How can I compress the images in my posts?

Hi Michelle, You can use a utility like TinyJPG (which also works for PNG files) to compress your images before you upload them to WordPress. Even better, the “Compress JPEG & PNG Images” plugin will automatically optimize new images on upload. But the best solution is for your managed WordPress host to handle this for you, transparently. Nexcess is building an easy-to-use, behind-the-scenes image compression solution that will make your site load faster. It's still a few weeks away, so in the meantime, they auto-install the plugin I mentioned above, so you can optimize your images with just a click. To answer your last question, it's generally a better idea to load images from the same web server, as opposed to pulling in images from other servers via a URL. The only exception is if your web host uses a content delivery network (CDN), which is a network of servers located all around the world that delivers web pages and images to a user based on his/her geographic location. So, to recap... make your images as small as possible before uploading. Unless your site is hosted on Nexcess, in which case they're already doing it for you. Otherwise, use the plugin I recommended above. Hope this helps!