If you’ve been inserting too-large images into your post content for years, re-uploading all of those images at a smaller size can be intimidating and overwhelming. Luckily, there are some easier ways to manage this! 🙂
Use an image compression plugin
Plugins like ShortPixel have settings to re-size your images to a maximum dimension. This is a great way to update all posts automatically, but it does:
- cost money (specifically, image credits)
- carry a small risk for broken images
The latter would only happen in a small sub-set of cases where you:
- previously inserted images at a specific size, such as “large” rather than the default “full” size
- that size was set to something larger than the maximum width you’re setting in ShortPixel
- you regenerate thumbnails and delete old/unused thumbnails
Set up srcset
If you want your images to look great on all devices no matter what size you upload them at (think: 4000px wide!), without impacting site speed, you’re looking for srcset. This would be set up by a developer and may require significant modification to your theme.
Pros: super easy – it “just works”!
Cons: can be expensive to set up, images take up more space on your server (if you’re short on that, which is becoming less common as storage becomes cheaper), and more image thumbnails requires more image compression credits .