How to LazyLoad Images in WordPress using WP Rocket

Posted on June 6th, 2022

Image Lazy Load is a feature that delays loading images on a web page until they are visible to the user. The goal is to improve the page’s load time by deferring the loading of images that are not currently visible. The effect is that the user can see the page’s content sooner, and the page’s overall size is reduced. Image Lazy Load was first introduced in 2013 by Google and has been adopted by other web browsers and websites. In addition to reducing page load times, Image Lazy Load can also reduce data usage for mobile users.

Image Lazy Load Feature is one of the most important aspects of a website. Image Lazy Load Feature is used to load images on a web page only when needed. Image Lazy Load Feature reduces the number of HTTP requests when a web page loads. Image Lazy Load Feature also saves bandwidth and improves loading speed. Image Lazy Load Feature is especially important for mobile devices because they have slower internet connections and loading times. Image Lazy Load Feature is also important for websites with many images. If you have a website with many images, then Image Lazy LoadFeature is essential for improving loading speed and reducing bandwidth usage. 

Lazy Load and Its Working Mechanism

Image Lazy Load is a technique to improve the loading time of web pages by loading images only when they are visible to the user. Image Lazy Load delays the loading of images until users scroll down to them. It is important because images often account for most of the downloaded bytes on a page and thus can significantly delay page rendering. Image Lazy Load is especially useful for lengthy web pages with large images, such as photo galleries. 

Image Lazy Load works because the browser loads only a low-resolution version of each image at first. When the user scrolls down, and an image becomes visible in the viewport, then the high-resolution version of that particular image is loaded. Image Lazy Load can be done using JavaScript or jQuery plugins. In most cases, these plugins also provide other features like detecting the visibility of images in the viewport and loading appropriate image sizes based on available device pixels ratio (DPR). There are several Image Lazy Load plugins available for WordPress. Some popular Image Lazy Load plugins are BJ Lazy Load, Unveil Lazy Load, a3 Lazy Load, etc. You can choose any Image Lazy Load plugin according to your need. 

Lazy Load in WordPress

Lazy Load is a technique employed to improve page loading speed and increase user experience for WordPress websites. Lazy Load delays the loading of images on a WordPress website until they become visible on the screen. We have several plugins that allow us to apply the Lazy Load feature on Website images. It means that images that are not initially visible when a user visits a website will only be loaded when they scroll down. Lazy Load can dramatically improve page loading speed, particularly when we have many images and articles on WordPress websites. 

Some of the most famous plugins for this feature are WP Rocket, Smush and Lazy Loader. In addition, Lazy Load Plugins can also help reduce data usage for users who are accessing a WordPress website on a mobile device. Lazy Load is a particularly important feature for WordPress websites, as WordPress is often used to create image-heavy sites such as blogs and portfolios. By utilising Lazy Load, WordPress site owners can ensure that their site loads quickly and efficiently.

WordPress is kept upgraded by the developers, and as a result, they made it the default feature after WordPress 5.5. Still, to ensure, we have a simple plugin available on WordPress that allows us to apply the Lazy Load and an extra couple of features in a couple of clicks. So let’s understand the plugin first and then understand the working of the plugin step by step.

WP Rocket

WP Rocket WordPress Plugin is a premium caching plugin designed to make your website run faster. It creates a cached version of your website, which is then served to visitors instead of the live version. It can speed up page loading times, improve user experience, and reduce server load. WP Rocket also comes with several other features, such as lazy loading, minification, which reduces the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, and preloading, which prefetch resources that are likely to be needed for the next page view. WP Rocket is a paid plugin, but it offers a 7-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it out risk-free. 

It comes with some of the basic features in the free version which can be downloaded from WordPress.org.WP Rocket is easy to use and has a wide range of features, making it the perfect solution for any user, regardless of their technical expertise. WP Rocket is the fastest, simplest way to speed up your WordPress website. WP Rocket requires no coding knowledge and can be installed in just a few clicks. WP Rocket is compatible with all popular WordPress themes and plugins. WP Rocket integrates with all major caching plugins and CDNs.

