Install Litespeed Plugin – (Step One) — Caching Static Files – (Step Three)
To be able to complete this step you must at the very least complete step one to install the Litespeed plugin into WordPress!
One of the most common mistakes when building a website is not optimizing your images to the smallest they can be without compromising on quality.
It is surprising the amount of websites that do not optimize the images and pictures they use.
This causes slower loading of your web pages due to larger file sizes of the images to build the pages.
Optimizing them makes sure that they load as quickly as possible for your visitors which in turn speeds up your web pages overall.
The ability to do this is built into the Litespeed plugin! and once setup it will automatically do this for any images you add going forward with no further input from you.
Litespeed image optimization is pretty powerful and is handled via their network of powerful image servers.
To be able to utilise this resource you simply need to request a domain key.
To do this from your WordPress admin Litespeed menu select General.
This will take you to the general settings page.
Click on Request Domain Key.
This will request the domain key for you.
It is normally issued pretty quickly.
You should now see this message.
After a minute or so reload the page by clicking General from the Litespeed menu again as we did a few steps back.
If the domain key has been issued you will see a Congratulations message!
Don’t worry if your key has not been issued yet just go and grab a coffee and try again in another 10 minutes.
Once you have the congratulations message you will also see the domain key field has been filled for you.
This means you now have your key and are ready to start optimising images!
It is all easy to do and as simple as following steps as you have done so far.
Now we head on to the Image Optimisation area of the Litespeed plugin.
So go ahead and click on it.
And so the task to speed up your website starts in earnest!
Once you have clicked that you will need to first check your optimisation settings.
On the page you will now be able to click: –
[2]Image Optimisation Settings
Go ahead and do that.
Now you will see a list of settings.
You need to match them exactly with the image shown below.
Once you have done that click Save Changes.
Now that is done you need to head to: –
[1]Image Optimisation Summary
Click on it as shown.
You are now at the page where you can start the optimisation.
On the next page there is quite a bit of information.
If you look for the Image Information box this tells you how many groups of images there are.
Groups are essentially one image but versions of it for mobile, desktop etc.
As you progress through the optimisation steps you will see the progress of the groups and the images themselves.
Eventually progressing until you see both indicators are full and both turn to green ticks.
At that point all your images are optimised and any images you add to wordpress going forward will be automatically optimised.
To get started find and click on Gather Image Data.
This checks it can communicate with the Litespeed image servers and also how many image groups and images you have.
Next you need to start the process of sending images for optimisation.
To do this click on Send Optimisation Request.
This will request your first optimisation.
To begin with you can only request 1 image group and 1 image.
This is deliberate by Litespeed so everyone does not overload their servers.
Don’t worry this soon increases to 200!
However you need to build this amount up.
As you can see in the next image 1 group and 1 image has been requested.
Once each image has finished being optimised the Litespeed image servers will automatically notify your WordPress install to pull the image.
Pulling the completed images back to your WordPress install is automatic.
Now begins the process of sending your remaining images.
To do this simply click Send Optimisation Request again.
Depending on how long has passed you may get an error message.
The error will tell you how long to wait before hitting the Send Optimisation Request button again!
After you have waited you will push gradually increasing amount of images at once.
These will be accompanied by having to wait a set amount of times between requests but soon ramp to 200!
Keep hitting the Send Optimisation Request Button and waiting any required time.
You will see your Image Information % increase until you eventually reach the elusive green ticks in both as seen in the image below.
Congratulations!
You have now optimised all images within your website.
If you look for the Optimisation Summary box you will see how much has been reduced.
As you can see from the example big savings can be achieved for very little work!
So already your web pages will be served quicker due to using Litespeed with the plugin.
And also by optimising your images to be as small as possible without compromising on quality.
Read on to find out how to build on that further in part three
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