Introduction to WordPress Website Images
Another of my most popular queries is about WordPress website images. Where to find images? How to optimise them? How to size them? What sizes should they be? Where should you put images? And so on…
So, let’s delve in and get your questions answered!
Let’s talk WordPress Website Images…
Ok so first things first. When you are planning a page on your website you will need to know how many images you need, what images you need and whether they need to be portrait, landscape or square.
Therefore, when you first start creating a website page, it helps to first plan out what you want in terms of layout, text and those all important WordPress website images.
So if you haven’t planned out that page first then go ahead and do that right now.
No clue where to start?
Feel free to sign up to my free planning course and then map something out and come back here…
If you don’t have time for that right now, then feel free to draw a quick box sketch out on paper. Basically, your planned layout in boxes with text or images in those boxes.
A lot of people like a full width header image at the top, for that you are looking at a landscape image. If you have a long piece of text in one column and want an image in a second column by the side of it then you are looking at a portrait image and so on.
Therefore, it’s good to map out where you will be placing images and text on the page, so you can roughly know which shapes you are looking for.
Next is choosing what images you need.
Do you already have images of you or your products? Or maybe images relating to your services? Which ones would be relevant on that page? Consider these points carefully as you plot the page out.
But what if you don’t have images?
MASSIVE TIP: DO NOT USE IMAGES OFF GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH!
Sorry for the shouting, but this could be one of the biggest mistakes you ever do. Most of these images are copyrighted. People who own these images can easily discover the websites that are using their images and you can be fined thousands of pounds.
It’s just not worth it.
So where do you find images?
The best place to find images that are royalty free are stock photo image sites. As you are running a business from your website they also need to be royalty free for commercial use.
Suggested sites to use that are free are https://pixabay.com https://pexels.com and https://unsplash.com
If you can’t find what you are looking for on these sites then there are paid sites such as https://istockphoto.com or https://stock.adobe.com
There’s also the option to have photos taken for your WordPress website images. If you are going to be having them taken by a photographer I suggest having a mix of landscape and portrait images. Likewise, if you are using images for headers,and they are photos of you, stand to either the right or left of the photo so that the other side can have writing on for your header when you put it on your website (such as in my main header on the home page of my website.)
WordPress Website Images: Sizing
Then there’s sizing, what is the optimum size? Sizing is a minefield, as it depends on where your image is and what shape your image is etc. there are so many variables. There are image size guides out there, depending on your theme, which give estimated image sizing. I have popped one on here to make life a little easier for you.
Image sizing is really important because it is usually one of the biggest reasons that you get a slow loading websites. To avoid the search engines and your visitors having a slow loading website use correctly sized images, it is a must. Consequently what happens, is that when your browser loads your website it has to resize the image before the page loads. Have a few images? It can add extra precious seconds to your loading speed.
How to re-size WordPress website Images
Another way to speed up your WordPress website images loading speed is to use image optimisation and I always recommend the Smush plugin for this, this plugin will automatically optimise your images for you and you can also switch on the toggle to show incorrectly sized images, just to double check.
If you do need to resize images you can use various software such as Photoshop or Affinity or there are many free websites that you can Google and find that will resize your images for you. You can also resize them in WordPress by going to Media in the WordPress dashboard. Click on the image you want to resize and click edit underneath, you can then crop and scale the image.
TOP TIP for WordPress website images. I often have people asking me why a few images in a line are not the same size? It is simple. WordPress doesn’t automatically size images for you, so if you have a row of images you need to make sure they are exactly the same size before placing them on your page.
Final Word
So, that should be most of your questions answered. However, if you have more qestions then the place to be is inside my tech support membership, The Tech Tavern – See you there!