Our new UpdraftPlus release, 1.22.3 (free version) / 2.22.3 (paid versions) is a security release. The short version is: you should update. To get the details, read on!

On the evening of February 15th, we received a security defect report from security researcher Marc-Alexandre Montpas of Automattic, who during an audit of UpdraftPlus found a previously unknown defect in current versions of UpdraftPlus, which has had a CVE identifier reserved of CVE-2022-23303.

This defect allows any logged-in user on a WordPress installation with UpdraftPlus active to exercise the privilege of downloading an existing backup, a privilege which should have been restricted to administrative users only. This was possible because of a missing permissions check on code related to checking current backup status. This allowed the obtaining of an internal identifier which was otherwise unknown, and could then be used to pass a check upon permission to download.

This means that if your WordPress site allows untrusted users to have a WordPress login, and if you have any existing backup, then you are potentially vulnerable to a technically skilled user working out how to download the existing backup. Affected sites are at risk of data loss / data theft via the attacker accessing a copy of your site’s backup, if your site contains anything non-public. I say “technically skilled”, because at that point, no public proof of how to leverage this exploit has been made. At this point in time, it relies upon a hacker reverse-engineering the changes in the latest UpdraftPlus release to work it out. However, you should certainly not rely upon this taking long, but should update immediately. If you are the only user on your WordPress site, or if all your users are trusted, then you are not vulnerable, but we still recommend updating in any case.

Users who are using UpdraftPlus Premium’s feature for encrypting your database backup are protected against data loss/theft from this problem, assuming that you have kept your encryption password secret. (There is no known vulnerability allowing the attacker to also access this). In such cases, only any confidential information in the backup of your files is at risk (and then usually only your media/upload files, since plugins and themes are usually only public code that contains nothing sensitive, being downloadable from their original supplier/author by any member of the public). Note also that the WordPress database, following modern security standards, hashes stored passwords. This means that your WordPress login password is protected even from someone who has obtained even an unencrypted copy of it.

This information is now being released approximately a day after updated, secured versions of UpdraftPlus became available. During that time, the majority of sites have been updated.

Again, we urge all users to update if they have not done so already. We at UpdraftPlus sincerely apologise for any and all inconvenience that has been caused, and wish to thank Marc for working together with us. From the moment we received the report, it was “all hands on deck”. An update was pushed to Premium users within the hour. We have lost a good amount of sleep, because your sites and their backups matter to us, and we will continue working hard to make sure that continues to be the case.

(Addendum: versions 1.22.4 / 2.22.4 have subsequently been released, which deals with a conflict with a bug in a popular third-party plugin, via adding a work-around (we have also reported the issue to the plugin author)).

David Anderson (lead developer)

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When there are two equally great products gaining popularity at a fairly equal pace in the same market, only small but important detail can set them apart.   

Think of two high end hairdressers that both offer the same services and quality hair cuts. The first hairdresser will answer the phone and process your booking within 30 seconds, while the second hairdresser leaves you on hold for 20 minutes as they are too understaffed to take the call. Which hairdresser would you most likely end up going to? In a world where your time is limited and everything demands efficiency, your answer would most likely swing towards the former. 

This is the same with websites. People are more likely to visit and continue to use your website if they are sure it’s fast. The loading speed will largely determine if they will stay or return. For every 100 people that visit your WordPress website, around 50 of them will abort if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. 

In this article we will discuss two of the most popular speed boosting WordPress plugins – WP-Optimize and W3TC. While both of these plugins can increase your website speed, the small, but important details will dictate which plugin you end up using.

What can performance-boosting plugins do for your WordPress website?

At some point, everything needs a boost to improve performance. Race cars require a measured dose of nitrous oxide for that extra final kick and humans consume energy drinks to get some more work done. A website is no different. A WordPress site needs a performance-boosting plugin such as WP-Optimize or W3TC, to significantly improve its performance. 

WP-Optimize

WP-Optimize is a market leading all-in-one plugin. It caches your WordPress website, cleans your database and compresses your images. With over a million active installations and tens of thousands of 5-star ratings from all over the world, WP-Optimize ranks at the very top of the list of the most trusted, used and sought-after performance-boosting plugins. 

Does it meet your needs?

