WordPress Posts Topic Index

WordPress Posts Topic Index

Topic Index for "WordPress Posts"

These are guides that we’ve written for WordPress that help you to understand posting in WordPress. Whether you need help writing posts, editing posts or creating new posts on your WordPress website, these guides should help.

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How to Delete or Edit an Image Gallery in WordPress Posts

In one of our previous WordPress Guides, we showed you how to add images to your WordPress posts which included a section on adding an image gallery with a working example.

After releasing that guide, I remembered we had a couple business clients that were using the keyboard backspace key to delete and then recreate the gallery to edit it. Once I showed them the correct way, they were thankful to say the least!

Editing an Image Gallery

Edit an Image Gallery in WordPress

Editing an image gallery is quick and easy to accomplish once you realize how it is done.

In the Edit Post screen, locate the image gallery in the post and then click on it to reveal what I am highlighting above in my screenshot.

After the click, you can then click the little pencil edit icon and make changes to your gallery. This will make a full screen edit window appear with options as shown below.

Edit Image Gallery Options

In the edit window, you can change the captions, Add to Gallery, rearrange the order of images (click and drag) and on the right side, change your Gallery Settings. If you don’t like using  the ## column you set (or it looks bad on the front end), you can change the value, change how the images are linked and all of the other settings you set when creating the gallery.

Everything that you can do to create a gallery can be done when editing your gallery as well.

Hopefully this will save you heaps of time and effort in the future when you need to change a WordPress gallery within your posts!

Deleting an Image Gallery

There’s two ways you can delete your image gallery and remove it from your WordPress post.

  1. Click the text that follows immediately after your gallery and then use the Backspace key. Of course, you can also click your cursor before the gallery and use the Delete key if preferred.
  2. Click the gallery itself and then click the X on the little toolbar that appears above the gallery.

Once your gallery is deleted from your post and you save, the gallery will no longer appear in your post.

Don’t forget to clean up your Media Library!

If the images used in your gallery aren’t going to be used in the future and you know the images aren’t used in your other posts, after saving your changes to your post, click the Media button in your dashboard.

WordPress Media Bulk Select

Once your are in the Media Library, use the Bulk Select button as shown above. This will allow you to select the media files you want to delete permanently.

Select the media files then click the blue Delete Selected button to delete the images. Clean up completed!

How to Add Images to WordPress Posts and Pages

In this WordPress Guide, you will learn how to add images to the majority of your WordPress content using the WordPress visual editor. We will cover various methods you can use to add images to your content. The process is extremely simple and straight forward.

The Drag and Drop Method

Drag and Drop Media

  1. Place your cursor where you want your image(s) to appear.
  2. From your desktop, drag and drop the image file to your WordPress editor.

Once the image is dragged to your WordPress editor, you should see what we are showing in our screenshot with a message to Drop files to upload. Once you release the click on your mouse, WordPress will upload the image to your Media Library.

Add your title, alt text, caption and alignment settings then click Insert into post.

The Add Media Method

Add Media ButtonAnother popular method that people continue to use (including me)  is to use the Add Media button. The process is very similar to the drag and drop method.

One advantage to using this method is an upload is not required if you already have a suitable image uploaded already. You can select the image, customize the description and then Insert into post.

  1. Place your cursor where you want the image(s) to appear.
  2. Click the Add Media button.
  3. Drag and drop the image to the add media screen.

Or, if you already have an image ready to be used, click the Media Library tab and click the image you want to use in the post. If you already have thousands of images, you can also use the search function to find the image.

Add an Image Gallery

Create an Image GalleryNow that WordPress has been upgraded to include native galleries, you no longer need a plugin. Here’s how to add an image gallery into your posts.

  1. Place your cursor where you want the gallery to appear.
  2. Click Add Media.
  3. Click Create Gallery.
  4. Choose the Upload Files tab to add new images or choose Media Library to use existing uploaded images.
  5. Select the images you want to appear in the gallery (check mark will appear).
  6. Click the Create a new gallery button.
  7. Customize your gallery appearance.
  8. Click the Insert gallery button.