WP Rocket is a WordPress plugin that helps improve your website’s performance. It does this by caching static files and eliminating unnecessary code, resulting in faster page load times. WP Rocket also includes features to lazy load images and videos, further improving performance. In addition, WP Rocket is compatible with many popular plugins and themes, making it a versatile tool for optimising your website. Overall, WP Rocket is an effective way to improve the speed and performance of your WordPress site.Let’s discuss all the important features of WP Rocket Plugin briefly.

Features

• WP Rocket is one of the most accurate and effective plugins used to accomplish many different optimisation tasks of WordPress websites. It comes with all the necessary features required to speed up the website.
• It comes with optimisation support for different files like CSS and JavaScript. You can activate all the file optimisations from one screen. 
• The WP Rocket plugin provides the most straightforward way to apply the Image Lazy Load feature. You can apply this feature to Images and Videos as well as we can exclude some specific files from the settings. You can also use the Image Compression feature to compress all the big image files instead of the LazyLoad feature.  
• This plugin helps you create all the advanced rules for optimising different pages and URLs. We have options for Cache URLs, Cache Cookies and Cache Users.
• Using the WP Rocket plugin, we can clean up many unnecessary things like Post, Comments, Transients and Database. We can even schedule the auto clean up for your website using it. 
• One of the most compelling features of the WP Rocket plugin is its Preloading features. We can activate all the Website PreLoad settings from one page by clicking on the checkboxes. 
• It has the most manageable and organised setting options with an excellent interface. Any beginner or new developer can use the plugin easily.
• WP Rocket plugin also supports different add-ons, which we can integrate with it. Some of the Add-ons are webp, sucuri and varnish.
• We can control all the APIs and Settings with WP Rocket. You can export and import all the settings as well as it provides better control over the website APIs.

How to Enable Lazy Load Feature using WP Rocket plugin

Step 1: Log in to your WordPress website’s Admin Area Dashboard using your username and password.

Step 2: Now, Hover your cursor on the Plugins tab section available on the left side of the screen. Then, Click on the Add New option, as you can see in the image below.

(We’re going to install the WP Rocket plugin. So you have to download the plugin from the official website. Follow the steps after downloading the plugin.)

Step 3: Now, click on the Upload Plugin button. Select the WP Rocket from your device. You can directly drop the plugin into the white box.

Step 4: After uploading the plugin, click on the Install Now button to Install the plugin features on your WordPress website, as shown in the image below.

Step 5: After the successful installation, click on the Activate Plugin button, as you can see in the image below.

Step 6: To apply the lazy load feature to this WordPress Website, hover your cursor on the Settings option available on the left side section. Then Click on WP Rocket, which is available as a last option, as you can see in the image below.

Step 7: On the plugins settings page, we have to find the Media Setting option on the left-side tab options. Click on the Media section that also contains settings for LazyLoad Images.

Step 8: In this section, you can see some Checkboxes just like the image below. Click on the checkboxes and mark as true to activate the LazyLoad Features on images and Videos of your website.

Step 9: To exclude selected images and videos not to use LazyLoad feature, Add the image and video names on the white text area. And Click on the Checkbox of Image Dimensions to automatically add missing dimensions like the Height and Width of the image, just like the image below.

Step 10: Click on the Save Changes button to save the latest changes.

Conclusion

Image Lazy Load and Image Compression are two great features that can help improve the performance of your WordPress website. Image Compression reduces the file size of images, which also helps to speed up your site. Both of these features can help to improve the user experience on your site and make it load faster. In addition, Image Lazy Load can also help to save bandwidth and reduce the amount of data that is transferred when your site is loaded. Image Compression can also help reduce the amount of storage space required for your site. Overall, these two features can provide several benefits for your WordPress website. Comment below and suggest the topics and information required and review this information.