WebP

  • WebP by Default Pulled from Upcoming WordPress 6.1 Release

    I’ve been reading through all the conversation and issues here. I am interested in supporting new formats and improving performance, but I think this change being pushed by default to users when they upgrade to 6.1 is a lot for right now, including with some of the clunky interactions OSes still have around webp (and HEIC!) files.

    I’m happy for support for working for webp and HEIC files to stay in core, as we should be liberal in what we accept and work with, but not with the change to convert everything to webp when JPEGs are uploaded.

    During today’s Performance Team meeting, contributors briefly discussed the revert.

    “We are still trying to figure out what a canonical plugin is exactly, and if that would work for WebP by default,” Google-sponsored core committer Adam Silverstein said. “We still have a couple of fixes to land for 6.1 around image quality when WebPs are output (which is still an option you just need a plugin for now).” 

    During the previous Performance team meeting Silverstein said Mullenweg’s post about the feature not shipping was a surprise to the team and that they were working with the release leads to better understand concerns in hopes of finding a path forward to include it in the update.

    “I want to acknowledge this is a blow for everyone who worked on the feature (myself included) and at the same time I’d like to encourage us to focus on how we can move forward given the current position,” Silverstein said. “Are there concerns we can address? Does a canonical plugin make sense?”

    Participants in that discussion had expressed concerns about getting users to adopt WebP by default if it is moved to its own plugin at the time. It would require strategic rebranding to indicate that it delivers faster images for the visitors, as most users won’t be familiar with the WebP format at this point.

    “I think if it remains a ‘feature project,’ it makes sense to remain in the Performance Lab plugin – we don’t know if moving it out of it would get us more testers (especially since the Performance Lab plugin has 10k+ installs which is a lot for a feature plugin),” Google-sponsored contributor Felix Arntz had said.

    “If the path of a ‘canonical plugin’ should be pursued, then of course we would need to take it out, but then the nature of the project would also change.”

  • WebP by Default Merged into Core for WordPress 6.1 update

    Despite a bunch of revisions, and filters to control or disable WebP uploads, the proposal still remained controversial. Contributors continue to report issues after testing it. Many still have questions about whether this should be opt-in or on by default in the final release.

    Some developers are supportive of the change but prefer for it to be off by default when it is first rolled out, to allow the ecosystem to prepare for the change before it becomes the default.

    “Therefore, I’m questioning why this functionality should be activated by default at this stage. IMHO, it should be opt-in only. Plus ideally, we would already start to think about adding further image formats to be supported by this feature.”

    “There have been many requests for this to be opt-in (as well as some asking for a setting on the Media page, rather than only a filter for developers). So far there hasn’t been any open conversation about why that’s not being taken into consideration.”

    The idea that WebP by default should be opt-in was summarily dismissed and the conversation was not revisited again before the changes were committed to the core.

  • WordPress Performance Team Puts WebP by Default Proposal on Hold After Feedback

    The more vocal opponents to the feature characterized it as “heavy handed” and pushed for it to be an “opt-in” feature or introduced with a more user-friendly way of disabling it. One of the biggest concerns is that the proposal has the potential to double the amount of disk space used for images, as it would generate WebP thumbnails in addition to the JPEG sub sizes as it uploads.

    Viktor Nagornyy summarized these storage concerns in a comment on the proposal:

    This is not just about image formats. You’re going to drastically increase disk space usage by generating more images. This will affect anyone hosting WordPress on managed hosts with storage limit, their own servers with limited storage, anyone offloading images to S3, etc. This is why there needs to be an option to disable this under Media options. Hidden images generated by WP because of plugins and themes already cause problems. I’ve seen a site generate 20 images for every uploaded image. Uploads directory was 20GB. Can you imagine adding webp images in addition to this? 

    This directly affects hosting cost. You will cause a lot of billing issues.

    The Performance Team said they are working closely with the hosting community but this change will directly benefit hosts that sell plans with tiered storage space limits as they can get you to pay for a larger plan. 

