My Local Business Online

Jan Kearney - Your Local Business Online Marketing Consultant - call me 07847 554418

Jan Kearney – My Local Business Online

Helping you get your business found online by LOCAL people

  • Home
  • Problems I Solve
    • I need a website that works
    • I need more online visibility for my local business
    • I want to start video marketing
    • My WordPress site baffles me
  • Why I Do It
    • Privacy
  • Toolbox
  • Contact Me
You are here: Home / Blogging / Cloudinary Plugin – Free CDN and Image Manipulation

Cloudinary Plugin – Free CDN and Image Manipulation

March 19, 2013 by Jan Kearney

Everyone knows that images can bring life to your blog posts and landing pages.  The problem is many people don’t optimise or compress their images, which slows down your loading time. 

Contents

  • Cloudinary have a great solution
  • What does Cloudinary do?
  • Image manipulation
  • Is there a downside to all this awesomeness?
  • Get started with Cloudinary
  • Related Posts

Cloudinary have a great solution

 cloudinary cdn image manipulation

Cloudinary recently released their free WordPress plugin that allows you to take advantage of their image optimisation, manipulation and content delivery network.  The plugin and basic service is free to use with a premium upgrade.

What does Cloudinary do?

The Cloudinary plugin gives you the ability to upload your images to their worldwide CDN (content delivery network).  A CDN is a network of servers that stores your content and delivers it to viewers based on location. 

Simply put, if you host your website in the US and users access it from the UK, it will take longer for the information to appear on the screen in the UK than it does in the US.   A CDN detects where the user is based and delivers the same content from a server nearest to them, speeding up delivery.

A CDN is a very useful way of speeding up your site, especially if you have lots of visitors.  It evens out the load on your host.

Unlike many CDN’s, Cloudinary only stores your images in the cloud, not all your website content.

In addition to potentially speeding up the delivery using the CDN, Cloudinary optimises your images by stripping out all the unneccesary data.  So super -fast loading images are now within reach.

Image manipulation

Just to get even more amazing, the Cloudinary plugin allows you to edit images and add effects straight from your blog.

cloudinary image manipulation

The WordPress plugin does require an Cloudinary account.  The free account is more than adequate for most standard WordPress blogs and websites with 500MB storage, 50,000 images and 1GB monthly bandwidth. Premium upgrades are available as needed, starting from $39 per month.

Is there a downside to all this awesomeness?

Of course there is. 

WordPress featured image isn’t supported, which is disappointing.  You can still use the standard WordPress upload for your featured image.  The “upload to Cloudinary” link for older images in the media files section so far isn’t working for me – I’ve not looked closely at this yet, it could just be my blog.

Overall, Cloudinary has made it into my nifty online toolbox.

Get started with Cloudinary

Cloudinary URL

  • Sign up for a Cloudinary free account
  • Install the Cloudinary plugin
  • Copy the Cloudinary URL from your Cloudinary dashboard
  • Paste the URL in the Cloudinary settings
  • Start hosting your images in the Cloudinary cloud

Over to you…

Do you use a CDN on your blog? Will you try the Cloudinary plugin? 

 

Cloudinary Plugin - Free CDN and Image Manipulation by Jan Kearney

Related Posts

  • Is Your WordPress Secure From Attack?

    WordPress installations worldwide are currently under a brute force attack.  These attacks are targeting the…

  • Where To Find Free Images For Your Blog?

    Where to find free images that you can use on your blog or social channels…

  • wordpress backup plugins to dropbox
    Top 3 Free Wordpress Backup Plugins – Back Up Your WordPress Site Today

    Is backing up your WordPress website a scary thought? Backing up doesn't need to be…

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: blogging, CDN, Cloudinary, images, plugins, WordPress

About Jan Kearney

I believe that every business, no matter how small or how local can use the power of the web to gain more customers. I offer no bull coaching and mentoring so small business owners can strategically put the web to work for their business. I've been called a "compass" and a "navigator" and probably a few more names that aren't suitable for a profile!
Connect with me on Google+, Facebook, Pinterest

Comments

  1. Bonnie Gean says

    March 19, 2013 at 1:12 pm

    I wonder how much this speeds up the load time for your blog? Have anything to measure against that would give us this information?

