If you experience problems uploading images, videos, and other files to your website, this guide will help you learn some common causes and how to solve them.
Keeping image files below 1 GB, 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. If your image exceeds 1 GB, we recommend reducing the dimensions and compressing it until it’s below that value.
Similarly, try compressing other file types before uploading. Check the size of your files by following these steps:
- Right-click on the media on your computer.
- Select Properties on Windows. On Mac, choose “Get Info“.
- Look for the file size information, usually displayed in bytes or kilobytes (KB).
Sites with the Business or Commerce plan also have access to SFTP for uploading larger files through a client.
Your storage space may be full. Our Get More Storage Space guide explains how to check your storage space.
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 anything larger might be unnecessary unless your site focuses on high-quality images, such as photography or art-based sites, where image quality is a priority.
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 keep 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 file types.
Some other 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 and other files 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 editing software or a free online converter.
WordPress.com incorporates several optimization features to ensure your site and dashboard load and respond quickly.
A slow network connection can cause errors while uploading images. Use an online speed test tool to check your upload speed. If it’s too slow, try switching to a faster connection to complete the upload. A popular online speed test tool is Speedtest by Ookla. You can use it to check your internet connection speed for both upload and download rates.
If you recently changed your site’s primary address, including connecting a new domain to your site, you may not see all of your content right away. For example, images may not appear on your site immediately after changing your site address. Follow these steps to ensure your new site address is set up:
- Review our Troubleshooting Domain Errors guide.
- Allow up to 72 hours for any DNS changes to fully propagate.
When a plugin-enabled site is set to Private mode, photo thumbnails may appear as gray boxes in your Media Library. Additionally, images on your site may not appear or appear as gray boxes.
To resolve the issue with media thumbnails showing as gray boxes, follow these steps:
- Log into your WordPress.com account and visit your Sites list by clicking the “W” logo at the top left.
- Click the ellipsis (⋮) under Actions and select Settings from the drop-down menu.
- Under the “Privacy” section, select either Coming Soon or Public.
- Click the “Save settings” button.
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.