Regarding customizing your gallery appearance in step 6, on that screen you can drag and drop the images to change the order of appearance. On the right under Gallery Settings, you can choose how you want the media to appear in your post, how many columns, randomize order and the image size you want to use.

WordPress Gallery SettingsHere’s some recommended settings:

  • Link To: Media File
  • Columns: 3 or 4 (If you have 6 images, use 3 to make it display evenly)
  • Size: Thumbnail

The actual appearance of your gallery will depend on the theme you are using. With Thrive Themes, here’s a live example of how the gallery appears which adds a really neat carousel effect when clicking on an image.

Image credits for these images are available here.

Afterwards, you can click the gallery within your WordPress editor and click the pencil icon to edit the gallery if needed.

Adding an Image From a URL

Get Permission: Do not directly link to other website’s images unless you have permission. Otherwise, you are stealing their bandwidth and susceptible to having the images removed or worse, changed to something wildly inappropriate.
  1. Click Add Media.
  2. Click Insert from URL.
  3. Paste direct image link.
  4. Add link text.
  5. Click Insert into post.

Some Image Tips

Make sure you have copyright permission to use images in your posts.

Consider optimizing your image sizes. If you are running a photography blog, then by all means use the full high-resolution images, but if you are running a standard site with traditional images, resize the images to fit your content. It makes no sense to upload an image that is 4,000px wide when your content area can only fit a 750px width image. This will help drastically reduce download times on your pages.

If you are uploading a JPG or PNG, consider using a web service like TinyPNG or using an image optimization plugin. Anything you can do to speed up page loading times on image-heavy pages will help the overall user experience and potentially help you rank higher in search engine indexes.

Don’t add images “just because.” Your ultimate goal should be helping the user with the topic you are writing about. Consider using images to help the user visually understand what you are referencing in your content. In our case, this post includes multiple screenshots with arrows to help you through the process of adding an image along with an example image gallery so you can see one in action.

How to Add a Link or Hyperlink to Your WordPress Content

Back to the WordPress basics in this post which will show you how to create a hyperlink in your content. This is a WordPress visual or text editor feature that is simple to use, once you know where to look. Any place that has the WordPress editor will allow you to add a link to another post or page on your website.

Of course, the first thing is to create or edit a post, page or custom post type. Once you do, you’ll get the traditional WordPress editor that allows you to create your content.

Add a Text Link to WordPress

Use this button in your WordPress editor to activate the add a link option.

Linking to Internal Content

Adding a WordPress Link Gif

This is a GIF showing you how to add a link in WordPress.

Let’s say I want to link to my how to fight WordPress spam blog post, all you need to do is highlight the text that you want to be linked, click the link button on the toolbar, search for your post, click the post and then click add link.

Of course, you don’t have to highlight the text first, you can also click the link button, find the post you want, click that and then add the text you want linked in the Link Text box. Highlighting just makes it a little easier (for me anyway).

One option you have is to Open link in a new window/tab. What this will do is add a target=”blank” to your link HTML so that it opens in a new window. Click here to see my WP Engine review and to see this link open in a new tab/window.

Linking to External Content

It’s the same exact process except this time, you simply copy the URL you want to link to (from your browser’s address bar) and then paste that into the URL field.

  1. Copy URL to your clipboard. Windows: Control + C. Mac: Command + C.
  2. Go to your post and highlight the text you want linked.
  3. Click the Insert/edit link button.
  4. Click the URL box and paste. Win:Control + V or Mac: Command + V.
  5. Click the blue Add Link button.

Linking an Image

Hyperlink an ImageYou can also hyperlink an image that you’ve uploaded to your content. All you do is use the Add Media button, drag your image to your browser to upload and then on the right, look for the section shown in the screenshot.

Look for Link To and switch that to Custom URL which will present the http:// box where you can enter the URL that you want to link to. It’s that simple.