    Sounds like a wonderful plan, but did you say $39 a month? FREE would be much better on the budget. 🙂

    • Jan Kearney says

      March 19, 2013 at 1:39 pm

      Hi Bonnie, you can start free. The free account is more than enough for most people, and if you’re getting the traffic so free isn’t enough then a paid version shouldn’t be out of the budget 🙂

      It will speed up pages with images (assuming you have uploaded the images to the cloudinary space). It does this in 2 ways.
      1. The CDN function – delivering the images from a server geographically closer to your visitor, which also balances the load on your server.
      2. Image optimisation – it strips out all the unneccessary stuff and compresses the file.

      I’m a bit gutted that the WordPress featured image is missing on cloud uploads – but that can be worked around.

      A quick and totally unscientific check on load speed of this post was 1.22 seconds. The Google Plus post was 1.77 seconds (no cloudinary) and the QR post 2.14 seconds (no cloudinary). I will be keeping an eye on it.

  2. Toni Nelson says

    March 20, 2013 at 3:39 am

    Sounds like a great plugin. I re-size my images prior to putting them on my site.

    • Jan Kearney says

      March 20, 2013 at 4:46 pm

      I resize mine too, Toni – give the plugin a go, I was quite surprised at the load difference just for a couple of images 🙂

  3. Paul Henderson says

    March 20, 2013 at 3:50 am

    Hi Jan,
    I’m quite new to CDN and don’t fully understand, I’ll admit that much.

    I do use AS3 for my membership site videos and files that I’m currently constructing, and I see the need for that.

    But is it really necessary to store individual images on a distribution network for faster delivery? It seems to me to be saying that the internet is getting all clogged up if we have to resort to this practice?

    Just my thoughts and I may be totally wrong 🙂

    Paul

    • Jan Kearney says

      March 20, 2013 at 4:45 pm

      Hi Paul – is it necessary? Well that’s down to personal preference. Most CDN’s cover all your static content, and you pay for that. I know I had this baby blog running through a CDN for a while because it’s hosted in the US and my market is UK. The traffic here isn’t worth the investment for shaving of half a second loading. Cloudinary have the option to just upload your images – and they’re a big slow down on many sites. As traffic increases, I would recommend a CDN to even out the load. Horses for courses 🙂

  4. Itai Lahan says

    March 20, 2013 at 10:47 am

    Hi Jan,

    Itai from Cloudinary here. We really appreciate this awesome post 🙂

    A quick update about the WordPress featured image issue – I’m happy to report that we’ve got a solution for this in the works. We should have an upgrade released next week that would support this.

    Cheers,
    – Itai

    • Jan Kearney says

      March 20, 2013 at 4:38 pm

      That’s great news Itai! Thanks for popping in too 🙂

  5. Joy Healey says

    March 21, 2013 at 2:15 am

    Hi Jan

    Well I certainly need to speed up my blog so this has to be worth a try. Looking at the documentation, it looks a bit complicated! Not sure if it’s above my pay-grade…. 🙂

    Perhaps it’ll all come clear when I install the plugin – I just created the account so far. Tomorrow is another day and it may look simpler then!

    Joy

    • Jan Kearney says

      March 21, 2013 at 6:54 pm

      Hi Joy, you can start with a free account. Sign up for an account, install the plugin and paste your Cloudinary URL in the plugin settings and you’re good to go. Next time you upload an image to your blog, use the Cloudinary button rather than the WordPress upload media button.

      • Joy Healey says

        March 22, 2013 at 3:23 am

        Hi Jan

        Well, in this case the “thinking about it” (yesterday) turned out to be worse than the “doing it” (today) and I put my first image on my blog using Cloudinary, on my most recent post (see CL).

