Even faster WordPress sites with our Speed Optimizer plugin (formerly SiteGround Optimizer)
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During the past few years, the SiteGround Optimizer plugin has become an essential part of the SiteGround WordPress hosting product. We’re constantly adding new features and improving existing functionality to make your WordPress sites faster. Now, we would like to tell you more about the most exciting changes we have introduced with the latest versions of our plugin. Read below to find out about the most recent front end and media optimizations in the plugin and how to test your site speed easily through your site backend using our cool integration of the Google PageSpeed test.
Stop render-blocking JavaScripts from slowing down your site
Very often JavaScripts in the site header do not allow the rendering of the rest of your web page until they are fully loaded. With our new feature you can defer render-blocking JS and load the rest of the page without waiting. Thus, your visitors will see a fully loaded page faster. We are aware that some scripts should always remain render-blocking. For example, like in the case of the jQuery script, there might be other scripts that rely on them. To accommodate such scripts, we’ve created an easy-to-use functionality to exclude specific scripts from being deferred. You can find and manage this new option in the Front End tab of the SiteGround Optimizer plugin.
Avoid unnecessary video loading with our new lazy load options
Lazy load of images has been available in the SiteGround Optimizer for quite some time. When enabled, it stops images from loading until they are scrolled to in the browser. Thus the first visible part of your page is loaded faster without waiting for images, that may never be reached by the visitor, to load at the background. Now you can use lazy load for iframes (YouTube, Vimeo & other embeds) and directly imported videos too. Another new feature allows you to select whether you want to lazy load your site on mobile devices or not.
Use the latest and fastest web image format – WebP
WebP is the newest, extremely exciting image format that has a great potential to optimize loading speed of all images on the web. This format may decrease the size of your images between 25% and 35%. The SiteGround Optimizer now allows you to create webP versions of all the images from your WordPress site with a click. Once you do that, we will load these smaller and faster images for browsers that support this format.
IMPORTANT: WebP support is available for websites hosted at SiteGround using our Site Tools.
Load Google Fonts without slowing down your website
Using multiple fonts, weights and languages from an outside source like Google can easily add up a lot to the number of site requests and slow it down if those requests are done in a render-blocking way. To tackle this, we’ve developed a mechanism to catch loaded fonts, parse them and load them in-line asynchronously. This method proved to be the fastest way to handle Google fonts, the most commonly used font sets online. Once they get cached by your browser, the effect they have on your page speed is reduced to zero.
Test your site speed with Google Pagespeed
Another great functionality we’ve added to the plugin is the ability to test your site speed using the Google Pagespeed test right from the SiteGround Optimizer interface. Not only that, but we’ve linked each performance recommendation to a specific functionality in the plugin to guide you how to better optimize your site and achieve top performance!
Although we believe that the plugin now is the best optimization solution for every WordPress site on a SiteGround server, there are still things that we want to implement and will introduce with upcoming updates. Our roadmap is full of awesome new ideas that will soon become available to you. So keep an eye on our blog and the SiteGround Optimizer change log!
Comments ( 88 )
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Siddhesh Jain
Hi I’m a siteground customer but I’m seeing cPanel in case I wish to use webP images can I do so using other plugins? Or how do I get to use SiteGround tools?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
As you are still using cPanel, at the moment you can use external plugins for webP such as this: https://wordpress.org/plugins/webp-express/. You may browse the wordpress.org plugins directory for more information.
Siddhesh Jain
It doesn’t work either it shows server not configured or permission required, how do I sort that.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hi, it's best if you post a ticket so the techs can investigate, but it sounds like either a plugin conflict or .htaccess issue.
