Your WordPress post images are your calling card to the world. An eye-catching image paired with an engaging title is a sure sell. In many instances, it has been seen that readers tend to read the post just because they liked the featured image and vice versa. Hence, your WordPress-featured image plays a crucial role in attracting audiences and doing the trick.
But do you need to switch between sizes or use a single size for all images? Well, it is essential that you use the required size for each image. It is obvious that some images would look good in landscape format while others may look better in portrait format. Therefore, WordPress offers the option of playing with the featured image’s size. With this, you can alter your image’s dimensions to suit your needs.
However, many find it difficult to use this option. But, worry not! In the post, I will guide you step by step on changing the featured image size in WordPress.
Before that, let’s understand what a featured image actually is.
What Is A Featured WordPress Image?
Your WordPress-featured image is the one that appears on your post when you share it on different channels. It is possible that you choose it yourself. However, if you fail to do so, WordPress does it for you. Generally, the first image in your blog is the one that gets the position of the featured image. Other than this, you can choose a featured image by placing it in the first three paragraphs of your post. This will automatically make it the featured one.
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Steps To Choose The Featured WordPress Image
Let’s say you do not want to select an image used in the post as your featured image. So, what do you do? Let’s see how you can choose a featured image for your post.
- Go to the editor option whether it’s a page or a post.
- On the right side of the page, you will see a settings option. Click that to explore more.
- Go to the post tab and choose the featured image and then select the set featured image option.
- You can either upload the one from the post or choose from your image library.
- Add the alt text to give a written explanation of your image too.
- You can also add other descriptions or a caption.
- Finally, set the image and you are good to go.
Ways To Change Your WordPress Image Size
The ideal wp featured image size is 1200 x 628 pixels. This size dimension is perfect for all kinds of blog posts. However, WordPress also tweaks the size as per the post requirement. Some of the most commonly used featured image sizes are discussed below.
- Thumbnail size image: 150 x 150 pixels
- Medium-size image: 300 x 300 pixels
- Large size image: 1024 x 1024 pixels
- Full-size image: This corresponds to the original dimensions of your image
But, you can do it yourself too. Let’s find out how.
Manual Method
You can easily adjust the size of the featured image on the WordPress post. All you need to do is go to the media option and change the image sizes there. However, WordPress here again does you a favor by making three copies of a single image in different dimensions namely medium, thumbnail, and large.
Use PHP
Using PHP is another way of changing the image size of your featured WordPress post. However, everyone might not be able to do this because it requires coding onto the themes. Moreover, it is recommended that changes should be made only to the child themes ad, not the parent images. This way, you will have both the original and the altered image saved in your WordPress.
In order to change the image size, you need to add the following code in the functions.php file or plugin made for this.
<?php set_post_thumbnail_size( $width, $height, $crop );?>Adjust Image Size Using CSS
Using CSS is another method to adjust your WordPress images. This is also a form of coding to adjust your image dimensions. Using this, you can play with your image’s length, width, border, and other such properties. Moreover, you can adjust the image in percentage too. This makes it even handier to use.
Here again, it is recommended that you customize the child themes only and not the parent ones.
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Conclusion
Choosing the accurate post-featured image size WordPress is crucial to depicting your image in the right size. Your WordPress can do it for you, but at times, you will want to customize the dimension yourself. If you are a web designer, you can go with PHP or CSS. These two work quite well or You can hire a professional WordPress development Company to do this task for you.
However, as explained earlier, it is advisable to adjust the dimensions of the child template rather than the parent templates. This will give you an edge in choosing the image size for your posts and still have the original one.