WordPress makes it easy for you to manage your pictures that you use on your website. As you upload images to your Pages and Posts, they are collected in a list for you. You can find this list on your Dashboard under Media > Library (or just click on Media). You can also upload new pictures without being on a Post or Page screen by going to Media > Add New.
Now why would you need to manage pictures once they’ve been uploaded? Well, you can delete those that you don’t need anymore, and edit them to change the Title and ALT text. Keep this in mind, though, that once a picture is inserted into a Page or Post, changing the Title and ALT text in the image editor will only affect future Pages and Posts. It will not sort through and change these settings for pictures in existing ones.
And there’s more…
Adding Thumbnails
Some themes will come with features like being able to add a thumbnail (small) photo when people view a list of your Posts and/or Pages. If it does not automatically choose the first picture on the Post or Page, then you will have to tell it what picture you want to use. This is where the Custom Fields for WordPress feature comes in. You can find the form for Custom Fields right on the same screen as your Pages and Posts. Simply scroll down below the text editing box to find it.
If your template supports any custom fields, thumbnails for example, the template’s instructions will specify what the name of the field is for adding a thumbnail, I.E.: thumb. Use the drop down menu under Name to see if the custom field thumb is already available. If it’s not, simply click on the add new link and type it in. You will also need enter the URL for the picture. This is when you need to use the Media Manager. You’ll find the URL (file location and name) for the picture by going under Media > Library and clicking on the Edit button for the picture that you want to use (hover over the name to make the links appear). Tip: rather than saving your page or post and going to the Media Manager, simply open it up in a new tab. This will save you a bit of time. This Edit Media page will give you the URL to the picture that you want to use. You then copy and paste this URL into the Custom Fields Value box (back in your post/page). Save your page or post. If you haven’t Published it yet, then save the Draft. You would then take a look at the front end of your website (public view) to make sure that things look correct. By this I mean making sure that the thumbnail shows up where you expected it to. If it does not, try leaving off the http://yoursite.com in the URL and check it again (keeping in the slash after the .com). I’ve run into this issue before – thought I’d mention it just in case you do, too. If things still do not look right, it’s time to make a visit to the support forum that should have come with your theme. Search the forum to see if there’s already an answer to your problem before asking someone to help you.
Editing Photos with WordPress
You can also do some very basic photo editing with WordPress. To edit a photo that you’ve already uploaded to WordPress, go to Media > Library and click on the Edit link under the name of the name of the image (hover over the name to make the links appear). You can change it’s dimensions, crop it, flip it, and rotate it. You can even change the thumbnail settings to only show a portion of the the picture, zooming in on one part of it to showcase it.
