Introduction to the Media Library in WordPress

Adding media, such as images, to your posts will enrich the reader’s experiences and get your articles noticed and the media will remain in your media library.

How to Use the Media Library in WordPress
Managing Media in WordPress

You can access your media library by selecting Media–>Library in the left-hand side bar. Once you select Library you will access a list of all the media you have added to your website.

Media Includes

The list will include all types of media you have used in you website including images, audio files, video files, pdf files, and other types of documents.

Media Usage

Any time you add media to a post, a page, or upload it directly to your library it will remain there for you to access at any time by going back to your media library. Once it’s uploaded it can be used on any post or any page throughout your entire site.

Placing your cursor over any media file thumbnail or it’s name will display the options menu and will enable you to edit, delete, or view the media file as it’s own post.

Edit Media Screen

By selecting edit on any file in the list you will go to the edit media section where you will see a larger thumbnail, the file name, the type of file, and the date it was first uploaded.

The fields you may edit are the title, alternate text (not viewable by readers), caption, and description. You can also view the location (URL) of any media in the library.

After any changes have been made be sure to click on the update media button at the bottom of the screen.

Deleting

If you click on the delete option on any media file you will open a pop-up dialog box asking if you are sure that you want to delete that media file. Selecting OK will delete the file, selecting cancel will cancel that action, but once a media file has been deleted there is no way to get it back.

View

If you select the view option you can view the media file as it’s own post on your website.

Watch the Video

Best viewed in full screen by clicking the icon in the lower right of the player.