[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #55443: Create WebP sub-sizes and use for output

[WordPress Trac]

#55443: Create WebP sub-sizes and use for output
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 Reporter:  adamsilverstein                      |       Owner:
                                                 |  adamsilverstein
     Type:  enhancement                          |      Status:  assigned
 Priority:  normal                               |   Milestone:  6.1
Component:  Media                                |     Version:  6.0
 Severity:  normal                               |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  has-unit-tests needs-dev-note        |     Focuses:
  needs-docs needs-user-docs needs-patch 2nd-    |  performance
  opinion needs-testing changes-requested        |
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Comment (by eatingrules):

 > For what it is worth, I think the server space issue is a little over
 blown. Lots of popular plug-ins add image sizes that create more files and
 no one talks about that.

 It's precisely __because__ of our experience with image optimization
 plugins and the massive bloat from (largely unused) thumbnails piling up
 that I know that this will make an existing problem much worse.

 I run a WordPress maintenance agency that currently supports about 750
 sites, ranging from mid-size e-commerce to some high-traffic sites seeing
 20-30 million pageviews/month. The majority of our clients have been
 publishing for many years, and their media libraries typically have
 anywhere from 3,000 to 20,000 images, and are growing every day.

 We don't provide hosting, and we have experience with all the major hosts
 and many others as well. **We run into storage issues on a near-daily
 basis.** Either their hosting account is running out of storage, or we're
 having issues with our nightly backups timing out because there are too
 many files.

 Often, it's directly due to image optimization. We use Shortpixel or
 Imagify on many sites, and keep the backups of the originals...this is
 indeed a large part of the usage (though we often exclude those backups
 from our backups), but we have found it's even more problematic not to
 save the originals, should anyone want to reoptimize in the future (so at
 that point we recommend our clients upgrade their plans to get more
 storage).

 **At least in the case of these image optimization plugins, they are opt-
 in.** The clients (or their support company) __choose__ to install these
 tools, and therefore they can be aware of the ramifications.

 I know I've been one of the most outspoken critics of this proposal, but
 I'm only chiming in so emphatically because I have deep experience on this
 topic. I also understand the end user extremely well, since I work with
 literally hundreds of publishers on a daily basis and see all the issues
 that come up...and know that this is going to confuse the heck out of most
 site owners.

 Should things move forward as proposed, the disk space issues may not
 surface right away on most sites, but over time (or when someone or
 something regenerates thumbnails), it will absolutely be a problem on
 many, many sites.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/55443#comment:136>
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