The following are just some of its functions to help you decide:

Optimizes your site’s database

Redundant files, such as unusable comments, unnecessary drafts, transients and revisions to mention only a few, will only slow down your WordPress site. You need a suitable plugin that will seamlessly get rid of these redundant files from your site while still leaving your site intact and running smoothly. WP-Optimize is your best option for achieving this.  

With the additional benefit of the integrated UpdraftPlus Backup plugin that comes with WP-Optimize, you won’t need to install a third-party backup plugin to secure your site.  

Compress your images

WP-Optimize compresses your site’s image files to your precise desired size without any dent in the resulting quality. While other plugins may use Imagify for this purpose, the feature comes built-in for WP-Optimize. 

With WP-Optimize, users get to determine the degree to which they are compressed. The image optimization feature in WP-Optimize is a cutting edge and leading image optimization platform. One of the easiest and quickest ways you can improve the speed is by optimizing your images. This process, which is commonly known as ‘smush’ or ‘smushing’ allows users to optimize, compress and resize all the large original images and convert them to smaller file sizes that are easier and quicker to load, without sacrificing any loss in image quality.

WP-Optimize Premium lazy loading

The Premium version of WP-Optimize includes a feature called lazy loading. . Lazy Load helps your website to delay the initialization of some of these components until they are needed as not all components are required to load every time your website is viewed. This feature can help improve performance and maximize the resources of the system. 

Page caching

By caching your site’s pages with WP-Optimize, your site is able to generate a separate set of files for mobile or desktop users, as well display personal page preferences for users that are logged-in. By using this feature, it can further add to the speed and help boost the overall performance of your site. 

Free/Premium versions

The WP-Optimize plugin has both a free and a premium version for download. The core features of WP-Optimize are free and can be downloaded here. Although the premium version, which is available here, comes with additional features that can help improve the speed and performance of your site further.  

W3 Total Cache (W3TC)

Like WP-Optimize, the W3TC plugin also has more than one million active installations. It comes in just behind WP-Optimize in both popularity and has a user review score of 4.5 stars. 

The following are some of its features: 

Minifying

While this often causes some problems for WordPress sites (in which case you have to perform a restore), it can be useful, especially if you are combining JS and CSS files.

Page cache

Although not as effective as WP-Optimize, W3TC also offers page caching when you enable it on your site. Others caching options include Opcode cache, Database cache, Object cache and Browser cache. 

Import & export

Both the free and the premium versions of W3 Total Cache feature import and export options. This option allows you to export your primary settings to your computer and then upload them to other WordPress sites. This can be a very useful feature for businesses with multiple websites. 

Robust feature set

While W3TC has an extensive set of features, this can lead to some confusion for less experienced WordPress users as the menus and multiple options can often be unclear and difficult to understand. 

WP-Optimize vs W3TC

Features	WP-Optimize	W3TC
Database optimization	Yes	Yes
Page Cache	Yes	Yes
Image compression	Yes	No
Mobile-specific cache	Yes	No
CSS and JS minification	Yes	Yes
GZIP compression	Yes	Yes
Simple setup	Yes	No
Preload cache	Yes	Yes
Free version	Yes	Yes
Built-in backup	Yes	No

Conclusion

After reading this blog, some things should be clear. They include:  

• It is important that your WordPress website has a performance-boosting plugin to give visitors the best experience. 
• WP-Optimize and W3TC are both top examples of performance-boosting plugins that are 2 of the most highly rated and downloaded available.  
• Of the two plugins discussed in this article, comparing both their free and premium versions, WP-Optimize comes out as the clear leading in this comparison 

You know what your WordPress site needs now. Good luck. Download and install WP-Optimize today!

The post WP-Optimize vs W3 Total Cache (W3TC): Which is the best WordPress optimization plugin? appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

Search engine optimization or “SEO” stands at the forefront of all digital marketing activities. To put it simply, SEO is the process of getting websites to rank higher on a Google search result. While there are other search engines available of course, we will specifically be looking at Google as Google owns over 87% of the overall global search market. 

As a business owner, your goal is to reach the widest pool of customers possible, and then pursue the leads that will hopefully convert to sales. The higher your ranking on a search results page, the better your visibility and chances of reaching these customers. SEO is the means to do just this. It is a complex process that comprises many elements, like SEO copywriting, keyword research, intuitive web design and seamless website navigation.

