This week’s blog is yet another installment in our series of WordPress website tutorials. Our last blog discussed how to add and edit posts on your WordPress site. This week we’ll be discussing how to upload, insert, and manage media on WordPress.

To begin, you’ll need to login to your WordPress website and access your Dashboard. (WordPress has updated some of their designs lately, so your Dashboard may have a slightly new look to it, though it should still be functionally the same.) You should notice a “Media” tab on the left hand side of your Dashboard.

If you hover your mouse over the Media tab, you’ll prompt two options: “Library” and “Add New.”

If you click “Add New” then you’ll be directed to the Upload New Media screen, which should look something like this:

The Upload New Media screen makes it simple to add media files to your WordPress website. Just drag and drop the file you’d like to add, or click the Select Files button in the middle of the screen to choose a file from your computer.

Once you add files, you can then view and manage the files in your Media Library. The Library allows you to sort media by images, audio, video, and other files, and also sort media by the date it was uploaded.

If you hover your mouse over each file, you’ll prompt several management options that allow you to edit, permanently delete, or view each file.

The “Attached to” column on the Media Library lets you know which page or post on your website each particular media file is attached to. If a file has been uploaded to your library but not yet attached to a particular post or page, it is listed as “Unattached,” and gives you the option of attaching the file to a post or page.

You can also add media files to a page or post by selecting the “Add Media” button in the upper left corner of the Add New Page or Add New Post screen (to get to those screens, click on the Pages or Posts tab on the left hand side of your Dashboard. Click here to reference our blog on Pages, or here for our blog on Posts).

Clicking the Add Media button will direct you to your Media Library, from which you can add files onto the particular page you’re working on. The Add Media button again gives you the option to Upload Files directly from your computer, in case you haven’t uploaded a particular file to your library yet.

Once you insert a media file into a particular page, you can then resize or edit it within the content of the rest of the page. To do this, click on the image once it appears in the page- or post-editing screen. This will prompt two boxes to appear in the upper left corner of the image.

The square with the red circle allows you to delete the image. The square with the little blue image in it is your Edit Image button. If you click on this, you’ll be prompted with the Edit Image screen.

The Edit Image screen allows you to align, resize, title, and/or caption your media, as needed.

This is just a quick overview of how to add, edit, and manage media files on your WordPress website. If you have any other questions about WordPress, contact O2 today!

To contact O2 Creative, call us at 970-726-8021 or email [email protected].

Click here for our last blog – WordPress Posts