In this short tutorial, we are going to learn how you can add images to WordPress to make your blog posts reader-friendly and reduce their file size to make your pages and posts load faster. You will be surprised to know that adding images to WordPress is much easier than it was a decade ago, thanks to the progress WordPress has made now.
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and are at no additional cost to you. I get compensated when you buy hosting using my affiliate links, which helps make this guide free for you. Please note that I only recommend products and services that I have personally used, and found to be worth it.
How to Add Images to WordPress Blog Posts
Before we dive into this tutorial, let us quickly learn how you can reduce the file size of an image without compromising on its quality as it is very important to do so before making this task impossible. To do this effectively you need to install a free WordPress plugin called ‘Smush Lazy Load Images’.
Smush-Lazy Load Images
By the developer – Turn on lazy load with the incredibly powerful and 100% free WordPress Image Smasher brought to you by Superteam at WPMU DEV to optimize, resize, compress images and improve your Google page speed. And to optimize it, Smush will compress images without an obvious degradation in quality. Image optimization is the easiest way to make your site load super fast.
To install it, simply click on Plugins on the left side of your dashboard, then click on Add New. Now type a keyword name- Smush in the search box as shown in the screenshot. To install, simply click on ‘Install’ and then ‘Activate’. Done? Congratulations. Once you installed it, every new image you upload to your WordPress blog will be automatically optimized and the file size will be reduced as much as possible without compromising the quality of your image.
Adding images to your blog post
Now, let’s dive into the details of how you can add images to your WordPress posts. There are actually three different places where you would need to add an image to your blog post:
- Adding a Full-Size Image
- Adding an inline image and
- Adding a featured image
1. Adding a full-size image to your post
This is a method that you use to add a full-size image to your blog posts. All you have to do is click on the ‘Type/to choose a block’ or + icon in the editing post and you will see a list of options. as shown in the screenshot below.
As soon as you click on the ‘Image’ icon, you will see three options- 1. Upload, 2. Media Library and, 3. Insert URL to choose from in box 2, and also the options to resize and position the uploaded image as shown in box1.
Upload: Clicking this will take you to the media library saved on your personal PC where you can select an image you need.
Media Library: This is an option you can use to select an image from your WordPress media library that contains all your uploaded images.
Insert from URL: If you don’t have an image of your choice on your PC or in your WordPress media library, there is an option to download the image online by simply putting the selected URL.
Now you have to decide which one best suits your requirements and upload the image you want. Once selected, simply click ‘Open’ to view the image uploaded to your post. To resize your image, you can simply hover your mouse over the small circle icon in the middle right of the uploaded image and drag it to the desired size.
You can also move your image up or down and change the alignment with the options that appear in a rectangular box above. Apart from this, you will see many options like- ‘Change block type or style’, ‘Insert link’, ‘Crop’, ‘Add text to image’, ‘Apply duotone filter’ and many more to edit the image of your choice. Needless to say, you can remove or change the image at any time as per your requirement.
2. Adding an Inline image
This is an option to upload an icon or a smaller size image within the text. To do this, simply click on the location where you want to add an image and you will see a rectangular box. Simply click on the icon highlighted in the screenshot to see the ‘Inline Image’ icon. Clicking on it will take you to the same option as you saw in case 1.
3. Adding a featured image
Featured images play an important role as they are always shown at the top of your blog posts. Here’s how you can add featured images to a post or page in WordPress. Simply click on the ‘Posts’ section at the top right of your WordPress editor and you will see the ‘Set a featured image’ box somewhere in the middle. Just click on it and you will be taken to the standard image upload screen, which we have already seen above, where you can add your selected image.
Once you have set your chosen image, you can change or delete it anytime as per your requirement. I am sure that once you have implemented these settings, it will be easy for you to go through all the technical processes involved here.
All at a glance
Adding images to your WordPress posts is not as technical as it sounds. WordPress has evolved over the past few decades in such a way that even beginners can easily access all its features.
