A3 Lazy Load - Remarkable Image Optimization Plugin That Will Make Your Website Load Faster (Review 2021)
Improving your website speed is important. One of the must-do things is image optimization. The images and videos in your WordPress media libraries can slow down your website loading times if they are not optimized. Therefore, you must do optimize your images.
There are many image optimization plugins available on WordPress. So, in this article, we will review one of the most popular optimization plugins exclusively for lazy-loading, A3 Lazy Load.
Getting Started
A3 Lazy Load is a mobile-friendly, easy-to-use image optimization plugin that improves the speed of a website’s page load. This plugin is dedicated to lazy loading exclusively for both images, videos, and iframes. The more content-heavy your website is, the better the plugin will function and the more noticeable the performance gains will be. The ratio Lazy-Load-xt JavaScript inspired and powered a3 Lazy Load.
Probably, A3 Lazy Load is the most well-known plugin with 200k+ active installations on WordPress. The biggest advantage of this plugin is that you can set up and customize it easily, even if you have less or no experience.
How Does A3 Lazy Load Work?
A3 Lazy Load plugin helps you to speed up your page load speed by lazy-loading your media files. It works by optimizing not only images on your website, but also videos, iframes, embedded media, and post embed, making them load faster.
There is an easy On | Off feature that allows you to include or exclude an image. It also works for a video URL you can specify in the dashboard. In addition to that, you can also add some animations with Fade In and Spinner effects when the images are loading.
What Are the Features Inside A3 Lazy Load?
100% Compatible With WordPress 5.7
A3 Lazy Load Image options function alongside WordPress 5.5 and 5.7 for lazy loading media files and iframes. Moreover, A3 Lazy Load improves it by lazy loading all images loaded from outside the media library, or on older browsers that don’t support the new WP attribute, as well as any iframes or videos that aren’t lazy-loaded by WordPress.
Image Lazy Load
A3 Lazy Load provides you with an option to ON | OFF lazy load all media files. Moreover, it increases the flexibility to include custom Post Types, Pages, and Posts (All Content Areas), widgets to post thumbnails (sidebar, header, and footer), and use it on Gravatars.
Horizontal Scroll
Not only ordinary lazy loading feature, but A3 Lazy Load also supports the loading of images in horizontal scrolling containers. You can enter the class name or ID of the container that uses horizontal scroll through the admin Images settings.
Video Lazy Load
You can also be able to turn Video Support ON | OFF from the a3 Lazy Load admin panel. You can choose to ON | OFF lazy load for videos in the ON position.
- URL-based video embedding in posts and pages (All Content areas)
- Video Widgets, Text Widgets, and HTML Widgets are all available.
Iframe Lazy Load
In content and widgets, a3 Lazy Load includes built-in support for content contributed via iframe from any source and will lazy load all iframe that WordPress core does not load.
- Embedded media in WordPress (examples)
- Facebook Like boxes with profiles, Like, buttons, and Recommend buttons are all available.
- Google Maps
- Google+ Profile
Post Embed
A3 Lazy Load makes embedding a post a lot faster. It is fully compatible with WordPress’s embed post on any site feature, which was introduced in WP 4.4.
WordPress AMP
Fortunately, A3 Lazy Load has built-in auto support for WordPress AMP Plugin. Hence, it will improve the experience of mobile users.
Jetpack Site Accelerator (Photon)
This is a setting you enable since the Jetpack Accelerator (Photon CDN images) has its own lazy load functionality that must be disabled before you can use a3 Lazy Load as your lazy load engine. Some users prefer a3 Lazy Load since it applies Lazy Load to videos, iframes, and photos as well.
WEBP Images
WEBP images are automatically supported by a3 Lazy Load. There are no settings for this since a3 Lazily Load will detect if an image has a WEBP version and lazy load the WEBP version if it exists. If a WEBP image isn’t available, the corresponding jpg or PNG version will be loaded in its place. WEBP detection is also fully supported by all browsers.
Lazy load Effect
You can sleepily load photos with a FADE IN or SPINNER effect with a3 Lazy Load. FADE IN SPINNER Option to design a custom Lazy Load pre-load background-color
Performance Tweaks
A3 Lazy Load lets you choose whether to load its script from the HEAD or the FOOT of your website.
- If you choose FOOTER load, your theme must support the WP footer() function.
- It’s worth noting that the plugin’s CSS is always loaded from the HEAD.
Exclude Images & Video
A3 Lazy Load allows you to easily exclude any image or video by class name from having the Lazy Load effect applied.
Javascript Disable Fallback
If your browser has JavaScript disabled, Lazy Load provides a built-in No script fallback. Developers that use underscore.js in their apps can use the No script argument to prevent Lazy Load from loading their plugins’ content.
Theme & Plugin Compatible
Any WordPress theme that follows the WordPress Theme Codex will function with a3 Lazy Load. Many theme and plugin developers, on the other hand, will add objects using a custom-written function. For example, the theme has a home page with a layout produced by a custom function they wrote. Because a3 Lazy Load is unaware of these functions, it cannot apply to the objects loaded by that custom function.
The following are some popular plugins that are 100% compatible with a3 Lazy Load:
- Advanced Custom Fields – Plugin (Free and Premium)
- WooCommerce – Plugin
- Jetpack – Plugin
- Elementor – Plugin (Free and Pro)
- WP Offload – Plugin
- WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, Auto-optimize – Plugin
- YouTube Embed – Plugin
- WordPress AMP – Plugin
- WP Touch – Plugin
- Mobile Press – Plugin
- WEBP Plugins – SMUSH, EWWW Image Optimizer, IMAGIFY, WEBP Express
- Plugins – do not conflict with any plugin that has lazy load built-in
- CDN’s – Jetpack Accelerator, Cloud Front, Cloud Flare, and all other known CDN architecture.
Why Should I Use A3 Lazy Load?
If you use lazy loading, you would get some benefits, including:
- Shortens page load time — Lazy loading a webpage reduces page weight, resulting in a faster page load time.
- Bandwidth savings — Lazy loading saves bandwidth by only delivering material to consumers when they request it.
- System resource conservation — Because the only portion of the images, JavaScript, and other code needs to be rendered or run, lazy loading saves both server and client resources.
How to Activate & Use A3 Lazy Load?
How Much Does It Cost?
A3 Lazy Load plugin offers a 14-day free trial period. Following that, there are two plans in A3 Lazy Load pricing that you can choose from:
For up to 5 sites
- Costs $24.99/ month
For unlimited sites
- Costs $49.99/ month
Pros
- The more photographs on the site, the better it will run
- Lazy loading includes photos, videos, and all embedded files
- Highly responsive to mobile devices
- Very simple to use
- Customizable features
- Includes built-in support for the WordPress AMP plugin
- Highly compatible with Woo Commerce plugin
Cons
- Do not work with hardcoded images or background images
- May break the site as complained by many customers.
What Are the Alternatives to A3 Lazy Load?
There are several plugins that can be A3 Lazy Load alternatives:
- WP Smush – A complete suite plugin of image optimization, image lazy-loading, and image compression
- Autoptimize – A multitasking plugin with both lazy loading images and code optimization
- Lazy Load – A lightweight lazy loading image plugin
Conclusion
A3 Lazy Loading is a perfect plugin to implement lazy loading on your website. Specifically, lazy loading is the technique of postponing the loading or initialization of resources or objects until they are really needed. Hence, it can increase performance and save system resources. Not only lazy loading, but A3 Lazy Loading also includes over ten features that may be beneficial to speed up your website loading time.
References
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