The Media Library contains all of the image and file resources that have been updated to your site.

From the media library you can bulk upload new imagery or files to your site. You can also click on individual files to edit their metadata or even delete them entirely. There are controls in the top left for bulk selection if a large number of files need to be removed. The search input to the right is useful to find a specific resource once lots of images have been uploaded.

‘Media’ contains your media library in the WordPress backend.

Your media library can accept many file types:

  • Images: .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .webp, .heic, .heif, .svg
  • Documents: .pdf, .doc, .xls, .xlsx, .key, .odt, .text, .ppt
  • Audio: .mp3, .ogg, .wav
  • Video: .mp4, .m4v, .mpg, .mov, .avi, .wmv
  • Data: .zip, .xml, .csv

Imagery

As a rule of thumb the largest image size the site will all you to upload is 1920px by 1920px. Any images larger than that will be resized down to those dimensions. Full width banners or hero images will output at this larger size. Logos and other imagery should be uploaded in a smaller format that matches closely to the size they will display on-page for the desktop site. Regardless of the size you upload your site will serve the smallest possible version to avoid unnecessary load time.

Images have some special properties in the media library. One of the most important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the ability to enter custom alternative text (alt text) for the image. By clicking on an image a modal will open with fields that can be use to enter alt text. This text should describe the contents of the image and will be displayed in the event the image is unable to load or if a visitor is using a assistive device to browse your site. Alt text improves the accessibility of your site and allow you to include keyword-rich terms in your site content.

By using terms in your imagery alt text you will improve your ranking for those terms within on search engines like Google or Bing. The text should still describe the image contents to avoid getting dinged for keyword-stuffing

Image Editing

Below the image there is also a button that allows for some very basic image editing. This should only be used to either rotate images that were uploaded in the in-correct orientation. Or to make small cropping adjustments in the event that an image doesn’t fit on the site correctly (When you crop an image it effects all version of that image on the site so be cautious and keep the original image accessible).