WebP Conversion

There are a few ways that EWWW IO can convert your images to WebP, and some of this depends on the functionality your web host has enabled on your site.

Local Conversion

Using the Bulk Optimizer, you can create WebP copies of your images. New uploads will be auto-converted during regular optimization. This can be done via local tools/libraries on your server, or via our API.

*Note, if your site is running in API Free mode, only JPG images can be converted. Otherwise, JPG and PNG images can be converted in Local Free mode, and conversion for GIFs is available with our paid API.

Also note, converting JPGs to WebP involves a slight quality loss, but that isn't usually noticeable. On the other hand, converting a PNG to WebP is completely lossless by default, but if you want more compression, you can use the EWWW_IMAGE_OPTIMIZER_LOSSY_PNG2WEBP override (define it as true in your wp-config.php).

Why Copies?

EWWW IO keeps the original JPG, PNG, or GIF copy of your images for a couple reasons. First, while all modern browsers currently support WebP, there will likely be folks visiting your pages with older versions of those browsers, and we're not a huge fan of broken images, even if folks ARE on an older browser. Second, the plugin will only create the WebP images if they are smaller than the original format (JPG or PNG), and while the WebP format works well for most images, it does not work for ALL images.

Can I get WebP without copies?

You might not be a big fan of the idea of adding a second copy of all your images, even if they are well optimized. Maybe you're already running into storage limits, and that's just a non-starter. Do not fret, our Easy IO service copies your images to our servers and stores the WebP versions on our CDN. Check out a free trial to give it a run for yourself.

Once your images are converted to WebP, it's time to setup a delivery method.