If I turn on WEBP Optimization are my original images lost?

[Vlasta]

I think the title says it all. I am tempted to turn it on BUT I want to have the option of also turning it off if a lot of my users complain that they cannot get images. Is the system smart enough to keep the old images or it just blasts through and process them all into WEBP images?

IF the old images are also kept, will my site serve the originals to browsers that cannot understand WEBP?

 

[Chromaniac]

all images are converted. you would have to take manual backup of everything. because reverting the images alone would not make them work after conversion. browsers which do not support webp would show dead image blobs.

you can have it enabled AND not convert old images. converting existing images is something you have to do manually. so yeah, you can turn it on, see the response for a few weeks or even months. and if everything is well, decide if you want to convert old images. you really do not have to do it at all. coz there is no undo for that except for restoring the site completely.

 

[Vlasta]

all images are converted. you would have to take manual backup of everything. because reverting the images alone would not make them work after conversion. browsers which do not support webp would show dead image blobs.

you can have it enabled AND not convert old images. converting existing images is something you have to do manually. so yeah, you can turn it on, see the response for a few weeks or even months. and if everything is well, decide if you want to convert old images. you really do not have to do it at all. coz there is no undo for that except for restoring the site completely.

so if I want to reverse it whats the process ?

 

[Chromaniac]

You restore your backup. There is no reversal of image conversion. Originals are not kept.

 

[StarArmy]

Because purpose of webm conversion is to save disk space by using a more efficient lossless format, keeping the originals in addition to the webms wouldn't make sense.

 

[Wildcat Media]

I should probably start another thread for this, but I believe the issue with webp on older/non-supporting browsers might be solved by a browser polyfill such as this:

GitHub - chase-moskal/webp-hero: browser polyfill for the webp image format

browser polyfill for the webp image format. Contribute to chase-moskal/webp-hero development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

If this does what I think it does, outdated browsers would then be able to support webp. Although I'm not 100% certain.

I do want to convert the forum I manage to exclusively webp but there are always those very few highly vocal sticks-in-the-mud who will make everyone's life miserable because they use Internet Explorer or some ancient browser version (and OS, for that matter) because they hate change in their lives.

 

[Alvin63]

Make a back up to save the jpegs and just turn it on. I also felt nervous about this but haven't looked back - it's very good. The only people who might not be able to see images are those with really quite old Apple devices. I haven't had any complaints. We're talking unsupported Apple devices. Even the Iphone 6s and Iphone 7 can view webp images so anything older than that. Unlikely to be an issue.