How to use images in WordPress
Posted by Ben on March 8th, 2009This is a guest post written by Ben Barden, lead developer at CMF Ads, creator of Injader, and blogger at Top Ten Blog Tips.
A couple of weeks back, I offered to help Lindsay with a post or two at Web Design For Idiots whenever time allows. After Lindsay set up my account, I logged in successfully and went to create my first post… only to find I couldn’t upload an image. I notified Lindsay about this. Her reply suggested that this might be a good idea for a post:
Well, I haven’t uploaded ANY images using wordpress media manager, I actually do it through FTP, but I can just upgrade your account status from contributor to the next thing.
Lo and behold, once my account was upgraded, I could upload images. This is actually a good place to start – if you have a blog with multiple authors, you need to go to Users and set each person’s access level to Editor if you want them to be able to upload images.
Uploading via FTP requires you to open a separate program, which is a pain in itself, but you also have to type in the full location of the image in order to use it in WordPress. But there’s a much easier way. Here’s how.
Start by creating a new post, or editing an existing post. If you have the correct access level, then you’ll see the following buttons just above the post editor:
WordPress: Upload image, step 1
You’re looking at the buttons just to the right of “Upload/Insert”. The first of the four buttons will allow you to upload an image. Click it, and the following screen will appear.
WordPress: Upload image, step 2
I have to admit, I’ve never had much luck with the Flash uploader, which is what comes up first. (Yes, I do have Flash installed, and yes it works on other sites.) This happens no matter which site I’m trying to use WordPress on. I gave up with it, and on this screen I always click the “Browser uploader” link. You then get this screen:
WordPress: Upload image, step 3
A brief sideline: it’s actually quite confusing to be writing this tutorial as I upload each of the images I created for it!
On the “Add media files from your computer” screen, click the Browse button. This will allow you to locate the image that you wish to upload. Find the image and click Open to get back to this screen. Then click the Upload button, and wait for the image to upload. Once it’s uploaded, you’ll get this:
WordPress: Upload image, step 4
In the above screenshot, I’ve already changed the default values. The Title will be automatically filled out, but it’ll use the filename of the image – e.g. wordpress-upload-image-step-1 – not the best title.
Don’t be lazy. Delete the title and type a short description of the image. Then duplicate the title in the Caption field if you wish to display a caption beneath the image (which is a nice touch that you’l see in this blog post – and it will also show the description for readers who have images disabled in their browser).
Next, choose an alignment and a size, if you don’t wish to use the full-size image. My preference is to use Center, and Full size – but if you use Left or Right, your text will wrap around the image. Which is nice if the image isn’t really huge. I do this over at Top Ten Blog Tips.
Once you’ve finished, click the Insert into Post button at the bottom, and the image will be inserted into your post!
Hope this tutorial helped you – if you have any suggestions for other WordPress tutorials, please feel free to add your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for reading!
Want to know who is offering this awesome content? Here it is! To change this standard text, you have to enter some information about your self in the Dashboard -> Users -> Your Profile box. Read more from this author