If you’re looking to boost your website’s SERP ranking, here are nine tips and tactics for building a solid website SEO strategy:

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1. Ensure your website is mobile responsive

54.8% of the world’s web traffic came from mobile devices in 2021. This is why your WordPress site must be optimised for viewing on smartphones and tablets. A website that is not mobile responsive will require tedious screen pinching and zooming.

This does not provide a good user experience and poses a very real risk of users leaving your site.

A mobile responsive website changes the look and layout of a site based on the device it is viewed on. The typical design elements considered while optimising a WordPress site for mobile responsiveness are:

• Creating ample space for tap targets
• Eliminating horizontal scrolling
• Utilising text that doesn’t require zooming

Better user experience boosts user engagement – making mobile optimization one of the key steps in an SEO strategy.

2. Create a plan for acquiring backlinks

Backlinks are external websites that link to yours through either blog posts or articles. A backlink is like a vote of confidence for your website and boosts your domain authority. Backlinks are also a great way for a wider pool of prospects to discover your website and click through to it.

How do you earn backlinks?

The most obvious (but difficult) way is to create great quality content that effectively answers search queries. This improves the chances of it being referenced by industry peers. This method is broadly known as link building. For example, is your business in financial services? Then why not write a guest post on robotic process automation for a fintech blog.

Many companies reach out to peers to trade links. However, backlinks can also be earned through other activities such as:

• Guest blogging
• Sharing videos and infographics
• Client testimonials
• Answering questions on open forums like Quora

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3. Boost your site speed

47% of consumers expect a webpage to load in two seconds and 40% abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load. So if you’re looking to do business online, your best bet is to get your website up to speed (literally).

This isn’t just one of those customer retention myths. Since 2010, Google has included site speed as a ranking factor in its algorithms.

The first thing you need to do to boost your site speed is to check your present speed. There are several free tools for this including Google PageSpeed Insights and GTMetrix. There is no single optimum speed for websites and scores should broadly be used as guidelines and not fixed standards.

Some of the most common ways of improving your site speed are:

• Optimising images
• Removing unnecessary plugins
• Cutting down page size 

To help optimise your site, we recommend installing the WP-Optimize WordPress plugin. WP-Optimize Cache is a revolutionary, all-in-one WordPress performance plugin that caches your site, cleans your database and compresses your images.

4. Produce valuable content

Content creation is a vital aspect of SEO. The golden rule for web content writing is that it must answer a question knowledgeably. It is important to remember that your audience is a group of real-life people who are looking for something specific. 

For example, if you’re in the business of providing online courses for remote learning and a consumer has clicked through to your site after searching for “best remote learning courses”, they should get information related to remote learning.

Whilst it’s important to optimise your content with targeted keywords after thorough SEO keyword research, stuffing your page with them will not improve your SEO score. It can actually turn off your users and get you downgraded by Google’s bots – as they can choose to penalize you for having unrelated content and remove your site from their index.

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5. Use keywords in the right places

Targeted keywords are what drive SEO and it’s vital to have a thorough understanding of keyword research in your website’s SEO strategy. To start, identify ten words that are related to your product or service and then research those using tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs. Find out the search volume for these words and seek out a few variations.

Essentially you need to identify the main short-tail keywords and find some long-tail variations to boost the overall search volume for your product or service. For example, if you’re trying to improve your ranking for “best WordPress backup plugin”, you can identify a few related keywords such as “highest rated WordPress backup plugin”.

6. Write content for featured snippets

A featured snippet is a great way of getting your website higher in the search rankings. A snippet is the answer box that appears at the top of the page for any search query. You can improve your chances of appearing as that snippet by making some design and formatting edits such as:

• Bullet points
• Infographics
• Answering specific query-based searches

Snippets are a great way to build awareness in your brand strategy and position yourself as a domain expert. For example, if someone is searching for the “best caching plugin for WordPress”, then a dedicated answer to the query could get you that coveted snippet. 

This is something for which you need keyword research. Identify keywords with high search volumes and then create content that aligns with those searches.

7. Write clean, clear clode

When adding any custom code to your WordPress site, it should be written following CSS and HTML best practises. A clear code helps Google identify and index the data of your website. The faster Google can crawl and index your website, the better your search rankings. The more pages on your site that are correctly indexed, the better the chances are of them being discovered.

