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We serve over 100 WordPress websites, some with relatively high traffic. I've never encountered a Cloudflare issue with image caching. I am a little confused ab

by system2 10mo ago

We serve over 100 WordPress websites, some with relatively high traffic. I've never encountered a Cloudflare issue with image caching. I am a little confused about what this is all about. We also have our own CDN-ish DigitalOcean droplets with Terabytes of data transfer available (stacked droplets increase the TB limit under the same account, too). This is a $10-$15 solution for 100+ WordPress sites. Small droplets (DigitalOcean, Vultr, or managed like CloudWays) offer multi-TB bandwidth for data transfers. With the WebP format, even the highest-resolution image is under 100 KB. We try to keep everything under 50 KB for mobile optimization as well. I don't see sites using 50 GB per month and always below the limits. Why would anyone need an extra layer of complication?

cr1st1an 10mo ago
Thanks for the detailed perspective. Your setup makes sense for agencies or teams that can manage their own caching, droplets, image formats, and traffic patterns. In that environment a plugin like this is not really needed. The plugin is aimed at a different group. A lot of WordPress users are not on Cloudflare, do not want to touch DNS, and are not comfortable running their own CDN proxy or tuning image formats. They just want their existing media to load faster without changing their hosting stack. If you are already keeping everything optimized and have a CDN pattern you like, then you are already covered. This is more for the long tail of smaller sites that will never set up their own caching rules or droplets. It is just a simpler path for them.
- system2 10mo ago
  But those small clients also do not know much about WordPress and use nearly unlimited traffic hosting. It would be a challenge to explain what your plugin does.
  - cr1st1an 10mo ago
    You are right that a lot of those clients are on “unlimited” hosting and never think about bandwidth at all. I am still trying to figure out how big the overlap is between “does not want to touch Cloudflare” and “actually cares about image performance.” This thread is helping me sanity check whether that overlap is real or just in my head.

by system2 10mo ago

cr1st1an 10mo ago

Thanks for the detailed perspective. Your setup makes sense for agencies or teams that can manage their own caching, droplets, image formats, and traffic patterns. In that environment a plugin like this is not really needed. The plugin is aimed at a different group. A lot of WordPress users are not on Cloudflare, do not want to touch DNS, and are not comfortable running their own CDN proxy or tuning image formats. They just want their existing media to load faster without changing their hosting stack. If you are already keeping everything optimized and have a CDN pattern you like, then you are already covered. This is more for the long tail of smaller sites that will never set up their own caching rules or droplets. It is just a simpler path for them.

system2 10mo ago
But those small clients also do not know much about WordPress and use nearly unlimited traffic hosting. It would be a challenge to explain what your plugin does.
- cr1st1an 10mo ago
  You are right that a lot of those clients are on “unlimited” hosting and never think about bandwidth at all. I am still trying to figure out how big the overlap is between “does not want to touch Cloudflare” and “actually cares about image performance.” This thread is helping me sanity check whether that overlap is real or just in my head.