Do I need Image Caching in addition to Plugin?

Hi Deborah,

To cache images: Performance –> Browser Cache –> Media & Other Files (last section under Browser Cache).

In addition, you should try Photon to serve your images.

Best,
AJ

Oh I see! Thank you!!!

Re. Photon, I see it’s part of Jetpack. I’ve just disabled Jetpack, although I miss some of the things it offers, because it was using up so much memory (according to P3 Plugin Performance Profiler). Is there an independent plugin which does what Photon does?

Thanks so much for replying.

So long as you have activated only the JetPack features you actually use, there really shouldn’t be any performance issues so long as the site is adhering to optimization best practices (which W3TC greatly assists with so long as it is correctly — Read: Optimally — configured).

Would you mind posting the URL in question? I (and others) can then get a better understanding of where your site stands relative to performance best practices.

At any rate, you should — ideally — be using a CDN not just to optimize the delivery of your images, but a CDN for ALL of your site’s static resources/files: CloudFlare has a free option, and will greatly increase the delivery speed of a myriad of file types:
css
js
jpg
jpeg
gif
ico
png
bmp
pict
csv
doc
pdf
pls
ppt
tif
tiff
eps
ejs
swf
midi
mid
ttf
eot
woff
otf
svg
svgz
webp
docx
xlsx
xls
pptx
ps
class
jar

Best,
AJ

Thank you AJ. I’d be extremely grateful if you could have a look at the site and possibly give insight as to why I am getting physical and virtual memory usage peaks a couple of times a day. The peaks don’t seem to be related to site usage.

https://www.photomobil.co.il/

About Cloudfare’s free version, it requires you to change your nameservers to theirs. And this worried me. Is it Ok to do this in your opinion.

Thanks so much.

Deborah

Well, first, depending on how the URL is tested, it is up 20.7MB in size (holy moley, Deborah!). This .swf file alone is 9.7MB. If your site is even a little busy, the size of your site/site’s files would strain even a VPS or dedicated server (especially if misconfigured), regardless of caching, and regardless of whether or not the site makes use of a CDN. The short version: PhotoMobil is entirely unoptimized for performance; and, while images are a big part of the problem, they are in no way the only ones.

About Cloudfare’s free version, it requires you to change your nameservers to theirs. And this worried me. Is it Ok to do this in your opinion.

Absolutely. It is something we do for our own clients daily and it never goes anything but flawlessly.

I do realize changing name servers can be a bit scary, but I’m confident that once you do it you’ll wonder why you hadn’t signed up for CloudFlare sooner.

I do want to emphasize, however, that a CDN — CloudFlare or otherwise — cannot ‘fix’ a 20.7MB homepage…

Best,
AJ

Wow! I had no idea it was so bad! I am planning on replacing the SWF with HTML5. So that will reduce the MB to about 11MB. Is that still bad?

The short version: PhotoMobil is entirely unoptimized for performance; and, while images are a big part of the problem, they are in no way the only ones.

I’ll go ahead and implement Cloudfare. But would be so grateful of an indicator of what else I should tackle apart from the SWF? Could it be the long list of posts?

Thank you so much for your help!
Deborah

[…]11MB. Is that still bad?

11MB is very, very (…very…) bad, yes.

A couple things,

I think that we’re now squarely outside of what the WordPress support forums are for in general, and assistance with the W3TC plugin in particular. Moreover, we’ve exited the ambit of what was initially asked in the beginning of the thread. I’m happy to help further, though: Contact my Support team at [ totally redacted, do not do that here again please ] specifically referencing this thread with a link to it in the body of your email, and I’ll have someone give you some help.

Please bear in mind, however, that much of the direction you’ll receive is likely to sound like an entirely different language. One which you will not only have to learn, but the objective of which will ultimately have to be implemented on your site. The implementation, itself, being something that will require quite a bit of training to execute.

Best,
AJ

11MB is very, very (…very…) bad, yes.

Yikes!

Thank you for the contact. I will contact them. I’m willing to learn.

Thank you again,

Deborah

Totally side note: Hi @ajm_1976 I was doing a review of the reviews (don’t ask, spam problem, oh the pain…) and came across this topic.

Much thanks for all the help. But please do not ask people to contact you or your service in these forums again. That’s something that is actively discouraged here.

Note that you’re doing fine and your help really is appreciated. It’s just posting contact info like that really sets off flags.

Sorry, Jan. Won’t happen again. Things got into a bit of a grey area, there, and wasn’t sure about the best way to continue to help Deborah in a manner that abided by all the rules.

Many thanks,
AJ