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8. Use local SEO to target local customers

Local SEO is becoming increasingly important for businesses. The mantra for local SEO is NAP; short for Name, Address, Phone number. Make sure this information is consistent across all your marketing collaterals and your WordPress site. This helps Google identify you when a customer in your area searches for a product or service that you offer. Don’t forget to boost local SEO by also creating a free Google “My Business” account.

9. Optimise social media

The global active social media population stood at a whopping 4.2 billion in 2021. With such a massive pool of consumers to engage with, businesses all over the world are optimising their social media marketing. Ecommerce traffic and sales benefit greatly from optimising social media for business.  

SEO is crucial for businesses to be found online and with the right SEO strategy, you can drive robust organic growth for your business. 

Severine Hierso

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Imagine you have the choice between two 5-star restaurants that serve equally great food, but one of them takes your order, serves you drinks and gets your meal out to you in ten minutes, while the other restaurant takes 60 minutes to even seat you at your table. Which one would you rather visit? In today’s modern world, where we are all trying to be more efficient with our time; you would almost certainly choose to eat at the first restaurant.

With so many distractions and options for people’s attention in today’s world, a smart business will adapt accordingly by not only giving the customers compelling, high-quality products, but designing the products to help them save time. This important fact should inform how you design your WordPress website. 

Once a user has visited your site for the first time, it is important to keep them coming back time and time again. Around 50 % of website visitors will simply abort loading your website if it takes more than three seconds to open. As such, it is vital that you make a good first impression with your website performance. 

While there are over a dozen performance-boosting plugins you can use for your WordPress site, we will be comparing two of the top choices – WP-Optimize and WP Super Cache.

Does your WordPress website need a performance-boosting plugin?

If you were an Olympic athlete, you would make sure you had the best running shoes available. The same is applicable for your website. All WordPress sites need performance-boosting plugins to help them to load as fast as possible and produce peak performance. 

Do you want your website to perform at the highest possible level? If your answer is yes, then your WordPress website will require a good performance-boosting plugin. 

WP-Optimize

Whenever WP-Optimize is mentioned, it’s three key aspects usually come to mind – cache, clean, and compress. As one the the leader all-in-one WordPress performance-boosting plugins, WP-Optimize helps to efficiently cache your website, clean it’s database, and compress the images. 

WP-Optimize currently has more than one million active installations, with users from all over the world. It’s impressive reputation, coupled with its all-in-one nature makes it the obvious choice for any WordPress site owner. 

The following are the primary functions of WP-Optimize. .  

Database cleaning 

Nothing slows down your website like redundant files. These can include transients, unnecessary drafts, unpalatable comments, and revision files. Your website needs an effective plugin that will automatically remove this unneeded content without tampering with the integrity of your website. WP-Optimize is about the only plugin that removes trackbacks and pingbacks. 

Image compression

Beyond just compressing the images on your site, you get to determine the degree to which they are compressed. The image optimization feature in WP-Optimize is a cutting edge and leading image optimization platform that works well and it’s easily the best in the WordPress market. One of the best ways you can improve the speed of your site via WP-Optimize is by optimizing your images. This process, which is commonly known as ‘smush’ or ‘smushing’ allows users to optimize, compress and resize all the images on a website, potentially saving many MB per image and improving loading speeds. This feature is available on both the free and premium versions of WP-Optimize.

Lazy Loading

Simply put, lazy load describes the process where a website delays the initialization of components until such a time where they are necessary. This is done to boost the performance of the website and efficiently utilize the system resources. WP-Optimize features this lazy load option and it’s arguably the best one available in the WordPress market. 

Page caching

This feature allows your website to produce a separate batch of files for mobile and generate a separate cache for logged in visitors. Using page caching, WP-Optimize improves the speed and overall performance of the website. 

Pricing

WP-Optimize has both a free and a premium version. Usually, the free version is sufficient for the basic performance improvement you’d need for your website. You can download the free version easily by visiting their website (link). The premium version is for businesses looking for something extra and it comes in three packages: 

WP Super Cache

Created by Automattic, WP Super Cache is used primarily to cache a WordPress website. It does this by generating static HTML files that your server displays to people visiting your website. Many developers consider this to be a faster option than processing WordPress PHP scripts. 

