WordPress: Preparing & Uploading Images

Adding Images To Your Page

Putting images on your web page takes a little bit of learning and can require simple photo editing skills. Though once you’ve done it a couple of times, it becomes quite easy.

Firstly you will need to know how to prepare your image for uploading and for use in your web page.

1) Preparing your photo / image

Your photo / image should not be no larger than say 2000 pixels across to be uploaded to your web page. Larger images that are uploaded may not have the automatic thumbnail processor run on it to create a smaller image that can be added to your page.

Uploading super large images are slow to download and will also take up your storage space on your hosting account. Generally images of 1000 pixels across are fine unless you need super high resolution images.

Use your photo editing software to resize your large imagest hen save it in JPG format at around 80% compression quality.

IMPORTANT: do not put any spaces in your image filename. Use underscores or hyphens instead. This is simply good web based filename practices.
E.G. name_file_like_this.jpg    or   name-file-like-this.jpg

If you require help learning how to manipulate and size your images, consult your image editing software help manuals. Most cameras come with their own image editing software. There are also lots of tutorials available with a simple Google Search.

If you do not have an image editor you can always download the Irfanview free image editor and use that.

2) Uploading your photo

Once you have your photo saved to your computer, you can use the file upload manager in your Edit window. Place your cursor in the page edit window where you would like to insert the image click the “Add an Image” icon next to Upload/Insert at the top of the editor window.

Hovering over an Icon will show a tooltip message to let you know what that button does.

Click the “Select Files” > then browse your computer to select your photo file.  You can also drag and drop images from a file manager window to upload them to WordPress.

Your file will upload to the website server, and if successful it will be added to the media gallery / library.  After a file has been uploaded, you can add titles and descriptions.

Select how you would like the image displayed and click Insert Into Post button to place the image in the editor.

3) Image Options

Once the image is in your editor window, you can select it and click the EDIT IMAGE button to edit some of it’s properties / options.

There are general and advanced tabs for more control over image properties. Image option include links, display size, alignment, border size (for no border set this to 0),  description (text shows when image is hovered over) as well as horizontal and vertical spacing (used to put whitespace around an image).

Newer versions of WordPress will allow you to crop and resize images.