Wordpress Optimise Images modification and plugin

I have really been impressed with Centmin Mod and some of the optimizations done, especially the image optimization. Most of the people who I have been working with have no understanding of image size and load speed so the image optimization will be a life saver. The problem I have is that it isn't built into WordPress. I took care of that via a plugin. I also don't like explaining to users how to run command line programs and how to optimize images for the first time so I also fixed that.

I modified George's optimise-images shell script to search the entire tree for image files, optimize them, and convert to WebP without a depth limit. The script also handles the passing of a single file to convert and optimize. This was a key change to allow a WordPress plugin to call the script with individual filenames. Now, when a user uploads a new media file, the image is optimized and a .webp file created. The additional file sizes that WordPress creates automatically are handled at the same time. Once a user optimizes their WP install they should be kept up to date as new files are added, no more cron jobs. When the image is deleted via WordPress the WebP files are deleted as well.

I mostly brute forced this by stripping the original script down to install and optimise functions. I haven't fully tested but I am building out a site so it will get tested as I go. I didn't have a clean install to try the install command so you might have to install the original optimise-images first.

In my rush to get this done I have skipped a few things,

• It needs to call exec to run the modified shell script
• The shell script is located in /usr/sbin and needs the correct permissions
• There is no admin panel optimization parameters outside the shell script
• No way to set
• There is no way to click and run the optimizer for the first time on the whole WP structure.
• The script should really be re-written in PHP and use function calls instead of exec
• The plugin code is not robust, no error checking, no database information

I have uploaded to Github (shor0814/image-optimiser-plugin) if anyone wants to use it or fix things. I mostly wrote this for myself but why not share.

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The quick and dirty instructions are in the Readme file.

Thanks again to George for all of his work, none of this would be possible without it.

 

Thanks for the feedback. Will make some comments to clarify for others if they are interested in using.

Point well taken. I could put in an option to limit depth based on the command line if it gives anyone troubles. Or they can still use your original. This one was never meant to replace yours, more of a compliment to it for less informed end users.

This is probably why it will forever live as a shell script. I did background the script in a "fire it off and ignore it" way because it was messing with image uploads and Wordpress thought the upload failed because the conversion took too much time. Backgrounding took care of that. If I ever add an admin tool to index everything I will have to monitor the process and update the dashboard.

exec. I was fighting shell_exec for a bit, I never got any errors in the error log but it was late and I don't remember if that happened before or after I realized I was missing execute permissions on the shell script.

Code is never "done" is it.