How to Upload Large Images in WordPress: The Complete Guide (2024)

Hey there, WordPress user! Are you pulling your hair out trying to upload your beautiful, high-resolution images to your site? Does WordPress keep spitting back frustrating error messages about exceeding the maximum upload size?

Navi.

Take a deep breath – you‘ve come to the right place. We‘re going to conquer those pesky image upload errors together.

In this ultimate guide, we‘ll explore:

Why your large images aren‘t uploading in the first place
How to easily increase the WordPress upload limit
Tips for optimizing images to reduce file size without losing quality
Ways to use galleries and CDNs to speed up image loading

By the end of this article, you‘ll be uploading gorgeous, giant images to WordPress like a pro. Let‘s get started!

Why Your Big Beautiful Images Aren‘t Uploading

First things first – why is WordPress rejecting your images? The culprit is probably one of two limits that WordPress imposes by default:

Max Upload File Size – The maximum size allowed for a single uploaded file.
Max Execution Time – The maximum time a script is allowed to run before timing out.

If your image file size exceeds the Max Upload File Size OR if the upload process takes longer than the Max Execution Time, WordPress will throw an error and the upload will fail.

The default values for these settings vary by web host, but some common numbers are:

Setting	Common Default Values
Max Upload File Size	2 MB, 4 MB, 8 MB, 64 MB
Max Execution Time	30 seconds, 60 seconds

To put those in perspective, here are some typical file sizes for a 1080p JPEG image at different quality levels:

JPEG Quality	Approximate File Size
30%	300 KB
60%	800 KB
80%	1.5 MB
100%	5-15 MB

As you can see, if you‘re using very high-quality images (especially large PNGs), it‘s easy to exceed the default WordPress upload limits.

Specific Image Upload Error Messages

Now that you know why your images are being rejected, let‘s look at some of the specific error messages you might see. If you‘ve encountered one of these, you‘re in the right place:

"The uploaded file exceeds the upload_max_filesize directive in php.ini."
"Post-processing of the image failed likely because the server is busy or does not have enough resources."
"The image exceeds the maximum upload size for this site."

Alright, now that we‘ve identified the problem, let‘s dive into the solutions!

How to Increase the WordPress Upload Limit

There are a few different ways to tell WordPress to stop rejecting your big beautiful images. We‘ll walk through three popular methods, starting with the simplest.

Method 1: Use a Plugin

By far the easiest way to increase your maximum upload size is to use a plugin. We recommend the free "Increase Maximum Upload File Size" plugin. Here‘s how to use it:

Install and activate the plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory
Go to Settings > Increase Upload Size in your WordPress admin sidebar
Enter your desired Maximum upload size and Max execution time
Click "Save Changes"

That‘s it! Your new upload limits should take effect immediately.

Method 2: Edit functions.php

If you‘re comfortable adding a bit of code to your WordPress site, you can also increase the upload limits by editing your theme‘s functions.php file:

Go to Appearance > Theme Editor in your WordPress admin
Select the "functions.php" file from the list at the right

Paste the following code at the bottom of the file:

@ini_set( ‘upload_max_size‘ , ‘128M‘ );
@ini_set( ‘post_max_size‘, ‘128M‘);
@ini_set( ‘max_execution_time‘, ‘300‘ );

Click "Update File"

This will set the maximum upload size to 128MB and the max execution time to 300 seconds. Feel free to adjust the numbers to suit your needs.

If you don‘t have a child theme set up, we recommend using a plugin like Code Snippets to add the custom code. This will prevent your changes from being overwritten when you update your theme.

Method 3: Edit .htaccess

Your WordPress site‘s .htaccess file is a configuration file that controls many server settings. If you have access to it, you can increase the upload limits by adding a few lines of code.

Connect to your WordPress site via FTP or your host‘s file manager
Find the .htaccess file in your site‘s root directory (it‘s a hidden file, so you may need to toggle hidden files on)
Download a copy of the .htaccess file to use as a backup
Open the original .htaccess file for editing

Add the following lines of code:

php_value upload_max_filesize 128M
php_value post_max_size 128M
php_value max_execution_time 300
php_value max_input_time 300

Save the changes and reupload the .htaccess file if necessary

Remember, your host‘s server-level settings may override changes to the .htaccess file. If editing the file doesn‘t work, you‘ll need to contact your hosting provider for assistance.

