
Show HN: Tinify (WordPress) – Compress as many images as you want for $7 - askopress
https://asko.press/tinify/
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asteadman
I'm not familiar with wordpress development, so I have trouble understanding
why something like this needs to be backed by an external API. Is it because
there is no viable method for plugins to reliably run binaries in a cross-
platform and compatible manor? or are there business/intellectual property
reasons for this approach? It seems woefully inefficient to send 2000
(presumably "large") images per user per month to an external server when they
could instead be "optimized" on the server in question.

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askopress
It's because most people run WordPress on shared hosting with little to no SSH
access and even if there is SSH access it's not like I can simply let my
plugin install imgmin and pngquant, that's why most of the compression plugins
that do not use an external API for image compression use something like
ImageMagick which renders poor results. So yes, I would say the first. There
is no viable method to let the plugin do everything - including the
compression, if you want quality compressing, that I know off anyway.

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asteadman
Interesting. I suspected this was the case. I've been contemplating writing a
wordpress plugin, and although most of it would be bog standard templating, I
would like to be able to do some simple image processing. Being unable to
shell out an external binary is unfortunate. Tangentially, Can you comment on
being able to depend on the GD module being present (I'm guessing no)?

Based on your new business model, I suspect that you did not have much success
with the pay-as-you-go approach? Like you, I'm contemplating having an up-
front fee, but having to support said users with an external API for all time
would suck. I was hoping to do it all on their end, but that may be more
trouble than its worth.

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askopress
Most shared hosts probably have GD present, but as with anything, there are
those that do not. As for how high that percentage is I have no idea. Think of
your target market and if it's for not-regular-folks (as in more web
development focused or so) then probably GD is present as more knowledgeable
people choose their hosting service more wisely, or so I'd like to think, but
small company website owners, fashion bloggers and what-not probably choose by
price, not quality.

The pay as you go service failed because I offered 1000 compressions for free
upon account registration and people took advantage of that, more often than
not they would simply use their 1000 compresses and sign up a new account with
a new email and nobody bought any compressions because well, seeing how
quickly people abandoned the use it's likely that they only ever needed to
compress less than 1000 images.

This way to even compress any images they need to purchase the plugin. It has
no barriers like account creation (which as far as I can tell people don't
like to do with plugins, they'd like to install and go). As for how it will
work in the longer perspective I've no idea, I've done my best to optimize the
API for high number of requests and will most likely release simple addons
(paid) to the plugin which will enable GIF compression, compress-while-you-
upload feature and whatever else I can think up, but that, too is just a one-
time price so once the user has all of those I will not be making any money
from them anymore.

So, if you're asking me if $7 for unlimited compressions work in the long run?
Well, if I can run it for tens of users with a simple $10 Digital Ocean
droplet, sure, why not. The reality however is that I most likely, depending
if it will get any traction or not, have to scale up the DO droplet up which
will cost me more, increasingly. There are quite a few ways to go about making
money with it and I suppose I'll test the waters as I see fit, but even if it
makes no money I don't mind much because I use it for all my client' sites and
paying a server fee is much, MUCH cheaper than using the competitors (TinyPNG
for example).

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timvdalen
>I’m not counting the plugins that compress images using ImageMagick, which is
just awful

I've always found ImageMagick to be an extremely powerful tool for a lot of
image manipulation tasks. Why isn't it suitable for compression?

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askopress
this: [http://imgur.com/a/Lm8Ia](http://imgur.com/a/Lm8Ia)

No, seriously, pngquant is better. That said, my research into the matter is
rather limited so if you know of a way to do PNG compression (while preserving
transparency) and having no _noticeable_ loss of quality with ImageMagick then
please do let me know.

