Once a Promising Plugin Now Turned Nightmare

In the initial stages, I must say WP Compress was nothing short of fantastic. I got my hands on it during its Lifetime Deal (LTD) days. At that time, it primarily served as an image optimization plugin with a few additional optimization features. It wasn’t the all-in-one WordPress optimization plugin it aspires to be now. And that was absolutely fine – the plugin performed its intended functions admirably well.

However, things took a drastic turn for the worse with the arrival of the 6.x.x versions. Since then, WP Compress has been, to put it bluntly, a real headache. I’ve lost count of the hours I’ve poured into resolving issues, many of which should never have occurred in the first place.

Even the core functionalities like CDN rewrites, and backup restore are frequently dysfunctional. The restore feature has even corrupted images on numerous occasions, leaving us to pick up the pieces manually.

The developers seem intent on transforming this once humble, efficient plugin into the ultimate optimization tool. Unfortunately, the reality is quite different – all it does is consume time and effort without delivering on its promises.

A couple of months back, I reported a mountain of issues to the developers. Their responses have been frustratingly dismissive, often resorting to the clichés of “we can’t reproduce the issue” or “it works great, just clear your cache.” If this plugin were indeed so brilliant, it would surely have garnered more than a meager 7000 downloads.

As a desperate last resort, I recently rolled back all my sites to version 5.11.11, where, to my relief, most of the features are operating as they should. The irony is not lost on me that while WP Compress has gone downhill with time, its competitors have been making strides forward.

For the time being, it seems rolling back to an older version is the only viable solution, and that’s just not a sustainable way to run a website in the long term. Here’s hoping WP Compress can turn things around before it’s too late.