Please Keep Media Folder Options

I’m open to feedback on this, which is why I deprecated it instead of completely removing it. I’d like to try and understand why you would use that option instead of the Deferred Optimization option?

So that you’re aware, the Deferred Optimization is much more efficient than using the Scheduled Optimizer with the two most recent Media Library folders.

The reason is that the Scheduled Optimizer has to scan every image in those two folders to see if they have already been optimized. Assuming you haven’t changed the schedule, this happens approximately every hour.

The deferred optimization puts uploaded and generated media into a queue, so that no filesystem scan is necessary. The queue tells EWWW exactly what needs to be optimized instead of doing a manual scan.

The reason I need it is that I specify folders to be optimized. Some of those folders contain images used throughout the site, but don’t get added/tracked through the WP DB which means there’s no way of telling EWWW to add those files to the deferred que and the only way I’ve found to keep those special folders optimized IS to perform the filesystem scan.

Hope that makes sense.

If you wanted to get super fancy with it, you could adjust it to set deferred que as the default, and have an admin setting to perform filesystem scans ONLY on specified folders?!?!?

As I was explaining the deferred option, I thought about that use case specifically, and wondered if that’s what you were doing. What kind of images are these? Are they generated by a particular plugin, or uploaded manually?

At any rate, I think you’ve convinced me to keep the media folders option, but the disabled auto-opt might still disappear in 2.6.

Thank you!

The folders I’m talking about are for images collected from a “content scraper bot” that goes out and finds certain things based on certain criteria and then saves to the server. Images are saved to specified folders, and each folder serves a specific purpose and it acts as like a storage repo for this auto-gathered content. It’s used by many different WP installs, some on the same server and others on other servers. I realize that I have a kind of oddball setup and this is typically NOT the norm which is why you were going to remove those features, so thank you for keeping them around for odd-balls like me ??

I’m indifferent about the auto-opt option. The purpose of the plugin is optimize images. I can’t think of a scenario when you would want auto-opt disabled….and if by chance you did, you can just disable the plugin to achieve that result?!?!

Ha, I tend to cater to the odd-balls, which is why there are so many options, but that’s ok.

If I remember right, the primary reason for disabling auto-optimization was because it could slow down the upload process. Deferred optimization takes away that pain point, so the option should be unnecessary, but we’ll see if anyone can come up with a valid reason for keeping it around too!

Hmmmm….
let me ask you this….

If you remove that option, will there no longer be an option to auto-opt IMMEDIATELY?

I thought it was like this

auto-opt meant that images will be auto-optimized EITHER immediately or by deferment based on whichever you choose.
Scheduled optimizations meant that you were going to either EXCULSIVELY use scheduled optimization, or IN-ADDITION-TO the auto-opt settings above (immediate or defered).

Do I have this wrong?

I do have a site with thousands of members where most of them are over 40 or 50 with VERY LIMITED computer skills. We had it fairly restrictive which hindered usefulness due to “upload restriction” errors. The members did not like this and had no real understanding or interest in “pre-optimizing” images themselves…..like saving in smaller resolutions or smaller file types and so on. To keep the members happy and the site productive, we’ve allowed some pretty large sizes for image and file uploads for hassle-free media usage (they have frontend upload/management capabilities). To help with bandwidth, we do optimize the images immediately upon upload. No deferment, no scheduling…do it immediately. If you remove the disable auto-opt admin setting, will this capability disappear?

If I remove that option (to disable auto-optimization), the default will be to auto-opt UNLESS the user enables the deferred opt. So I believe your setup would still work just fine.

PERFECT!

Guess a plugin rating has been long overdue…