If you are not the system admin, you can’t enable exec. Whoever runs your server must enable it, and if they won’t, you have to use the EWWW IO Cloud: http://www.exactlywww.com/cloud/ or find a better webhost.
I am the admin, how do I enable exec??? I’m having the same issue – EWWW Image Optimizer requires exec(). Your system administrator has disabled this function.
aromellc, you have full root access to your server? You set it in your php.ini. If you don’t know where that is, I don’t think you’re the server admin (or you are in way over your head). This is different than the wordpress admin, so don’t confuse it with that.
My host is name cheap. I didn’t have the php.ini file, but I was able to generate one. It seems like there is an option that I can change things in that file. Maybe I have a system admin access? If so, how would I enable exec() in php.ini? I will try and if it doesn’t work, then I will use your cloud. Thank you!!!!
unless you have your own private server (VPS or dedicated), you don’t have system admin access. the exec() function cannot be overridden via a php.ini on a shared hosting plan, you have to ask namecheap to enable it. Let me know if they will not, because they are currently on the list of hosts that allows exec(), but perhaps their policy has changed on that.
edit: even if you do have vps or a dedicated server with them, I would ask namecheap how to re-enable exec(). The location of the system php.ini varies between linux versions, and between webhosts, so they are your best resource on that.
This seems to be a new issue. I’ve been using EWWW for a long time on my sites and never had this issue until now. Is this a way to encourage folks to pay for the cloud based system?
No it is not. The plugin has always been free for those on webhosts that permit it. Are you on namecheap as well?
To verify the disabled_functions list, you can turn on debugging on the settings page and look for the exec function yourself. If you can’t find exec, you can paste the output on pastebin.com and post a link back here.
OK. No,not on Name Cheap. The site is on Network Solutions.
nosilver4u, I contacted namecheap support and they enabled my exec(). Now it’s working, yeaaaay!!!! I tried to optimize just a few pictures to see if it is working, but surprisingly, some of my 700 kB pictures got optimized just with 3% or something very little. Is there a way that I don’t know about that I can get the pictures down to 100kB or less? I know it’s not part of this thread’s problem, but maybe you can give me a tip before we close it? Thanks for your help, you are amazing!
The only way to see savings like that is if there is a ton of metadata (it’s recommended to run on Removal of metadata), or using lossy compression. Photos from a digital camera will often see 20-30%, and the resizes in wordpress will usually see 3-10% savings.
PW EDEN, check with Network Solutions to see if they will enable exec() and report back here if you wouldn’t mind, so I can add them to the list for reference.
Nosilver4u, so I optimized all the library with the the option of removal of meta data, and lossy compression for both JPG and PNG. I now got total savings 11.65 MB, which seems to me pretty good. However, the google speed test is still complaining and my score went from 56/100 to only 57/100… it still mentions many images that I should optimize. I ran the optimizer many times with different settings (forced to re-optimize) but this is pretty much it, I think, 11.65 MB.
Does it just say lossless compression, or does it tell you to resize them?
Many of those are on cloudfront. Depending on the plugin you use to upload those to cloudfront, EWWW may not be able to replace them. The local ones still need resizing before optimizing.
And I got this warning. I contacted the administrator of that and told me that activate this function affects the security of the site.
In short, you have to give up this plugin that I think would be a good alternative to smush.it that does not work now.