The following are some features for this plugin: 

Suited for CDN (Content Delivery Network)

WP Super Cache works perfectly with CDN Networks. CDN allows your WordPress website to be stored on multiple servers all over the world so it can be downloaded from cache by visitors. In turn, this makes your website super fast, even if visitors are far from the origin server. 

Pricing

WP Super Cache only has a free version and can be downloaded from their WP.Org. All its features, as you have seen, are somewhat limited as they are only available on a free version. There is no option for users to upgrade when more features and tools are required.

WP-Optimize and WP Super Cache compared

Features	WP-Optimize	WP Super Cache
Database optimization	Yes	No
Page Cache	Yes	Yes
Image compression	Yes	No
Mobile specific cache	Yes	Yes
CSS and JS minification	Yes	No
GZIP compression	Yes	Yes
Simple setup	Yes	No
Preload cache	Yes	Yes
Free version	Yes	Yes
Built-in backup	Yes	No

WP-Optimize and WP Super Cache: Which is the better plugin?

From everything that has been discussed so far in this article and due to all the extra features and tools available to users, WP-Optimize is the superior of the two plugins. 

Conclusion

There are many takeaways to be found in the above analysis, but here are the top three: 

• WP-Optimize and WP Super Cache both offer free versions of their plugin and both top rated performance-boosting plugins. 
• Of the two plugins, WP-Optimize offers more features and more tools, giving a bigger boost to the optimization of your WordPress site. 

While some may argue that a direct comparison is unfair as WP Super Cache doesn’t have a premium version, It should be noted that for this analysis, the free version of WP-Optimize and WP Super Cache were compared – With WP-Optimize coming out as clearly the better and more complete plugin.

The post WP-Optimize vs. WP Super Cache: Which is the better WordPress optimization plugin? appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

Every day, it seems there is more and more competition for people’s time. Be it the internet, movies, TV, video games or streaming, these days, in order for your site to be successful and gain traction, you not only need to have an interesting and engaging website, but you also need to make sure it is fully optimized and loads quickly. 

Of course, as anyone that has set up and run a website will know, getting visitors to visit your website is one thing, but getting them to stay for an extended period is quite another. 

You may get visitors to your websites for any number of reasons, but they will only stay and return again in the future if it is efficient and professional. The most simple and obvious example of this is how long it takes for your site to fully load. New research by Google has found that 53% of mobile website visitors will leave if a webpage doesn’t load within three seconds. Page speed is a direct ranking factor, a fact known even better since Google’s Algorithm Speed Update. However, speed can also affect rankings indirectly, by increasing the bounce rate and reducing dwell time. Typically, the greater the speed of your website, the better your ranking will be. 

Having established the importance of page speed in trying to get your WordPress site fully optimized and on the first page of Google, which website performance-boosting plugin should you use? WP-Optimize and Autoptimize are two of the most popular plugins available for WordPress. In this blog we will look at both of them, evaluate performance and which one you should install

Website performance-boosting plugins

Your website should be performing to optimal speed if it hopes to attract visitors that will stay, interact and return in the future. Although you may have a great product and a modern and stylish design, it is not enough to just expect these factors to bring your success on their own. To help, you need to install performance-boosting plugins to ‘speed’ things along.. 

Your website has a reserved storage space called a ‘cache system’, and it’s specifically cut out for storing temporary data. Caching solutions will store static versions of your website in a cache. This allows WordPress to skip running heavier PHP scripts every time your site loads. This caching process helps to improve WordPress speed and performance and the overall user experience. This cache collects images, text, and other data when a visitor comes to your page for the first time. The essence of this is to give your site enough room to load faster and generally perfume more efficiently. 

But for your cache system to perform well, it has to have a decent CPU and RAM. But however great they are, they will soon run out with increasing traffic, leaving the site to render slowly. This is where performance-boosting plugins, such as WP-Optimize and Autoptimize help. They work round the clock to improve the efficiency and overall performance of your site.  

WP-Optimize

As the leading all-in-one plugin, WP-Optimize cleans your site’s database, compresses the images and caches the website. At the time of writing, WP-Optimize has more than a million active installations and a 5-star rating from hundreds of thousands of users on WP.org. WP-Optimize has become the plugin of choice for anyone that is looking to keep their WordPress site fast and efficient. 

