Problems Uploading Images to WordPress

WordPress is a great piece of software for running a small blog or business website and the new features coming in the soon to be released version 3.0 are going to bring even more acclaim. That said, it can still give new and experienced users a hard time every now and again and one of the most common problems we see is with the uploading of images in a post, page or through the media manager direct.

1. Cryptic PHP Error Messages

If you get an error message that starts with: Fatal Error: Out of Memory then your image (or file) is too big to be uploaded with the media manager. There are technical ways to get around this by specifiying a larger memory allowance for PHP in either your .htaccess file or php.in file but this is not really the best approach in most cases.

Think about your users, do they want to download such a big file? If it is an image, resize it, bring the pixel size and file size down to reasonable levels and the image will upload. If it is a PDF, optimise the document, there really is no reason why it needs to be so big.

If you really must upload something larger than is allowed then you need to tweak either the php.ini or.htaccess file. The exact approach depends on host but you will want to add the following lines to allow up to 128 Megabytes.

php.ini - memory_limit = 128M

.htaccess - define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '128M');

2. Media Manager not creating different sized images

Is your image uploading but it is not creating the small, medium and large versions? If so, again, the problem relates to the size of the image you are uploading. If you are pulling pictures from a modern digital camera they are going to be huge and you need to prepare them first.

If you have photoshop or similar you can resize the images to a reasonable pixel size and optimise them for the web - uploading these will then work as it should. No photoshop? No problem. Do a quick Google search for 'online image resizer' and you will find a bunch of free services that will help you prepare your images.

That's all folks

That's it, I almost wish it was harder so I could look cleverer but it really is just a case of getting your media down to a reasonable size before uploading it to your website. This will allow the WordPress Media Manager to do it's job and provide a better experience for your site visitors.

Author Details: Marcus Miller is the owner of Bowler Hat Solutions and is a web site and internet marketing expert with ten (painful) years of experience from Birmingham, West Midlands, UK. Looking for website design in birmingham? Bowler Hat provide everything you need to get a great website online, to generate traffic and to convert that traffic into paying customers. If you are planning a new site then download our free website planning guides or if you need to generate more website traffic then download our free beginners guide to Search Engine Optimisation.

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