Dale Reardon
Hi, I am a Siteground customer using your cloud hosting and the SG Optimizer plugin. However I am having difficulties because I am blind and use a screen reader to use the internet - Jaws for windows it is called. In the plugin controls and setting options you have used non standard HTML elements, specifically your own versions of radio buttons, checkboxes, form fields, drop down combo boxes etc. I am guessing you have used JavaScript to create these controls. These non standard controls are completely inaccessible and unusable by me as a keyboard and screen reader user. Could you please put me in touch with your dev team for this plugin to get these problems fixed? WPMUDEV had done a similar thing with their plugins but fixed it very quickly once the issue was raised. Several other plugins I use (asset cleanup Pro and PerfMatters have put in a settings toggle to choose whether to use standard HTML elements or your fancy ones to fix the problem for me. Hope this can be addressed quickly. My site with you is https://travelforall.guide Thanks, Dale.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Dale, We’re in the final stage of testing screen reader support for our new Client Area and Site Tools, as well as the SG Optimizer plugin. JAWS is on our list of screen reader software, being tested and we’re currently fixing issues before we can release the screen reader support and keyboard handling. That said, we’ll be happy to get your feedback to our developers for further improvements. You are welcome to send us your comments at reviews@siteground.com.
James
Can this webp plugin be used with non wordpress websites?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am afraid it works only on WordPress sites.
Matt
Awesome work. Does the plugin work with custom wp installations, eg roots bedrock, or will it only work with standard wp installations?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
HI Matt, Yes, it's designed to work with bedrock. Glad you like it :)
John
Hello, the plugin works great. I have a question regarding media optimization and I currently use Imagify which creates webp images and also stores a backup of the original image. If I wish to move away from Imagify and use SG Optimizer for my Existing Image Optimization will it use the backup image or the webp image?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
If your images are already optimized, you don't need to do the bulk optimizations, just keep the option for optimizing new images on. As for the WebP optimization - we make copies of existing images, so you need to generate those copies. This is generally safer - we don't touch the original image but create a webp copy of it.
Jim
Once the WebP images have been generated is there something else to be done to ensure they are served? I can see the generated WebPs in the file manager but they are not being served. I have made sure to purge the SG cache.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
No, we will detect if the browser declares webp support and serve them instead of the original ones. You can check a Chrome browser -> Inspect element and the Networking tab, then select a jpg resource for example and you will see that its type is actually webp :)
Jonathan
I'm glad you explained how to tell if your images are actually webp, I was having the same issue of thinking they were not being served. However, in my case it's not working for all of my images. Some are webp, but many are still jpg or png. I've cleared the SG Optimizer cache as well as my local browser cache. How can I get webp to work fully?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We convert images present in the media library. Those that are not generated are most probably coming directly hard coded with the theme or through plugins that don't register them properly in the WP Media library.
Daniel
Is there a way to convert theme images through siteground tools or that would need to be done manually?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, the SG Optimizer does that for you :)
Reona
Awesome features! Happy made the switch to SG :) Also, I have a few feature request; 1. Please allow backend exclusions for javascript, there are files I'd like to exclude since they cause issue when some minification is on, but there's currently no option for it. 2. Please support option for leverage browser caching
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Both are already available :) Check out the Frontend optimizations tab and the Environment optimization tab of the plugin :)
Reona
Hi Histro, thanks for reply! Didn't know that, thought browser specific cacheing was a different thing. I turned that on, and it actually slowed down my website. Is it usually not recommend to enable it? Also, I'm using ThriveTheme and want to exclude editor.min.js but it doesn't show up as option in js exclusion. How can I add it?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Regarding the exclusions, you can use these filters: sgo_js_minify_exclude sgo_js_async_exclude There is a more detailed explanation how to use them here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/sg-cachepress/ You may want to contact support and see what causes the slow down and if the issue is really the browser caching or else.
Reona
I used new SG's webp generation, but I noticed some pictures got heavily degraded in terms of quality, especially PNG images. As much as I'd like to use Webp, as it indeed made my speed faster. I think some exclusion feature for page level or media level would be very helpful!
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
The exclusion functionality is on the roadmap, though I cannot give any ETA right now :)
Lexi
Absolutely the same issue here - was quite shocked. This didn't just affect WebP for me, but the other optimisation as well - now I'm having to replace a ton of images as originals have been overwritten. Maybe have an option to keep the originals in case it goes wrong?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Originals are NOT overwritten by the WebP file generation. Probably you have the other option for originals optimization enabled. If that's the case, keep that one off and use only the WebP functionality.