Autoptimize

Autoptimize is another popular plugin for optimizing your WordPress website. Like WP-Optimize it works by aggregation and caching scripts and styles. Autoptimize will input CSS into the page head by default, as well as inline critical CSS. It will then defer the already aggregated full CSS, move the scripts to the footer and minify HTML. 

It features Google Fonts and image optimization, including Lazy Load with support for Web and AVIF formats. Autoptimize can be a good plugin to install if you want to improve your website’s performance. Like WP-Optimize, Autoptimize also has more than 1 million active Installations but has a lower 4.5 star rating. 

Comparison of WP-Optimize and Autoptimize (tabulated) 

 

WP-Optimize and Autoptimize: Which is a better optimization plugin?

With both plugins having over a million active installs and a high star rating, the dilemma for every website owner is which plugin is more suitable for speeding up a website’s load time and improving the overall performance. As can be seen in the above chart, WP-Optimize has more features and tools and is clearly the better performance-boosting plugin.

WP-Optimize offers more value 

One thing WP-Optimize and Autoptimize have in common is that they both offer a free version of their popular plugin and optimizations functions. But both plugins are not created equal. Feedback from users who have used and compared the two plugins have shown that WP-Optimize is the superior of the two, both in features and in functions. 

WP-Optimize has a backup feature

WP-Optimize plugin comes combined with the UpdraftPlus backup service; the most trusted and biggest backup backup plugin in the world. By using WP-Optimize and UpdraftPlus, you can be rest assured that essential files, such as original high-resolution images on your WordPress site, are kept safe. The backup and restore functions for UpdraftPlus are so seamlessly built-in that they can be operated by just the press of one button – restoring your site or files to their previous state. Autoptimize lacks this feature and does not offer any kind of backup or restore service. So if you make a mistake while optimizing your site with Autoptimize, then you will be stuck with the changes you have made.

Image compression feature: Which is best?

Like WP-Optimize, Autoptimize has an image compression feature built into the plugin. But it is recommended that you disable the feature on Autoptimize, as it does not appear to function optimally. Even Autoptimize advise that users use a third-party plugin like Imagify to compress your images. The image optimization feature in WP-Optimize is a cutting edge and leading image optimization platform that works well and it’s easily the best in the WordPress market. One of the best ways you can improve the speed of your site via WP-Optimize is by optimizing your images. This process, which is commonly known as ‘smush’ or ‘smushing’ allows users to optimize, compress and resize all the images on a website, potentially saving many MB per image and improving loading speeds. This feature is available on both the free and premium versions of WP-Optimize.

WP-Optimize is easy to use

After installation, both WP-Optimize and Autoptimize still require some fairly simple and straightforward ticks within the plugin options to fully set them up. However, WP-Optimize is much more straightforward and easier to set up for both WordPress novices and experts. Users may find that Autoptimize is a bit more complex and that you may need some technical know-how to make the kind of changes that are more easily identifiable in WP-Optimize.

Autoptimize has minify-related issues

Many users have sent and reported feedback in which they complained about running into problems when they set Autoptimize to minify CSS and JS. The recommended solution is to exclude CSS and JS files when trying to minify files. This is obviously not ideal and limits the kind of optimization that a user can perform on their site. WP-Optimize does not have this problem. Users can minify CSS and JS on WP-Optimize to their heart’s content! This is just another example of why WP-Optimize is superior. 

Conclusion

If you have read the above blog, then you will have already figured out for yourself exactly which plugin is the best and why. If you want to improve any aspect of your site and improve its speed and performance, then WP-Optimize is the easy favorite for all the reasons listed in this article.

The post WP-Optimize vs. Autoptimize: Which is the best WordPress optimization plugin? appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

More than 40% of your website visitors will close your site and leave if it takes over three seconds for your website to fully load. This phenomenon becomes more relevant as technology continues to advance with other devices vying for your attention, causing the global attention span to decrease. By now it should come as no surprise that site speed is crucial to the success and usability of your site and influences your website’s search engine rankings. Knowing this, if you run a WordPress based site, a common dilemma at this point will be ‘what website performance boosting and optimization plugin should I use?’ To answer that, we will compare and contrast two of the most popular optimization plugins: WP-Optimize and WP Rocket.  

What’s an optimization plugin?

Every website has a dedicated storage space reserved for keeping temporary data to ensure your WordPress website loads faster and generally performs more efficiently. This storage space is called a ‘cache’. When your website is opened for the first time it collects files, images, text and other necessary information about your device. It’s this data from the first visit that ensures your website loads faster on subsequent visits. 

