About this plugin
Welcome to Henkan (Japanese for “conversion”) — your lightweight, high-performance solution for next-generation image optimization in WordPress!
Slow loading times and heavy images are a thing of the past. Henkan seamlessly integrates into your WordPress dashboard, silently converting your standard JPEGs and PNGs into highly optimized WebP or AVIF files. Boost your Core Web Vitals, improve your SEO rankings, and save massive amounts of server bandwidth without sacrificing an ounce of image quality.
✨ Why choose Henkan?
Most image optimizers rely on slow PHP processing or expensive cloud APIs with monthly limits. Henkan is built differently: It prioritizes native OS binaries ( cwebp, avifenc ) to process images blazingly fast directly on your own server, completely free and without any restrictions.
🚀 Powerful Features
- Next-Gen Formats: Instantly convert images to WebP and AVIF formats.
- Zero-Config Auto-Conversion: New images are optimized silently in the background the moment you upload them.
- 1-Click Bulk Optimization: Got a massive existing media library? Process thousands of images with a single click in our beautiful, modern dashboard.
- Smart Fallbacks: Uses ultra-fast exec() binaries when available, falling back to GD or ImageMagick seamlessly if needed.
- Cache Auto-Clear: Fully compatible with WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, Autoptimize, and LiteSpeed Cache. Conversions automatically trigger a cache purge.
- Frontend Delivery: Automatically serves the optimized images to compatible browsers using modern HTML <picture> tags or Nginx/Apache rewrites.
- WP-CLI Power: Built-in commands ( wp henkan convert ) for sysadmins to process massive libraries directly from the terminal without PHP timeouts.
- Global Ready: 100% translation-ready. Shipped with English, German ( de_DE ), and Japanese ( ja ) out of the box.
🛠️ System Requirements
To unleash the full speed of Henkan, we recommend:
0 or higher
4 or higher
* For WebP: cwebp installed on the server (recommended) OR PHP GD extension with WebP support.
* For AVIF: avifenc or ImageMagick (magick/convert) installed OR PHP GD extension with AVIF support.