How To Optimize Images In WordPress
Optimizing images on a website is a great engagement. There are many things to do for that, the main and easiest things are to compress images or .. use fewer. Defining image sizes is a very important point of optimizing our content. We need to have in mind that the image size is automatically generated according to the size given when we choose to upload an image. This makes sure that even if you have a 4500px image, it will … never be used when a 600px image is good enough. So it’s better to upload a 600px image rather of scaling down a larger one. It’s also better to upscale one from 500px to 600px. That depends on what you prefer best.
How WordPress Handles Images
How WordPress Handles Images? If you try to upload an image in WordPress you will see the image selector. This gives you the option to insert a small, a medium or a large version of the chosen image. You also have the option to resize the image within WordPress every time you upload an image to your WordPress website, it will generate 4 different versions of the image and it will be stored separately. For example, if you upload a 1600 × 1200 image, WordPress will create a thumbnail 150 × 150, a Medium 300 x 225, a Large 640 × 480 and a Full Size 1600 x 1200 version. When you choose to insert the Medium (300 x 225) you will get the associated shrinked version. This is extremely helpful because it saves lot’s of bandwidth on the server and processing time on our visitor’s computer. As you already know downloading a 5Mp image needs more time and processor power to download, than a 1 or 2Mp. If we choose to use a larger image the browser has to make all the calculations to scale the image down. That usually will not take ages but that’s something that also depends on our visitor’s equipment and it’s better for us not to give him the chance to notice how much time it took him to open our website or how slow it is. That will most probably make him run away before our home page finishes loading or not to visit our website back in the future.
Choosing The Appropriate Image Size
The ultimate purpose should be to always use appropriate image sizes. If you need a 440×380 image, then select an image with that size from your collection. If you have one with more resolution, you can edit the image (I use Microsoft Office Picture Manager) and make a new copy with the needed resolution.
Where To Use Images
There are two places where we use images. In the post and as a featured image.
Let’s focus on featured images first. Within our articles, we may use different image sizes and it’s totally acceptable. When we talk about Featured images, we talk about a common, almost standard size images which are called thumbnails and are approximate 178 x 178. The good thing is that WordPress has already generated all the possible versions of an image as mentioned above, check the attached image above.
You can also read my blog post in Wealthy Affiliate University regarding How To Insert Images To Your Posts
I suggest giving it a read and leave your comments or questions.