Sean
It's been almost 6 months since I first heard about the migration to Site Tools, yet I am still on cPanel. There is a reminder about it every time I log into my cPanel account, taunting me. I can only hold my breath for so long ;-) I'm really looking forward to it so I can make use of functions such as Webp, without any more plugins. How many GoGeek servers do you have left to migrate in Eemshaven?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Sean, unfortunately, we are behind schedule with the migrations to Site Tools. We had to change plans and focus a lot of our efforts on the migrations to the new infrastructure so the new interfaces are falling behind. I wish I could give you a more specific date for migration or at least a forecast, but that will be a speculation right now. We are very sorry for not being able to turn this around faster as we had hoped to do.
Ben
Cool I especially like to lazy loading of (YT) videos! Youtube embeds have a terrible effect on page speed. THE ONLY THING I am missing in SG Optimizer is the feature to "combine all javascripts" and the option to exclude specific ones, like Autopotimize is doing. Will SG Optimizer ever offer this feature and if » when? THANK YOU
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hi Ben, yes, this feature is in the roadmap for the year, but can't give you an exact ETA right now.
Don
Can you help me find the SG Optimizer plugin for Joomla? I see it listed in the documentation, but have been unable to locate it.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Here's a tutorial about it: https://www.siteground.com/tutorials/joomla/improve-speed/
Summer Lee
I have generated a set of WebP images via SGOptimizer on two websites 3 weeks ago. However, many of them, and sometimes all the images are not showing up on Safari browsers. I can only see a question mark in the placeholders. I have read that it is a known issue on Safari. I have tried adding some codes to counter the problem and force the Safari browser to load from jpg image, but there would be still one or two images not loading well on Safari from time to time. Eventually, I had to remove all the WebP images because of this issue. Can the team come up with any solution to counter this problem so that the WebP images load completely on Safari browser? Thank you.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Before we serve webp images, we check if the browser making the request supports it. The problem you're describing is with the CloudFlare CDN and their image caching. We've raised the problem to them and still waiting for a resolution. Meanwhile, you can disable your CloudFlare cache for images and rely on our caching for proper webp serving.
Jonas
I had the same problem but i found this solution: https://403page.com/how-to-support-webp-on-cloudflares-edge-with-a-worker/
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
But it requires the premium subscription for CF. In the next SG Optimizer version we will completely rework our WebP mechanism so it works fine even with such services as CF.
vincent
After i installed this, do i still need to install W3 total cache?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
No, don't use multiple plugins for the same fuctionality. Check out the SG Optimizer options and enable them for best results :)
craig mullins
Do we have a list of best practices with using Wp rocket & SG Optimizer together? What settings should we use in SG optimizer and what should we use in WP rocket? For whatever reason Memcached keeps getting shut off in the plugin. Saves it and it's on, load a page and gets shut off.
Raul
I’m costumer if SG with WooCommerce store... SG Optimizer works too with WC? I need high skills for setup?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, the SG Optimizer plugin works perfectly well with WooCommerce. We've made all our interfaces to be simple and intuitive so you don't need to be a dev to make it work. Just take the time to enable all the optimizations one by one and check after each how your site works after that :)
Adrian Chambers
I am a recent (and happy) SiteGround customer, but am an admitted IT dummy! I am interested in improving my newly redeveloped site wherever I can. Will SG Optimizer work with my site? And do I need any special skills. Thank you, Adrian.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Totally, it can even handle the SSL and forcing HTTPS for you!
Nat Belza
I'm liking SG Optimizer so far! It's an all-in-one optimization plugin but without the complication of the likes of W3TC. Are you guys planning to include critical CSS soon? I've been watching since November 2019 about it getting included in the near future.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, it is on our roadmap but I can't give you an ETA when it will be ready at the moment.
Shane
Compared with WP Fatest Cache plugin, which one performs better?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
On SiteGround servers the SG Optimizer will provide you with the best possible performance results.