Optimizing Images for WordPress

Bumping up your site‘s upload limits will let you add bigger images, but it‘s still important to optimize your files for web. The larger your images, the longer they‘ll take to load – which is bad news for user experience and SEO.

Multiple studies have shown that slow page load times lead to increased bounce rates and decreased engagement:

Pages that load within 2 seconds have an average bounce rate of 9% (Source)
47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less (Source)
A 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions (Source)

On the SEO side, page speed is a confirmed ranking factor for both desktop and mobile search results. Faster sites rank higher, plain and simple.

So what‘s an image-loving WordPress user to do? Two things:

Resize your images to the exact maximum dimensions needed
Compress images to reduce file size without noticeably impacting quality

The ideal image dimensions will depend on where you‘re using the image (hero image, blog post, thumbnail, etc.) and your theme‘s layout. As a general rule of thumb, here are some good sizes to aim for:

Image Type	Ideal Dimensions
Full width (hero)	1600 x 500 pixels
Blog post	1200 x 630 pixels
Thumbnail	150 x 150 pixels

As for file format, we recommend using JPEG for most photographs and PNG for graphics that need to maintain transparency.

There are many free tools you can use to resize and compress images, including:

Adobe Photoshop
Affinity Photo
Pixlr
Squoosh
TinyPNG

Many of these tools offer "save for web" options that will find the ideal balance between image quality and file size. Experiment to find the best settings for your needs.

Using an Image Gallery Plugin

If you need to display a lot of images on your WordPress site, a dedicated gallery plugin can help keep things running smoothly. Galleries let you create attractive, organized collections of images without bogging down your pages.

Our favorite WordPress gallery plugin is Envira Gallery. It offers:

Responsive, customizable gallery layouts
Lightbox display option for showcasing large images
Lazy loading to speed up page rendering
Deeplinking for better SEO and linkability
Drag-and-drop gallery builder
Integrations with popular page builders like Beaver Builder, Divi, and Elementor
Watermarking to protect your images from theft
WooCommerce support to create product galleries
And more

Instead of inserting individual images into your pages and posts, consider using Envira to create lightweight, good-looking galleries. Your page speed (and sanity) will thank you.

Serving Images via CDN

Speaking of page speed, one of the best ways to turbocharge image loading on your WordPress site is to use a CDN (Content Delivery Network).

A CDN is a network of servers located all around the world. When you use a CDN with your WordPress site, copies of your images are stored on this network of servers. When a visitor lands on your site, they‘re served images from the CDN server geographically closest to them.

Serving images from a nearby server rather than your origin server reduces latency and speeds up loading times significantly – especially for visitors far from your primary server.

There are many excellent CDN providers that integrate with WordPress, including:

Cloudflare
StackPath
KeyCDN
Amazon CloudFront
Bunny.net

Many CDN services offer free plans for small sites, with usage-based pricing as you scale. To set up WordPress with a CDN, you‘ll typically install a plugin that rewrites your image URLs to point to the CDN‘s servers. Some top-rated CDN plugins include:

W3 Total Cache
WP Fastest Cache
CDN Enabler
BunnyCDN

With the right configuration, you can let a global network of servers handle the heavy lifting of delivering your images. Your pages will load faster for visitors around the world – no plane ticket required!

Wrapping Up

We covered a ton of ground in this guide! Let‘s quickly recap what we‘ve learned about uploading large images to WordPress:

WordPress has default file size and execution time limits that can prevent large image uploads
You can increase these limits by:
- Using a plugin like Increase Maximum Upload File Size
- Adding code to your theme‘s functions.php file
- Adding code to your site‘s .htaccess file
It‘s important to optimize images by resizing and compressing before uploading
Using a gallery plugin like Envira Gallery can speed up pages with many images
Serving images via a CDN can dramatically reduce loading times for geographically distant visitors

Armed with this knowledge, you should be able to conquer any WordPress image upload error that dares cross your path. Now go forth and upload those big, beautiful images!