    “There are also significant conflicts of interest,” WordPress agency owner Andrew Wilder said. “WebP is a format that Google Created — and it’s Google Engineers who are leading the Performance Team.” WordPress agency owner Andrew Wilder said. “This proposal is designed to serve Google’s interests (making it easier and cheaper for them to crawl the web). And the increased cost for all the additional storage space needed will be borne by site owners, not by Google.”

    Disk space – a vast majority of our users have very large image libraries. While they might not be hitting limits yet, effectively doubling the media library size is going to cause issues for many people. I can see that ending in one of several ways – either they’ll ask us to delete the webp files (so, more work for us, thanks!), or they’ll be forced to upgrade (so, higher fees for them), or they’ll get upset that we don’t offer more disk space for free, and then potentially leave us

    Backups are already one of our major expenses. We invest in multiple solutions, and multiple storage locations. A decision like this will *directly* increase our costs. It will also make account restorations, account migrations and similar actions more time consuming.

    In the most recent update, Silverstein said the Performance Team’s primary objective in enabling WebP by default is to bring WordPress’ image processing to the level of its competitors.

    This reasoning is extremely disconnected from the concerns voiced by people who are in the trenches supporting and maintaining all the WordPress sites. The team’s initial approach at selling the benefits they saw of WebP, without really addressing the disk space issue, has generated significant community pushback in a short amount of time.

    As Performance Team representatives responded to the concerns in the comments of the proposal, several participants in the discussion grew more irritated, saying they felt advocates of “WebP by default” do not fully grasp the real-world implications of the proposal for users. The timeline for bringing it into core also seemed rushed and premature for it to go forward, given that WordPress already has support for WebP images for those who choose to use them on their own.

    “Bottom line is pretty simple,” WordPress agency owner Sergio Scabuzzo said. “We are being asked to double the number of images for no good reason.”

    “There is a small bandwidth benefit in forcing all images to have a WebP version. But we will then have a crap show on our hands in the back end. How manageable are media libraries now? Cool, now double that with another media format. Oh, wait, let’s add AVIF later too…”

    “This is a problem looking for a solution, not a decision. This change is great only from a web crawler, search engine, supported device/medium. But for the WordPress ecosystem, it will create a huge headache in maintenance and hosting costs.”

    The Performance Team is now reassessing their approach and seeking to support its case with more data and research. Silverstein referenced two GitHub issues where the team is tracking research on the impact of enabling WebP by default: 

    1. Research: Impact of additional WebP images on upload [Issue #289]
    2. Research: WebP compatibility [Issue #290]

    “Once we have completed our investigation and determined next steps on these two issues, we will work with the community to reassess two other concerns that were raised – having the feature on/off by default, and having a UI-based control to turn the feature on/off,” Silverstein said.

  • Performance Team Proposes Enabling WebP by Default in WordPress 6.0

    With WebP now being enabled by default, WordPress users would not experience any changes to their usual image upload workflow. WordPress would automatically convert all JPEG uploads to WebP in the background and use them on the website for you.

    The proposed feature would ship with two filters to control or disable WebP uploads, and a user-friendly plugin would be created to do the same thing. 

    Despite the significant performance benefits this new format has, support for the feature proposal is not unopposed. Several contributors participating in the discussion expressed concerns about email clients and social media platforms not supporting WebP at this point.

    “I feel like WebP is not yet ready to become a ‘hardcoded default’ in the post_content due to all the reasons mentioned in the previous comments,” Kaspars Dambis said. “Many web clients (which are not just browsers) don’t support WebP formats — RSS clients, email clients, smart TVs, ebook readers, open graph parsers, desktop image viewers, etc. These are all important users of the web.”

    Silverstein then answered these concerns that were expressed, confirming that WordPress will continue generating the JPEG image sub sizes as it always has.

    “One important note about what this feature doesn’t change: JPEG sub sizes are still generated and stored in the same meta fields,” he said. “For that reason, consumers of RSS feeds or REST media endpoints or OG tags for example will continue to use the JPEG sub sized versions.”

  • WordPress 5.8 WebP image format support

    This modern image file format was created by Google in September 2010, and is now supported by 95% of the web browsers in use worldwide. It has distinct advantages over more commonly used formats, providing both lossless and lossy compression that is 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs and 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEG images.