product launches, promotions, or special offers—without requiring any coding skills. With its intuitive interface, users can create and insert unlimited countdown timers into posts, pages, and widgets in just a few clicks. The plugin offers multiple timer types, including standard, circular, and vertical slider designs, giving you flexibility to match your site’s style. It also includes dozens of animation effects, allowing you to enhance visual appeal and capture visitors’ attention. Fully responsive and optimized for all devices, the countdown timers look great on desktops, tablets, and mobile screens. You can customize various elements such as colors, fonts, sizes, and positioning, ensuring seamless integration with your website design. Additionally, the plugin lets you define actions after the timer expires—such as hiding the countdown or displaying a custom message—making it ideal for time-sensitive campaigns. Our plugin Demo page: Countdown Timer Demo Our plugin has two versions: free and premium. Let’s take a look at the features of both versions and compare them. Free version Features Easy install and use Works perfectly with all versions of WordPress Fully Responsive Ability to create unlimited Timers Ability to use on pages/posts and widgets Time Zones (full list of ~100 timezones) Ability to select the action after time expired Ability to type message after time expired Countdown position (left/center/right) Countdown width (px / %) “Classic B&W” theme WooCommerce integration Elementor integration Gutenberg block Supports Legacy Gutenberg Supports Classic Editor User friendly back-end Tested on popular WordPress themes You can upgrade from the free version to WordPress Countdown Premium to access some features. Premium version features 40 Premium themes (10 Standard + 10 Vertical + 10 Circle + 10 Flip) Count up, Evergreen countdown, Evergreen count up Countdown repeat: Restart after ends, Every X hours, Daily, Weekly, Monthly All evergreen settings (duration, expire mode, restart behavior, daily expire time) All repeat settings (interval, day-of-week, day-of-month, stop conditions) After timer expires: Redirect to URL, Show button, Hide page content, Show hidden content (free only gets Hide / Show text) Select the countdown timer fields you want to display (free is locked to Days / Hours / Minutes / Seconds) Display elements inline (Fit on one row) — responsive auto-scaling Set animation for each element or for group Animation Effect (fadeIn, bounceIn, flipIn, rotateIn, and 25+ more) Vertical — full settings (slide-digit animation) Circle — full settings (SVG ring animation) Flip Clock — full settings (3D flap animation) Popup timers (size, position, fixed/absolute, background, border, animation) Sticky Bar timers Premium Support and much more… If you find a bug in our plugin or have a question, please contact us at [email protected]. With the WpDevArt Countdown plugin, you can create a wide variety of themed and purpose-driven timers tailored to different occasions and campaigns. This includes festive countdowns for major holidays like Christmas, Halloween, and New Year’s, as well as promotional timers for sales events such as Black Friday or limited-time discounts. It’s equally effective for event-based countdowns like product launches, webinars, concerts, or registration deadlines. Users can also build evergreen timers for ongoing offers, personal milestone countdowns (birthdays, anniversaries), and even daily or weekly recurring timers. With full customization options, each countdown can be styled to match the mood of the occasion—whether it’s a festive holiday theme, a high-energy sales campaign, or a clean, professional event reminder. Our Countdown old version: Step by step guide Adding a countdown timer to your website’s pages and posts After installation, activate the plugin, then go to your pages or posts and simply click our plugin’s shortcode button to add it to your pages or posts. If you are using Gutenberg, search for WpDevArt Countdown and use one of the two blocks. If you are using Elementor, then you need to search for our countdown widget. Adding a countdown widget to your site’s sidebar After installation, activate the plugin, then go to the widgets page (Appearance > Widgets) and drag our plugin’s widget to your sidebar. Then select a timer and theme.

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.