Shane Bishop is the creator of EWWW Image Optimizer, a suite of tools for optimizing images in WordPress. In this interview, Shane shares the story behind the creation of EWWW and how it compares to other image optimization services and pluginsā¦ and more! Letās get started! ????
Jordy : Where are you from? Who are you?
My name is Shane Bishop and I hail from the great state of Montana (United States). I started in software development in college, and did system admin work for quite a while at two different colleges. Eventually I landied back into PHP and WordPress development around 2010, and plugin development in 2012 with the launch of EWWW Image Optimizer.
Jordy : What are the most common issues you face as a WordPress developer?
Time, time, and time. Never enough time to do all the things Iād like, but one thing Iāve found that helps is to get all my tasks into one place where I can prioritize them and keep them organized. Support always takes time, especially with a user-base as large as EWWW IO, so thatās why Adam was my first hire to help with support, and heās done a pretty good job.
One other thing that ate up a bit of time was managing my own dev sites for testing things. I run Linux, and so it always seemed natural just to run those on my desktop. But I started using SpinupWP a while back to host my dev sites, and that has simplified life so much for me on that front, and lets me have as many sites as my droplet/VPS can supportāwhich is quite a lot even with all the thousands of images Iāve uploaded over the years š
The World of EWWW
Jordy : Why did you create a EWWW?
Back in 2012, I was already working on trying to make the sites I worked with run faster, and I discovered image optimization via tools like Yahooās Yslow. There were only two available plugins at the time, CW Image Optimizer wouldnāt run on my web host (or any non-dedicated hosting), and WP Smush.it used the unreliable, and now defunct, Yahoo Smush.it API. I had a little PHP experience at that point, so I decided to try and fork CW into something that would run on my web host. Somewhat to my amazement, I got it working, so I decided to try and share it on wordpress.org. Within a week, EWWW IO had 500 downloads, and it took off from there!
Jordy : What are the solutions you offer?
EWWW IO is unique in the image optimization space, in that the free version allows folks to compress the images directly on their own server without sending them to a third-party API. However, the first paid service I offered was the Compress API, because some web hosts arenāt too keen on the idea of using server resources for image optimization. The Compress API allows EWWW IO to offload the CPU-intensive image compression process to our servers instead. It also includes advanced compression algorithms like TinyPNG and TinyJPG to max out the compression (55% on average) without sacrificing visual quality.
Our Easy IO CDN service takes a different approach, with on-the-fly image compression that doesnāt alter the originals on your server. Easy IO can convert images to nextgen WebP and AVIF formats without storing any of those images on your server, and even integrates with the EWWW IO lazy loader to auto-scale images for whatever device your visitor is using.
The latest addition, the SWIS Performance plugin, addresses things like page caching and JS, CSS, and font optimization.
Jordy : Whatās good about EWWW? I am curious to know how different (or better) it is from Cloudflare or WPRocket.
Everything š In all seriousness, there are a lot of great tools for making your site faster, and I always tell folks to use what works for their site and their budget. Cloudflare is something Iāve used since before they launched publicly, and they have a lot of great tools, but the performance stuff tends to be a little pricey. WP Rocket + Imagify + Rocket CDN is comparable to the EWWW IO Unlimited bundle, but Rocket CDN is just a standard CDN, and an expensive one at that.
On the flip side, the Easy IO CDN embodies our mission, which is to make image optimization accessible to as many people as possible. That means a couple things beyond just making it āavailableā, first of which is making image optimization easy enough that anyone can do it. The second part of that is keeping things affordable, and thatās something weāve worked on the last couple years especially.
If folks want to talk specifics on a given tool, they can always use our support email, whether they are a paying customer or not. And thatās probably one more huge thing, is our support. While there are just two of us at EWWW IO, we strive to provide exceptional email support to every EWWW IO user, paid or not. We probably give away more than we should, but weāve been blessed throughout this incredible journey, and we canāt help but share that with others!
About Images Management
Jordy : Nowadays, do you recommend users to be careful and to upload decently-sized JPGs or do you have a different recommendation? What is the ideal workflow for uploading images to WordPress
Generally, I say donāt worry about it, because thatās why I created EWWW IO. So that anyone can upload any image, and have it turn out alright in the end. But itās important not to have overly large images, so if you arenāt going to scale images down or compress them before upload, make sure youāve got EWWW IO (or Imsanity) set to constrain all uploads to a maximum size like 1920 or 2560 (pixels).
Now, thereās also a significant difference in compression between EWWW IO in free-mode and using our paid/premium service, and even something like WebP plays into all of that. We include WebP conversion 100% free in EWWW IO, and it can trim down images quite a lot, so thatās definitely something to pay attention to.
Jordy : Do you have anything to say about Image Sizes?
The more the merrier! Okay, so not really, thereās value in moderation tooā¦ By default, WP generates a pretty good spread, and some themes tweak that a bit, but watch out for themes and plugins that get out of control. Weāve seen sites where there are 50-60 different sizes of an image being generated, and thatās just insanity. Something like Perfect Images is good at filling in any gaps for 2x/3x devices, and our Easy IO + Lazy Load works with all 1x/2x/3x devices.