Fabio
Hello unfortunately I cant use WebP WebP support will be available once we migrate your account to Site Tools. I'm waiting for the migration but it seems Siteground doesn't take care of old loyal custumers. Just see how we are treated for the renewal of services: 3 years Grow Big New Customers - 299.08 Eur, Renew for old custumers - 568.87 Eur
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Fabio, we had to pause migrations from cPanel to Site Tools in order to complete the upgrade migration to Google Cloud Platform first. It is almost over so we will shortly proceed with it. It is exactly because we value our customers why we're migrating those servers slow - we make mupltiple checks both automated and manual to make sure nothing breaks on your end. I understand that you're eager to get on the new system - I would too, it's faster with much, much better interfaces, improved security and speed and extra tools. However, it's easy to spin new accounts and really tough to migrate existing ones without breaking something. As for our pricing - those are our regular prices, you've just received a promotional one upon your first sign up. Note that we have discounts if you renew for longer period!
Dorys
Will you be adding Defer parsing of JavaScript? That is the only issue I have on one of my sites based on GTMetrix scoring
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We've already added it, it is in the Frontend Optimizations tab :)
Howard
Can the optimizer be used in conjunction with another cache or speed applications. My site always scores 97-100 on page speed except for: Leverage the font-display CSS feature to ensure text is user-visible while webfonts are loading. Potential savings 120ms AND: Avoid chaining critical requests 3 chains found Thanks Howard
Asit Aithal
Plugins like WP Rocket are recommended for site optimization. If this plugin covers most of the features offered by it, I'd rather use this one. Can I, or do I have to use both of them?
James
Instead, stop moving us to inferior servers and cheaper servers and calling them ?better?"
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The new infrastructure is faster and better than the previous one. I am sorry if you have experienced slowdowns - they are temporary while our system is synching backups, services and everything else running. In few days after the migration everything should normalize and your sites will load faster than ever.
Norman
Hello I'm currently using Hummingbird. Should I deactivate it before switching on SGO features?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, don't use more than one optimization plugin because that will lead to worse results caused by duplicate functionality.
Sudhan
Use The Latest And Fastest Web Image Format – WebP is not working.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
It is available only on our Site Tools accounts. We will soon proceed with migrating the rest of cPanel accounts to Site Tools and it will work just fine :)
Collins Mbaka
I have generated the webP from the media optimization but when I go to media or even check the image formats via chrome dev tools it is still jpg. Also i have w3 Total cache and Smush, should i deactivate all this other plugins?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Open the page with Chrome and go to inspect element -> network tab. Then, click on a jpg file and you will see that the file type is webp :) You can use the curl command I gave few comments above to check it too.
Collins Mbaka
Thanks, it works well now Please do I need to have other performance tools like w3 Total cache?
Herb
When will this optimization be available for joomla?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
At this point we don't have plans to develope such app-speciffic optimizations for Joomla but you can benefit from all the power SuperCaching provides for your Joomla site.
Steve
Is it possible to check when the websites (within my SiteGround account) will be moved to SiteTools (from Cpanel) so that I can use the Webp feature?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We will start with these migrations very soon and you will receive an email regarding it well before your sever is scheduled for the migration.
Kevin
After I turned on lazy loading for all my images, thumbnails, and iframes, the first time I load up my home page on any new device, none of the images load. It looks like lazy loading changes the image sources to something that looks like [code]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7[/code]. Is this a known issue?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
No, that's probably an issue with your theme or the site builder because from what I can see the image is added in binary format and not a proper HTML tag. You can open a thread in the WordPress plugin forum and we will look into it further - https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/sg-cachepress/
Lefteris
I am still waiting for webp. I sthis implemented and ready and how can i use it?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
It is available on our Site Tools accounts, if you're migrated, you will see the WebP option in the Media Optimization tab in the SG Optimizer plugin. If not, please wait until your site gets migrated.
Grant
Ok... Love this plugin. I have one problem... When I enable combine Javascript Files, my Amazon Native Shopping ads disappear. I have tried excluding the scripts but have not had any luck. Any ideas on what to exclude?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Can you please post a thread in the official WP plugin forum: https://wordpress.org/plugins/sg-cachepress/ providing your site URL. We will look into it and tell you more :)
Shahnawaz Khan
Hey HRISTO PANDJAROV How can i implement this automatically in all my Wordpress Websites which are on my server currently i am using Go Geek Plan and my Primary Domain is https://aayatinfosys.com/
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You need to manually install and activate the plugin on your site. We're working on a bulk management system that would allow you such actions but I can't give you an ETA when that would happen.
