In the world of web development, ensuring that your website meets the latest performance standards is crucial. Google’s Core Web Vitals update has brought a heightened focus on user experience and page load speed. One key recommendation from Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is to serve NextGen image formats, such as WebP. While platforms like WordPress offer plugins to handle these optimizations, Blogger requires a more manual approach. This guide will walk you through how to serve WebP images on your Blogger blog, and address common challenges and solutions.
Understanding WebP Format
WebP is a modern image format developed by Google that provides superior compression methods compared to traditional formats like JPEG and PNG. By serving images in WebP format, you can significantly reduce the size of your images without compromising quality, leading to faster page load times and better performance scores.
How Blogger Handles Images
Blogger, a popular blogging platform by Google, automatically processes uploaded images, converting them into WebP format. This means that even if you upload images in JPEG, PNG, or GIF formats, Blogger’s image server can convert and serve these images in WebP format. However, understanding how to request these optimized images manually can further enhance your blog’s performance.
Step-by-Step Guide to Serving WebP Images on Blogger
1. Uploading Images to Blogger
To begin with, upload your images as usual through the Blogger dashboard:
Go to your Blogger dashboard.
Navigate to the post or page where you want to insert the image.
Click on the “Insert Image” icon in the post editor.
Choose the image file (JPG, JPEG, PNG) from your computer and upload it.
2. Switching to HTML Mode
Once your image is uploaded, you need to switch to HTML mode to adjust the image URL:
In the post editor, click on the “HTML” tab to switch to HTML mode.
Locate the tag for the uploaded image in the HTML code.
3. Modifying the Image URL
Blogger’s image server supports various image sizes and formats. To request the WebP version of your image, you need to modify the image URL by adding the -rw suffix:
Find the URL of the image in the tag. It will look something like this:
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Modify the URL by adding -rw after the size parameter. For example:
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Change it to:
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Here, s640 denotes the image size, and -rw requests the WebP format.
4. Adjusting Image Sizes
To serve different image sizes, adjust the size parameter accordingly:
For small images: s320 becomes s320-rw
For medium images: s640 becomes s640-rw
For large images: s1024 becomes s1024-rw
Example for a small image:
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5. Verifying WebP Image Delivery
To confirm that your image is being served in WebP format:
Save your changes and publish your post.
Open the published post in your browser.
Right-click on the image and select “Open image in new tab” or “Inspect” to view the image URL.
Check the URL to ensure it ends with -rw, indicating that the WebP format is being used.
Troubleshooting and Theme Compatibility
1. Theme Issues with WebP
Some Blogger themes may not fully support WebP images. If you encounter issues such as broken images or layout problems:
Access the Blogger theme editor.
Locate the main theme function file, which is typically a long JavaScript file near the