We recently made the switch to ShortPixel Adaptive Images to check how our site’s performance is improved. With a combination of good hosting and WordPress plugins, we have achieved a Google PageSpeed Insights score of 99 for mobile and 100 for desktop, and also a perfect GTMetrix score, specifically 100% for performance/structure. How amazing is that?

And here’s how we did it.

Progress never stands still regardless of industry, and web development is no exception. New trends in website creation appear with enviable regularity, and it is quite difficult to keep track of them all. And this is extremely important for future web products that need to be technologically advanced, modern and competitive to survive in a highly ambitious business world.

We decided to help you with the selection of current trends for your future web solutions and put together the latest 2021 trends in one place. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Whether you are developing an HTML website all by yourself, from scratch, or utilizing a template/online tool to help out, it is really important to learn why and how to optimize your images.

Difference between HTML and WordPress

WordPress is a flexible content management system (CMS) that allows a user to create, edit, organize and publish content. On the other hand, HTML is a markup language that allows for static page creation on the web. A static HTML website is composed of a library of HTML files – one for each page on the site. Don’t get confused, though: any website is, in the end, presented to you in HTML format; the difference is how it is generated, either dynamically by WordPress or by hand by yourself.

If your site doesn’t require too many regular updates, or any additional content, simple HTML is a better alternative as it will make your website perform faster.

Back in 2017, we made a pretty good comparison of image optimizer plugins and services for WordPress, and we found out that ShortPixel was overall the best. Our analysis required a thorough exploration of the world of image compression for WordPress, and we did exactly that. Besides ShortPixel, we looked at other well-known image optimization tools, such as Imagify, Smush and EWWW Image Optimizer. We know that developing and maintaining the best image optimization plugin to speed up WordPress is a complex undertaking, therefore we believe it’s time to check the scores again to find out, objectively, which are the best image optimization plugins for WordPress in 2021.

Nowadays there are many other products that use a different approach, like taking the images and storing them on a CDN, from where they will be optimized and served. That’s the case of ShortPixel Adaptive Images, Optimole, WP Compress, Flying Images, etc. In this review, we’ll only focus on local optimization, where the images are compresses on your own server.

ShortPixel’s mission is to make websites faster by optimizing images, thus improving their overall speed and bandwidth footprint.
We are a 15-person team, spread around the world, working remotely and sharing the same values.

And now we are hiring!

We are looking for a skilled WordPress Plugin Tester to remotely join our team.