How To Set The WordPress Media Settings

One of the first things I do when I set up a new WordPress site is configure the Media Settings. Configuring the settings correctly will give you a much easier experience with your images. It just takes a moment to do but a bit of thinking up front will help you determine the best settings for your theme.

As you look at this post, you will notice that the theme I am using presents a large content area (left) and a sidebar (right). The content area is 760px wide.

With that knowledge I set the media settings (Dashboard/Settings/Media) as follows.

 

 

Thumbnail

The ‘Crop thumbnail to exact dimensions (normally thumbnails are proportional)’ check box tells WordPress to CROP the image exactly to 150 x 150.

Decide what size thumbnails you would like to use. Depending on your theme, these might also be the images that show up in your post teasers on your home page and in your archives. StudioPress themes give you additional image size options. These are set elsewhere and I will cover those in a separate article.

Tip: While WordPress does a great job of creating thumbnails, sometimes the crop is not exactly what you want. In that case, crop the image first in Photoshop (or whatever software you might be using) then upload it again.

 

Medium Size

For the medium size, I choose a width that I think will work well for left or right alignment inside a post. I usually set the height to double the width. This tells WordPress to SCALE (not crop) the images based on those settings while maintaining the aspect ratio of the original image.

 

Aspect Ratio 101: The aspect ratio of an image that is 1000 x 500 is 2 to 1. The aspect ratio of an image that is 500 x 1000 is 1 to 2.

So with the media settings I have set for this site, if I load an image that is 1024 x 756 WordPress creates a medium size of  300 x 221 (300 being the maximum allowable width for a medium size image).

Large Size

For the large size, I choose a width that will be 10px to50px less than the width of my theme. I want a nice big image that will fit ‘centered’ inside the theme with a bit of padding around the edges which is really important if you are going to use captions. Again, these settings tell WordPress to SCALE (not crop) the images and maintain the aspect ratio of the original image.

For example, if I load an image that is 1024 x 756 WordPress creates a large size of  700 x 517 (700 being the maximum allowable width for a large size image).

 

Here is the same image with a caption

With these settings, when I add an image to a post here at synaptic i, I have all of these choices available to me at the click of a button.

• Thumbnail: 150 X 150
• Medium: 300 x 221
• Large: 700 X 517
• Full Size: 1024 X 756

Tip: If none of those image sizes work for you, try loading your large size image and then click on it. You will see icons appear above the image. Click the little pencil.

Note: You can also just grab the edges of the image (little white squares) and manually re-size.

Now you will see this screen. Use the Custom Size option to scale the image. Just enter a width or a height (not both) and WordPress will scale the image for you.

Changing Your Existing Media Settings

If you decide to reset your media settings after reading this, WordPress will create the new image sizes for you as you upload new images. It does not re-create your existing images. However, there is a way to do that using a great plugin called Regenerate Thumbnails by Viper007Bond. I have written about this plugin here.

I hope this has all made sense to you. Please feel free to ask me questions in the comment section below. Also, if you have tips of your own, please share them with us!

 

Photo Credits

Image of frustrated woman from the Microsoft Clip Art Collection