Woocommerce site - plugins need updating - images need compression and resizing, etc

Experience Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Our site uses many images to show the products. The plugin Variation Swatches and Photos also forces the use of many more photos. The admin site of the site is VERY slow because of this - and possibly something else.

Work to be completed:
* Website (an WooCommerce shop) and plugins need to be updated to the latest version
* Whole site needs to be optimized. It is running VERY slow.
* Images need to be optimized. There are about 20 Gig of images. Some are WAY too big and should be resized and/or re-saved to a smaller size.

Time frame:
* We need this work done quickly - within a week or 2 at the most so we can move to the next phase (making a DE version of the stie).

Issues you will face:
* Some plugins have been customized so they cannot be directly updated with the latest version. These have been noted below in the list.
* The site was made multi-lingual. Due to plugin conflicts and and bugs the DE version was turned off. There will be remnants of the DE version still on the site. AFter the site is updated and optimized, we need the DE version working again. That is Part 2 - billed separately.
* Duplicating the site will be slow because of the large amount and size of the images.

How this should work (very simple):
* The site should be backed up (we have BackupBuddy working on the site) and copied to another location where the work will be done.
* When the work has been completed we will test it to make sure everything works as it should.
* Once approved, the changes can be copied to the live site.

Recommendations:
* Backup the site WITHOUT the images, then FTP the images to the copied site. Othersize the size of the backup will be a bit ridiculous with the images included.

Our site is built with the following WP version and plugins:
* Wordpress - v3.7.24 (update to 4.9.1 required)
* BackupBuddy - v8.0.1.1 - for backups and duplicating the site
* Contact Form 7 - v4.1.2
* EWWW Image Optimizer - v2.50
* Instagram Slider Widget - v1.2.3 (update to 1.4.0 required)
* Lightbox Plus Colorbox - v2.7
* Post Types Order - v1.7.7
* Shortcodes Ultimate - v4.9.2 (update to v1.93.5 required)
* Social Media Feather - v1.6.11 (update to v1.8.4 required)
* WooCommerce - v2.0.20 - *** This may have been Customised
* WooCommerce Multilingual - v3.1 (upgrade to 3.7 possible) - *** this may have been Customised
* WooCommerce Ogone Payment Gateway - v1.1.2
* WooCommerce Product Add-ons - v2.2.0
* WooCommerce Products Filter - v1.0.7
* WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping - v.2.6.6
* WooCommerce Variation Swatches and Photos - v1.5.2 - *** Customised
* WordPress Importer - v0.6.1 (upgrade to v0.6.3 possible)
* WordPress SEO - 1.5.2.7
* WPML Media - v2.1.1 (upgrade to v2.1.13)
* WPML Multilingual CMS - v3.1.7.2 (upgrade to v3.2.7 possible)
* WPML String Translation - v2.0.9.1 (upgrade to v2.2.6 possible)
* WPML Translation management - v1.9.6 (upgrade to v2.0.5 possible)

We had the site running in EN and DE, but the plugins were giving so many errors clashing with each other we turned off the DE version.
We will need DE working again after the update/optimization is completed. That will be a separate project.

Some of the plugins have been customised to get them working. We are now afraid to upgrade the site for fear we will overwrite these changes. This must be addressed.

The website is here: http://www.coupure-art.com/

Whoever we choose we hope will continue to help in the future for updates and changes.

Kind regards,
Darren