Optimize images

[MirandaEcho]

No description provided.

[benlk]

One specific image that would save them a lot of bandwidth: The Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications image in the sidebar, at https://www.ghn.test/wp-content/uploads/goliath/Grady-01.jpg, is 429kb and nearly 2700x980px. That could be reduced to 600px or 300px.

[joshdarby]

Expanding on @benlk's point above, a good chunk of the images that Google is complaining about are in the sidebar.

We can probably reduce the size of and optimize all of the sidebar images then go from there.

[joshdarby]

Took me way too long to figure out how to replace the sidebar images. TLDR; they're set within the WPBakery Page Builder.

I replaced these three images.

222KB to 42KB

330KB to 31KB

30KB to 27KB

[joshdarby]

These have been updating on the staging site and Google is no longer complaining about them. Next up is the sponsor images.

[joshdarby]

Sponsor images have been reduced in size and also optimized, most of them going from 250-350KB to around 30-40KB. I've updated them on the staging site.

[joshdarby]

Next up: They have Smush installed but not active. I'm going to activate it and enable lazy loading and image resizing (if possible).

[joshdarby]

Installing Activating Smush (on staging) and enabling Lazy Load + updating those sidebar images has brought the staging site from a 35 to a 64.

[joshdarby]

I've configured Smush to automatically optimize images as they're uploaded, but we'll probably want to ask/decide if we want to "smush" (optimize) existing images. They currently have 5,991. Smush lets you optimize 50 at once, so that would take 120 runs.

Or, they could sign up for the $7/mo plan that would let them do it all at once.

Although, I'm not 100% sure it's needed. Lighthouse is only complaining about 6 images on the homepage now. All are under 45KB except one that is 160KB which I will optimize now.

[joshdarby]

I've run out of time on this issue, but I think the site will see a nice speed improvement with these updates + @benlk's updates from #3.

Final scores on staging site:

Desktop: 64/100, up from 35/100
Mobile: 60/100, up from 40/100