Fortunately, EWWW IO also puts you in control of the image sizes that are generated on your site, with the ability to disable any size you like.
WordPress & Website Creation
Jordy : How do you see the future for WordPress in general? Any thoughts on Gutenberg?
While it seems WP growth has plateaued, at least as a measure of the % of the top sites, I donāt think the WP ecosystem is anywhere near done growing. Love it or hate it, Gutenberg is likely a big part of the continued growth. There are things Gutenberg enables that just werenāt possible a few years ago, and it has spawned an entire ecosystem of block plugins to extend the core editing experience. Now, Gutenberg has not been perfect, and Iām sure weāll continue to see growing pains as it moves into FSE (full site editing), but overall I think it has been a huge win for making the content creation experience better.
Jordy : What about page builders? Do you have a particular one you like, do you prefer Gutenberg, or (like me), self-developed themes?
Ugh, thatās what I thinkā¦ But just like Gutenberg, they enable folks to do new things that they couldnāt do before, and thatās pretty cool. I hope Gutenberg has pushed the page builders to ālevel upā as well, and we continue to see new page builders, so I donāt think Gutenberg has made them obsolete by any means. Iāve personally avoided page builders, and even though the ewww.io front page was built with one, I would do it over with Gutenberg if I had the chance. All that said, weāve got a team working on a completely new theme for ewww.io, and if you have the time or the money, thatās definitely a great way to make sure you have exactly what you want without a lot of bloat.
Jordy : What are the most important points to keep in mind when creating a website?
Keep it simple, and donāt get carried away by a lot of shiny gadgets. You want to make sure that folks who come to your site know exactly what you offer, and how to get it. If you have things distracting from that (like Sliders), youāre going to lose out on conversions. Make sure you have a reliable web host, make sure you keep the site secure and up to date, and make sure you have a good backup system in place. On the backups, try it out and see what it takes to restore your site, or to get access to a backup. Your web host might have an awesome system, and thatās all you need, but some web hosts have garbage backup systems, so you might want an additional service there.
On the performance side, do what you can afford, and be careful of striving for perfection. When you have tools like Pagespeed Insights or GTmetrix giving you a performance score, thereās this tendency to think youāve got to get 100, and thatās just flat out dangerous. First, it pushes you to do things just to increase the score, and those things might actually be worse for real-world performance. As an example, if you delay all JS loading, it will (normally) increase your score, and itās one of those neat ātricksā that folks use to get 100%. But if no JS loads until the user starts clicking or scrolling, the browser will be bombarded with a ton of JS all at once, and youāll end up with a huge delay in response all of a sudden.
Second, you can spend more time going from 80-85 than you might going from 20-80, and thatās just spinning your wheels for almost no benefit. Shoot, you can sometimes go from 80 to 85 (and back) just depending on the weather!
Lastly, youāll hear a lot of folks tell you to be careful how many plugins you have, and while you certainly do want to be careful, itās more about the quality of the plugins than the quantity. I set up a demo site a while back trying to make it slow, and after loading it up with about 40 of the more popular plugins, including a page builder, it was still quite speedyāand that was before doing any optimizations to the site.
Jordy : What are your favorite plugins?
Well, of course EWWW IO is one of them! For anti-spam I tend to use Akismet, and Apocalypse Meow for brute force login protection. Easy Digital Downloads has been a great plugin for managing our digital/service ecommerce stuff. ManageWP is part plugin, part service, but Iāve been using it for years to manage updates across all my sites, and for those all important backups. When it comes to contact forms, Iāve used Contact Form 7 and WPForms Lite which are nice simple options.
Can I list my favorite developers? Well, Iām going to anyway! The Delicious Brains team has always been great to work with, and while I donāt use their WP Offload Media plugin in production, Iāve worked with it a ton during development. I also use their Better Search Replace plugin to assist with site/URL migrations, clones, all that sort of stuff. Of course Jordy is another one thatās been good to work with, and Iāve worked with WP Retina 2x (now Perfect Images) a bunch of the years, and am regularly recommending his Media Cleaner plugin. Particularly excited to see what comes of the new Database Cleaner too!
Jordy : What advice do you have for someone starting using WordPress?
Take things at your own pace, and if you start to get overwhelmed, slow down! We talk to some folks where it seems they are trying to figure everything out in a week (or a day), and sometimes thatās just too much to handle. Donāt be afraid to ask for help either! There are a ton of great folks in the WordPress community who would love nothing better than to help you solve your problems. But do be patient, many are just volunteers, and just doing the WP thing on the side. Thereās so much good information available, and I know one site that was a great resource for me as I learned was WP Beginner. Of course, thereās some garbage information also, so you might need to do some sifting, but never stop learning, thatās what I always say!
I would like to thanks Shane for his interesting answers, and for working with me (our plugins are all compatible with each other, and Perfect Images directly supports EWWW IO) over the past years! I believe we make WordPress a better eco-system together! āļø