I recently received a support request from a client who was having trouble with sizing images when inserting them into her posts…
Hi Adam,
I have been receiving images from my customers and uploading them into my posts for awhile now with no problems, but lately I’ve run into an issue I hope you can help solve. Usually after uploading an image I get to choose from the size of the image to insert into my pages or posts. The sizes to choose from are Thumbnail, Medium, Large, and Original. I have a couple questions regarding some inconsistencies I’m seeing.
Why do I get all of these size choices with some images and other times I only get Thumbnail, Medium, and Original (no Large)?
Why do the available sizes of these images change? Sometimes the medium size will be 300 x 300 and other times it will be smaller (like 250 x 250) The same thing happens with the Large size too, but the above things only happen sometimes? I would like to make an image fill the entire width of my posts just like the text does, but depending on the image, sometimes my only choice is either too large or too small for this area.
Thanks for your continued support, we appreciate all your help!
Alexa
While offering Alexa the solution and explanation of why this happens and how to correct it, it occurred to me that even with the many years experience I have of working with WordPress, I very seldom took advantage of a built-in image and media setting that can really help to create consistency when using images in your posts and pages, not to mention making things easier for you.
The first thing you’ll need to know is how wide your content area is. In other words, what is the maximum width that you can have for each image. The width you have to work with is directly related to the theme you have installed and activated on your site. There are a couple ways to find out the width of the content area of your specific theme, but for the purpose of this tutorial, I’ll be using the WordPress default theme named Twenty Ten. I know that the content area has a maximum width of 640px, and that’s how wide I want my uploaded images to be.
Post Content Width
Trouble sizing images correctly for your available content area? One setting in WP can make things easier: http://tinyurl.com/36cqh2h
RT @wpmodder: Trouble sizing images correctly for your content area? One setting in WP can make things easier: http://tinyurl.com/36cqh2h
Just started looking at your site. Thanks for the great tuts! I develop WP sites and these helpful articles I will pass on. Regardiing the image settings, I set this for my clients differently. I set the Large to 640px wide and the medium to 300px wide. This way they have a convenient way to include an image in their post that text can wrap around with medium or a full image with large. Hope this is helpful to some.
Hi Robert,
Thanks for your comment and sharing your process with other readers. I agree that setting both a “full width” size and another size that lends itself to wrapped text content is helpful, and just makes sense:)