Storage space and site speed are legitimate concerns for bloggers, which is why we don’t want old, unoptimized images weighing us down. But what is the best way to deal with them? Let’s chat about it!
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Transcripts
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[00:00:30] For this week's episode, I'm addressing two questions that have a common theme. What to do with old often unoptimized blog post images. We'll dive into the specific questions in just a second, but first we need to talk about the importance of image optimization. There are several reasons why we should care about optimizing the images on our blogs.
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[00:01:17] And secondly, optimization is important because the more elements you have on your blog post, the longer it takes to load. Site load Time is becoming more and more important. It's always been important, but Pinterest especially is starting to pay attention to your site load time. So not only does having a slow loading website impact user experience,
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[00:02:03] She was inspired by some episodes of the podcast and she was rolling up her sleeves and getting that work done. But she discovered as she deletes these old posts, the images that were in those posts still exist in her media library, they don't automatically get deleted as well. So she's wondering if there's a good way to deal with these old images without having to go through each post one by one.
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[00:02:51] Because if she deletes the image, then she now has a broken image throughout other posts on her website. But it just does not seem realistic to scroll through your entire list of blog posts to make sure an image isn't used anywhere else before deleting the image. So on the surface, it might seem like the media library has this capability.
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[00:03:32] And one of the columns is labeled, uploaded to. And so there is a link to the blog post that that image has been uploaded to. And then if you sort that column, you know, you press the sort button. All of your unattached images, so images that have not been attached to a blog post are going to be grouped together. But I did some experimenting, and that is not an exact science because first, that image will only attach to one post.
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[00:04:34] Is there a way to deal with this quickly? I will admit that this is something I have not had to deal with in my blogging life, so I did have to do some research to see if there's a plugin that can handle this task. And just as a quick disclaimer, as you know from previous episodes of the podcast, I am very cautious when adding plugins to a website.
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[00:05:26] But I did see mixed reviews for many of the plugins that I checked. Some users said that their entire media library was deleted or flagged for deletion. So when you're deciding on a plugin, you want to choose one that gives you manual control of the deletion process. So if the only option with that plugin is to identify orphaned images and then delete them in bulk,
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[00:06:18] For this particular episode, I am not going to name specific plugins because I haven't tested any of them myself, and this episode will live on indefinitely, so I don't want to make an untested recommendation that could become obsolete when the plugin is no longer available. So instead, if this is something you're interested in tackling for your website, I would suggest searching for orphan image WordPress plugin on Google, or to type in how to delete unused images in WordPress.
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[00:07:14] We've all been there. That's the joy of blogging. There's always more to learn. This listener now has a solution for ensuring their images are an appropriate size when they upload it to WordPress. However, they're wondering if there is a way to retroactively optimize the images on their website. The answer to this question is a resounding yes.
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[00:07:55] You also wanna make sure that it is compatible with your version of WordPress. But one thing I wanted to mention is that there are some image optimization plugins that allow you to both reduce file size retroactively and identify orphaned images. So these more robust plugins usually have a cost, but that is something to keep in mind as you're looking for an option that will work on your site.
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[00:08:47] This is especially true when you're dealing with the removal of assets on your website. If something breaks or goes wrong, you wanna easily be able to set things right again. If this episode sparked a question for you, be sure to let me know. You can submit a question for the podcast at stephanieroyersolutions.com slash podcast if you'd like to hear it answered on the show.
