If you experience problems uploading images to your website, this guide will help you learn some common causes and how to solve them.
In this guide
We recommend keeping image files below 1GB, which is large enough even for the highest-quality images. There’s rarely a reason to go over this size for pictures. See our Optimize Your Images guide to learn how to decrease image file sizes without compromising quality.
You can check the size of your image files by right-clicking and selecting Properties on Windows. On Mac, press Command + Click and choose “Get Info“. If your image is more than 1GB, we recommend reducing the dimensions and compressing it until it’s below that value.
Your storage space may be full. Our Get More Storage Space guide explains how to check your storage space.
You may consider compressing your files and only uploading the size you need. Most website visitors use a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 or lower, so depending on the purpose of your site and its audience, anything bigger than that may be unnecessary. One notable exception is photography or art-based sites for which images are the main focus.
You can upgrade your plan or purchase an add-on to increase storage space.
While WordPress does some clever behind-the-scenes checks to avoid invalid filenames being an issue, it’s far better to name your images correctly ahead of time.
It is recommended to stick to letters and numbers only. If the file name of your image has other characters, they will be removed or replaced with the ‘-‘ symbol.
WordPress supports these common image file types.
Some other image formats are not accepted and will cause an error upon upload. If a file type is not supported, it will be for a good reason, such as the file type is so large that it would slow down your site.
If you have images in unsupported formats that you want to use, then you should convert them to a valid file type before uploading. You can do this with image editing software or a free online converter.
If your network connection is slow, you may see an error while uploading images. You can use an online speed test tool to measure your connection’s upload speed. Switch to a faster connection to upload images if it’s too slow.
For designers, if the colors in your uploaded images appear different from the originals, save your images in sRGB before you upload them. sRGB is a standard default color profile for the web and is the most common color space web servers use today.
The sRGB color profile will work best for resized images. Remember that some sRGB images may still have slight shifts in color when resized on the server. If you want to ensure your colors are as close as possible to the original, upload your images in the same dimensions you’d like to display on your site and insert them at full size with no image dimensions.