Your cache system will require decent levels of RAM and CPU to properly carry out this function. But no matter how good they both are, increasing traffic will soon consume it, causing the page to render slower. This is where performance-boosting plugins come in. They are able to cache your WordPress site, clean your database and compress your images. This helps to increase the overall performance and efficiency of your WordPress site.

WP-Optimize

WP-Optimize is an all-in-one optimization plugin that cleans your database, compresses images and caches your website. Put all of these functions together and you get what the name implies, a well-optimized WordPress website, performing seamlessly and efficiently. 

WP-Optimize currently has over a million active installations. If you are serious about keeping your WordPress website in the best shape and providing a high-end user experience, you have to install WP-Optimize for your website.  

WP Rocket

WP Rocket is another optimization plugin that allows you to speed up your website in a few steps. It ranks among the most functional WordPress website performance plugins in the world. Like most optimization plugins (including WP-Optimize), WP Rocket can help to cut down your load time and boost your Google PageSpeed and Core Web Vitals scores. 

Comparison of WP-Optimize and WP Rocket features

Features	WP-Optimize	WP Rocket
Free version	Yes	No
Database Optimization	Yes	Yes
Browser Caching	Yes	Yes
Page Caching	Yes	Yes
Gzip compression	Yes	Yes
Lazy Load	Yes	Yes
Image Compression	Yes	No
Cache Preloading	Yes	Yes
HTML/CSS/JS minification	Yes	Yes
Mobile Specific Cache	Yes	Yes

Why is WP-Optimize a better caching plugin than WP Rocket?

WP-Optimize has a free version

You can install WP-Optimize on your WordPress website and start using it for free without any hidden charges. You get instant access to several features including database optimization, caching and image compression. WP Rocket does not offer a free version and as such, all of its features come at a premium. Buying a premium product without being able to test out it’s features and functionality can be an expensive and risky endeavor. With WP-Optimize, you can test out many of the major features and get a better feel for how the plugin can improve your site, without having to spend your hard earned money first. 

WP-Optimize is a better Premium option

While prices are subject to change over time, the general pricing levels of these two plugins show a significant difference of price and number of websites the plugin can be used on. While WP-Optimize not only offers a free version of it’s plugin, it also has a premium version that gives access to additional features, including logging, lazy load, multisite support and top-notch optimization scheduling. 

The premium version of WP-Optimize is more affordable than WP Rocket and will let you install it on more websites compared to WP Rocket.  

WP-Optimize

Name of plan	Cost	Number of websites
Starter	$39	2
Business	$69	5
Unlimited	$179	Unlimited

WP Rocket

Name of plan	Cost	Number of websites
Single	$49	1
Plus	$99	3
Infinite	$249	Unlimited

WP-Optimize comes with an image compression feature

In the bid to increase website speed and facilitate large file savings, WP-Optimize offers both Lossy and Lossless image optimization. Large, uncompressed images can be one of the leading factors on why a site could take so long to load. As an additional feature, you can also backup your original high-resolution image files, in case you need them in the future. WP Rocket does not come with a built-in image compression feature. You would have to install Imagify, a third-party plugin, to compress your images. 

WP-Optimize is integrated with UpdraftPlus backup

WP-Optimize uses UpdraftPlus to back up your site. UpdraftPlus is the world’s leading backup plugin and is an essential plugin to install in order to safeguard your files. The integration is so seamless that the backup and restore functions are automatic and super-convenient. WP Rocket does not have this option, which is an especially necessary and crucial feature when making any changes to your site.

WP-Optimize is more effective for page caching

Page caching gives your WordPress website the capacity to generate more than just a set of files for separate visits from different devices – This feature allows for an overall better website performance, and while both WP-Optimize and WP Rocket offer this feature, WP-Optimize is more effective in delivering noticeable results. 

Conclusion

As you have learned from this blog, both plugins will do a good job in optimizing your website. However WP-Optimize is the more effective option and can deliver better results. The addition of a free version of the WP-Optimize plugin also allows the user to experience and test out the basic features within the plugin, without having to make an expensive purchase. If you are looking to speed up your site, reduce image size and find the best caching option available, WP-Optimize is the plugin for you. Download and install it today!

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