How can I test Cloudflare Polish on a limited number of pages?

[brian.tozer]

I would like to test Cloudflare Polish (want to try WebP for images), but my Director of UX is very concerned that this could “break” the site. I think I already know the answer, but he’s asking if we could test a limited number of pages or some type of whitelist rather than the whole site.

If this is not possible, I recommended that we could turn Polish on or off at will, but it will require the cache to be cleared. I’ve run a variety of metrics on 32 URLs and would plan to retest them with Polish turned on.

How can I run a “safe” test that wouldn’t freak him out?

[sdayman]

Polish applies to images, not pages. So you’d have to craft Page Rules to do this.

Since you do have Polish, then you’re on at least a Pro Plan with 20 page rules. I’d try something like enabling Polish with WebP in Speed → Optimizations, then a bunch of Page Rules that turn off Polish for wildcarded image directories.

For example, WordPress uses wp-content/uploads/YEAR/… So create a Page Rule to turn Polish OFF for example.com/wp-content/uploads/202* (disables for all 2020-2021 images).

[brian.tozer]

Thanks for quick reply! I’ll explore these options.