What's the ideal setup for an Image-heavy website?

[DarkCarnage]

Hi,

I have an image-heavy website and I'm looking for ways to maximize the page speed and reduce loading time. I'm currently using [removed] and Smush Pro CDN (for image delivery). Is there a better solution than this for a content site with many images on each page? Is something like Cloudflare CDN going to be better for my site?

 

[Ryuzaki]

I think the most impactful thing you could do is to use Lazy Loading, and in such away that it "reserves" the vertical space for each image even before it loads. This way you don't get Cumulative Layout Shifting as the images come in. Beyond that, I wouldn't split too many hairs over which CDN is better. I'd just make sure they have servers spread out in the right locations if you're serving a global market.

 

[DoItNow]

I have a couple of image-heavy websites, and I do what @Ryuzaki suggests: Lazy Loading with reserved space pre-loading, and a CDN with servers around the world, as both my sites get global traffic. This approach works fine for me. I use Cloudflare but I don't think it really matters which one you use as long as they have servers in your target location. I just looked up Smush Pro - they say they have servers in 121 global locations. Are you having any specific issues with your current setup?

 

[chubes]

Want to add that combining JPEGmini (locally) with Imagify (plugin) has worked well for me in optimizing image file sizes. In addition to using CloudFlare. And Lazy Loading via WP Rocket or Breeze by Cloudways, depending on the site.

 

[DarkCarnage]

I have a couple of image-heavy websites, and I do what @Ryuzaki suggests: Lazy Loading with reserved space pre-loading, and a CDN with servers around the world, as both my sites get global traffic. This approach works fine for me. I use Cloudflare but I don't think it really matters which one you use as long as they have servers in your target location. I just looked up Smush Pro - they say they have servers in 121 global locations. Are you having any specific issues with your current setup?

It's a bit expensive. It bills by bandwidth and it looks like I'll need to get their 5 TB, $200/month plan. Which is a bit high for my liking.

I see that cloudflare doesn't bill by bandwidth but it's not exactly a CDN for images. This is why I'm confused as to what I really need for a fast end result for the reader.

I've turned on lazy loading and webp through Smush Pro.

So I'm wondering if I'm being stupid paying $200/month for Smush Pro's Image CDN instead of something like Cloudflare plus a cheap Webp plugin?

 

[Jamaica0007]

I found cloudinary was pretty good for image hosting but I only ever used it for very basic image hosting.
It has a free version. It can do a lot of image processing via APIs etc that I tried wrapping my head around but in the end it was a bit too complicated for me.

https://cloudinary.com/