Andy
Hi My front page has a logo, menu, text and an embedded video. There's also a carousel at the bottom, but I've tested without this and it made little or no difference. I've done everything I can with SG to optimise the site, but I get a mobile performance score of 31 and desktop score of 67. I've read the places to improve, but they mostly look like the should be covered by the optimiser Eg Eliminate render-blocking resources Remove unused CSS Remove unused JavaScript Reduce initial server response time As there's very little to the page https://whatyouneedtoknow.co.uk/ I'm disappointed it's not faster. I've looked at the analysis, but I'm not a specialist in this field and I can't see any simple fixes, but there's nothing much on the page that I would have thought would have slowed it down. The theme is by Avada and they claim that it's a fast theme. As Google is looking more and more towards user experiences and fast loading times especially for mobile. I'm not sure what steps I should be taking to resolve this.
Marina Yordanova Siteground Team
Hello Andy, I have noticed in your ticketing that the issue was already discussed with our Support team. The SG Optimizer was not active due to a conflict with one of your plugins. You need to disable it first in order to speed up your site with the SG Optimizer. Please check the information provided in the ticket.
Subrata Sur
Why do not support webP image format For cPanel based accounts? This is huge issue that I face long time, hope it will be solve soon
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
If you generate your webp images and use them within your site they will work just fine even on cPanel. However, our automatic system for generation and delivery relies on certain services that cPanel cannot accomodate. We will migrate all our accounts to Site Tools eventually so you will get it once your server is moved to the new platform.
Reza W.
Hey Hristo, Great job on the plugin, but I have a suggestion for this plugin. You see, a lot of people are using the Shortcodes Ultimate plugin. It's one of the most (if not the most) shortcode plugins used by WordPress users (800,000 active users!). It has a feature of embedding YouTube videos using one of its shortcodes, and just like many users, I used it religiously on my posts because it's easy and it does the job. The thing is, the SG optimizer will not lazy load the YouTube videos embedded using this shortcode plugin. Can you make an update to the plugin so it will lazy load the YouTube videos embedded using the Shortcodes Ultimate plugin? I'm sure many people will appreciate it since this plugin is really popular. Thanks
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Adding it to our roadmap, we will look into it and make sure we add support in the upcoming updates of the SG Optimizer :)
Emin
Hi, I personally don't think to have the Pagespeed in the plugin was a good idea, makes the plugin heaver. We could check that on Google :) Instead, it would be amazing if you could speed up the Site Tools migration so we can take advantage of WebP. It has been announced for a long time now and still have not been converted over to Site Tools. Thanks for the hard work
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I can assure you we're doing those migrations as fast as possible. As to the test, it doesn't really add much to the plugin footprint but on the other hand is very useful since it links the PageSpeed report to actional items and options that you can enable to improve reported points.
MIGUEL
Hello, we're a SiteGround customer and are missing critical CSS asynchronous loading. When will it be available? Also, just to let you know, we're using Autoptimize for CSS minification and combination (also for critical CSS), since it seems SiteGround Optimizer is having some trouble with Divi theme. Thanks beforehand!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We are working on the Critical CSS generation. Without it the async CSS load just doesn't make sense. As to your other question, the latest version of SG Optimizer works flawlessly with Divi and you don't need another plugin for this which is adding overhead and slowing your site. I would recommend using only the SG Optimizer. If there are issues, post a thread in the SGO forum and we will fix them asap.
Jose Pablo
I have received this message I'm don't really know what to do to make work properly, please advise. Message: We have detected that a script is generating uniquely named files which result in our combined assets taking up a huge amount of disk space. Please, exclude any scripts that generate unique JS code per page or per visit in order to avoid this from happening again. Thanks in advance.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, post a ticket in the plugin forum (https://wordpress.org/plugins/sg-cachepress/). We will look into it and help you further.
Gideon
Hey, Am using SG Optimizer and am getting below error under frontend optimization-combine javascript file; JAVASCRIPT COMBINATION DISABLED We have detected that a script is generating uniquely named files which results in our combined assets taking up huge amount of disk space. Please, exclude any scripts that generate unique JS code per page or per visit in order to avoid this from happening again.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, open a ticket in the plugin support forum and we will look into it :)
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