webp conversion no longer working on multiple websites

@bobhhh if the images are delivered via Cloudflare (from Statically), some images might not be converted to webp because Cloudflare found that conversion will not result in many gains.

I’m closing this issue since there is not site URL or URL of the image to debug. Also, for issues related to Statically, contact them directly.

I added an example image url.

If Cloudflare decides to seemingly arbitrarily not converted images, how can we still use your plugin reliably?

@bobhhh if that’s done by Cloudflare, it’s intentional. Converting all images to WebP is not always good. Cloudflare does that conditionally.

Again, as I said. I’m not 100% sure about it. I don’t provide support for Statically. Contact them.

Created a ticket, will keep this thread updated.

Hi @bobhhh you can learn more this CDN behavior here https://statically.discourse.group/t/image-cdn-does-not-serve-webp/80

To make work easier for @gijo, you can send the link above if you receive related questions

Thanks

So in short, my sites are no longer on the same CDN as before and that particular CDN doesn’t support conversion to webp.

Not very predictable and usable then.

Note that Statically uses multi-CDN, so to give you insights to help you predict, here’s how WebP works at Statically:

– Fastly: will send WebP if accept: image/webp header present no matter what, even if the image gets large (yes, converting JPG to WebP can result in a large file size)
– BunnyCDN: same as Fastly
– Cloudflare: will check the WebP file size is larger than the original image, if not, then send

I personally prefer the approach applied in Cloudflare, because it’s faster, therefore a larger portion of the traffic is currently going to Cloudflare, they also provide more PoPs for Statically. You can check the DNS resolution for cdn.statically.io from around the world at https://dnschecker.org/#CNAME/cdn.statically.io and see what you got.

WebP is great, but the web is getting modern, modern solutions have to be made, edge logic is getting more advanced and static asset delivery has to be smarter. Serve WebP only when it is useful to serve.

Again, this is a challenge running the auto-WebP service with a multi-CDN and this is what we can make.

If you want something like always-WebP, I recommend that you go with a paid solution, there are many services that provide this.

Quoting @gijo “Converting all images to WebP is not always good”.

Thanks, @fransallen for jumping in!!!

Frans, I appreciate you taking the time to explain all this but what I’m seeing in the browser is something else.

My example image is served by Cloudflare and it’s optimised to 187kb. However, the webp image is only 85kb so why is the jpg still getting served?

If Cloudflare CDN is used, Statically uses the awesome Polish feature for image to WebP solution. The rest I leave it to be handled by the system for the automation process.

My suggestions, check the CDN CF-Polished HTTP header, check if you do compression on the origin side, is the image cached? Polish only WebPize image in cache, and finally learn the various CF-Polished statuses to make sure what is happening behind the scene, here https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000607372-Using-Cloudflare-Polish-to-compress-images

I hope this helps