Can I be able to change the picture of an active website

[SumanPalisetty]

Hello,
My question is not regarding the code, but a general question. I have a website currently live. The site has some big images which are 0.5 MB, and is taking lot of time to load. I went to GTMetrix and see their suggestions to replace the jpg files with WebP which drastically reduces the size. My question is will I be able to replace the files? Will it cause any harm? Of course I will replace the files with the exact same name. Kindly enlighten me.
Regards
Suman P.

[dev7060]

Hello,
My question is not regarding the code, but a general question. I have a website currently live. The site has some big images which are 0.5 MB, and is taking lot of time to load. I went to GTMetrix and see their suggestions to replace the jpg files with WebP which drastically reduces the size. My question is will I be able to replace the files? Will it cause any harm? Of course I will replace the files with the exact same name. Kindly enlighten me.
Regards
Suman P.

Test locally before updating the live version.

[bakertaylor28]

The first problem is using jpeg for web development. The standard in web development is to use png. Nobody really uses jpeg for web development because the files are either massive, the quality isn't that great, or some combination of the two.

Webp is a newer format that isn't supported by some browsers, so you'll want to serve WebP images only to clients that can display them properly, and fall back to a different format for clients that can't. As all browsers support png format, that would be the path of least resistance, with the least amount of code involved.