WordPress experts and website designers are constantly reinforcing to their clients the importance of having great imagery on their pages. After all, nothing grabs a visitor’s or user’s attention like compelling photos, infographics and like: they draw the reader in and foster a desire for further exploration while adding to the overall visual appeal of your site.
However, imagery doesn’t always cooperate, especially for beginners to the WordPress platform. And although the program comes with some truly nifty tools for managing and editing images it’s not always intuitive when in comes to tweaking definition, size, cropping and the like, and uploading images onto pages comes with inevitable technical issues. And that’s to say nothing of the problems involved with making sure your host server has the space to maintain all the great photos you want your viewers to see.
Here are some of the most common quirks that arise when dealing with getting the ideal imagery onto your WordPress site, with quick and easy remedies and fixes to smooth out the bumps on your digital road.
- Quite often a user will discover, after uploading an image, that it’s appearing out of alignment on the page. To remedy this be sure choose image alignment when uploading an image and before you insert it into your post. Also, you can tweak the alignment using the image toolbar contained within the post editor by selecting the image and using the align buttons.
- Want to add a caption below your image? After uploading the picture use WordPress media to give it a title, description and caption. And if you want to add a caption later go to “attachment details” in the editing box and type it into the “caption” box.
- Sometimes post thumbnails disappear when you’re setting a “featured image” on your page. This often happens because the “set featured image” function within the post edit area hasn’t been checked. Click on the “Screen Options” button and be sure the “featured image” box is selected.
- Likewise, a common rookie mistake is to have a featured image appear twice. This occurs because, once you’ve set your featured image you also insert it into the post editor along with your content and you get a duplicate image on the page. This is easy to solve: make sure the “featured image” is only inserted into the “featured image box” and not also in the “post editor” section.
- When uploading an image from a smartphone or camera, it’s likely it will be way too large and will need to be cropped. Go to “Media, Add New” and upload your image. You’ll then see an “Edit” link next to the pic; click on it and it will open in the Edit Media screen where you can perform some basic image editing, cropping included. You can also rotate the image, resize it etc. right from here.
- On that subject, when importing a external image into WordPress there are sometimes issues to overcome, especially if you’re migrating your site to the WordPress platform and certain photos are still aimed at the older location. This can be tricky because, although the imagery appears correctly on your site they’re still loading from the previous and external source. So install and run the Import External Images plugin immediately: it will check and display all your images and tell you where they are, and you can choose which ones to import with one-click simplicity.
- A background image can really add some pop to a page, and thankfully most WordPress themes come with the feature. Visit “Appearance, Customize” and launch the theme customizer: you should be able to see the “Background Image” option. Then simply upload an image you want to use as your background—whether it’s original content or from a free media library—and you’ll see it automatically previewed. And now you can make it a fixed background or, for even more page appeal, allow it to be scrolled. Just be sure to save your changes and do a preview of the site before you make the background image live.
- Lastly, a header image—like a background image—can really spice up your site, and again most WordPress themes come with the feature. Upload your desired header image from “Appearance, Customize” and the program will instantly tell you the size requirements based on the theme you’re using. You may need to crop the image when prompted, automatically guide you through the process.