        The poor quality of the image in the post is the fault of the original, NOT something Cloudinary has done.

        Tagging seems a little clunky (or perhaps I’ve not got the hang of that), but getting the image into the post was very easy. Hard to tell about the speed on one image / post. Perhaps when I get round it it (hahaha) I can go back and move some of my key images to Cloudinary.

        Thanks for finding this, I’ll use it on my two main blogs and hope it will speed things up.

        Joy

        • Jan Kearney says

          March 22, 2013 at 6:48 pm

          Great stuff, Joy! Heading over to have a look.

          As for the tagging – I think it’s what you get used to. Like when WP updated to 3.5 and shifted everything around with the images. It would make life easier if the tags were immediately visible without that bit of scrolling on Cloudinary.

  6. Ginny Carter says

    March 21, 2013 at 3:36 pm

    Good idea for speeding things up – slow loading is a killer. I think my blog speed is ok (tell me if you think not) but this looks interesting thanks.

    • Jan Kearney says

      March 21, 2013 at 6:52 pm

      Try running it through Google’s pagespeed analyser – you’ll get a score. Mine bounces between 82-84 depending on what day it is I think, which is ok but not fabulous. Hopefully running future images through cloudinary will help that too 🙂 https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights

  7. Sue Worthington says

    March 25, 2013 at 12:44 am

    Hi Jan
    This looks good
    Paul Henderson – you can upload your images to as3 too but I never thought of doing that
    Will give this a try especially since they are going to get the featured image working too
    Thanks Jan if it made it to your nifty online toolbox it’s good enough for me!

    Sue

    • Jan Kearney says

      March 25, 2013 at 2:54 pm

      Featured image is now on, Sue – not tried it out yet!

  8. Itai Lahan says

    March 25, 2013 at 12:49 pm

    Hi all,

    I wanted to update that the Cloudinary plugin was upgraded with support for featured images.

    WordPress media items are now created also for attachments of images generated by Cloudinary. The media items link to the remote cloud-based images and can be used for featured images and galleries. Note that you will need to save a draft of your post in order to see newly attached images available in the featured image selection dialog.

    • Jan Kearney says

      March 25, 2013 at 2:52 pm

      Great stuff! Thanks for popping back in Itai 🙂

Meet Jan Kearney

I believe that every business, no matter how small or how local can use the power of the web to gain more customers. I offer no bull coaching and mentoring so small business owners can strategically put the web to work for their business. I've been called a "compass" and a "navigator" and probably a few more names that aren't suitable for a profile!
Connect with me on Google+, Facebook, Pinterest or Discover More About My Local Business Online…

Also On The Blog…

7 Useful image optimisation tips for search and social media

7 Useful Image Optimisation Tips For Search And Social Media

A web page without an image is almost naked, missing something, a finishing touch. Basic image optimisation can transform your web pages, product … [Read More...]

50 Fabulously free stock photo sites to bling up your blog

50 Fabulously Free Stock Photo Sites To Bling Your Blog

Not all of us have photographic talent. Creating your own photo images for your website, social updates, blog or presentations is HARD.  When the … [Read More...]

Is your business website Google-worthy in 2016?

Is Your Business Website Google-Worthy In 2016?

Creating your own local business website is never an easy task, especially when the guidelines change regularly. As always online, the only thing you … [Read More...]

Jan Kearney
and My Local Business Online
Helps small business owners get to grips with the web and get found online.
2 Stanley Villas, Greenway Road, Runcorn, Cheshire
Phone: 07847 554418

You need to know

This website uses cookies. By continuing using the site, you are agreeing to the use of cookies. Info on the cookies used can be found in my privacy policy.

Jan Kearney is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.

More Info

  • Contact Me
  • About
  • Privacy

Copyright © 2022 · My Local Business Online · WordPress · Log in