NewThe WP Tutoring WordPress training platform is live — on demand video courses and interactive WordPress lessons. Free account, no card.Start free
Helping site owners learn WordPress since 2012 · (844) WP-TUTOR
Plugins course · BeginnerIn production

EWWW Image Optimizer: WordPress Plugin Tutorial

Speed up WordPress by compressing every image with the free EWWW Image Optimizer plugin. Learn setup, core settings and bulk optimizing your library.

4 lessons
16 min
Free with a free account
Create a free account →In production. Every lesson will be free — a free account gets it the day it releases

Watch the whole course free on YouTube

FreeAll 4 lessons, with captions and chapters. Open the playlist on YouTube →

  1. Why Images Slow Down Your WordPress Site
    From the lesson

    “Welcome. In this lesson we'll see why images usually decide how fast your website feels, and the three simple ways to fix that. Here's the key idea. When someone opens your page, the words arrive almost instantly, but the pictures are heavy. On most sites, images are more than half of everything the visitor downloads. The heavier those images, the longer people wait for your page to appear.” Watch the full lesson →

  2. Install EWWW Image Optimizer and Set It Up
    From the lesson

    “In this lesson we'll get EWWW Image Optimizer ready to shrink your photos automatically, and we'll do it entirely for free. Because it works locally on your server, your images never leave your site. You'll set a handful of options once, and from then on it works quietly in the background. Each new picture you upload gets smaller, automatically.” Watch the full lesson →

  3. Bulk Optimize Old Images in the WordPress Media Library
    From the lesson

    “When you installed EWWW, it began shrinking new uploads automatically. But your library is already full of older pictures that were added before it arrived. In this lesson we clean them all up at once. Here's the surprise for most site owners: every photo you upload is saved several times over, at different sizes for thumbnails and layouts. Bulk Optimize works through all of those copies in a single pass.” Watch the full lesson →

  4. Measure Image Speed Gains and Set Image Limits
    From the lesson

    “Optimizing images isn't really about a settings page. It's about pages that load faster because they carry less weight. Page weight is the total size a visitor's browser downloads to show your page. Shrink the images and the whole page gets lighter, so it appears sooner, especially on phones. In this lesson we watch that happen to a real photo in the Media Library.” Watch the full lesson →

Following along on your own site and stuck on something the video doesn't cover? Book a WordPress tutor — a live session on your own website, $85 an hour.

This EWWW Image Optimizer tutorial shows you why images usually decide how fast a WordPress site feels, and how the free plugin fixes that automatically. By the end you can compress new uploads as they arrive and shrink the images already sitting in your library, without a visible drop in quality. It is a quick win for page speed that keeps working in the background once it is set up.

What you'll learn

Large, unoptimized images are the single most common reason a WordPress site feels slow, and slow pages cost you both visitors and search ranking. EWWW Image Optimizer matters because it handles image compression for you: it optimizes every new upload and can bulk-process the ones already there. In this course you will learn the core settings that get a good result safely, run a bulk optimize across your existing media library, and understand the boundaries of what compression can and cannot do. You will finish knowing exactly how the plugin fits into a lasting routine for a faster site.

Inside the course

  • Why Images Are the Problem
  • Installing EWWW & Core Settings
  • Bulk Optimizing the Existing Library
  • Results, Boundaries and the Image Routine

Who this course is for

This beginner course is for site owners, bloggers and small businesses who want a faster WordPress site without wading into technical performance work. No prior speed-optimization knowledge is needed. If you would rather read the concepts first, our free written tutorials and live training are there as alternatives.

Frequently asked questions

Is EWWW Image Optimizer free?
Yes. This course covers the free EWWW Image Optimizer plugin, which optimizes new uploads and your existing library right on your own server. There are paid options for cloud processing and extra formats, but they are not required for the workflow taught here, and the course is free to watch with a free account.
Will compressing images hurt their quality?
Done right, the difference is not visible to the eye while the file size drops noticeably. The course walks through the core settings that keep quality high and explains the boundaries of what compression can achieve, so you make the trade-off knowingly.
Can EWWW optimize images I have already uploaded?
Yes. Alongside optimizing new uploads automatically, EWWW has a bulk optimize tool for your existing media library. The course runs it live so you can see how to process an entire back catalogue of images in one pass.

Get our free WordPress starter guide

Join thousands of site owners and get step-by-step WordPress tutorials in your inbox, plus printable cheat sheets.

Beginner-friendly, no jargon
Printable cheat sheets & checklists
Unsubscribe anytime

Request your session

We’ll reply quickly — usually the same business day.

By using this form you agree with the storage and handling of your data by this site.

Start learning WordPress free — on video, step by step

Two full modules of WordPress Fundamentals, every Quick Fix lesson and the free plugin courses, taught on a real WordPress site. A free account is an email address — no card, no trial clock.

Or browse the full course library first →