While compressing your standard JPEG and PNG images is a great first step, serving them in next-generation formats like WebP can shrink your file sizes by an additional 30% without any loss in visual quality. Lighter images mean less data for your visitors' browsers to download, resulting in significantly faster page loading speeds and improved performance scores.

Because your Sternhost account utilizes LiteSpeed technology, you don't need a premium image optimization plugin to achieve this. You can automate the entire WebP conversion and delivery process directly through your existing LiteSpeed Cache plugin in WordPress.

Step 1: Requesting Image Optimization

The LiteSpeed Cache plugin connects to LiteSpeed's cloud servers to process your images in the background, ensuring the heavy lifting doesn't drain your own hosting CPU resources.

• Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard.

• In the left-hand sidebar, hover over LiteSpeed Cache and click on Image Optimization.

• Click the 'Gather Image Data' button so the plugin can scan your media library.

• Once the scan completes, click the 'Send Request' button to start compressing your images and generating the new WebP versions.

Step 2: Enabling WebP Replacement

Now that the WebP images are being generated, you need to instruct your website to actually serve these new, lighter files to your visitors instead of the old, heavy JPEGs.

• Still within the Image Optimization menu, click on the Image Optimization Settings tab located at the top.

• Scroll down until you find the setting labeled 'Image WebP Replacement'.

• Toggle this setting to ON.

• Scroll to the very bottom of the page and click the Save Changes button.

Why WebP Conversion is a Game Changer

• Massive Size Reduction: WebP files are significantly smaller than traditional formats, instantly reducing your total webpage size and saving monthly server bandwidth.

• Automated Workflow: Once this is configured, any new image you upload to your WordPress media library will automatically be compressed and converted to WebP in the background.

• Broad Compatibility: The LiteSpeed plugin intelligently detects if a visitor is using an older, unsupported browser and gracefully falls back to serving the original JPEG or PNG, ensuring your images always load correctly.