My goals for today were to make my “about page” more irresistible by trying some of the ideas from Blogging 101, create a custom header, and get to bed before 10 pm so I could read my new mystery book. Unfortunately, none of those items got checked off my to-do list. Nope, none of them. Nada! So here I sit at 11:53 pm, simmering with a backlog of frustration. I hope you don’t mind if I squawk for a few minutes. I’ll try to be brief.
I just learned something about blogs and images that I wish I had learned a long time ago (Like when I first started blogging). It would have been s-o-o-o-o helpful back then. I really could go on and on, moaning about my tale of woe, but I said brief, so here’s the abbreviated version…
This morning, when I tried to upload a new gallery of pictures from Saturday’s two hour long parade, the last 10 images wouldn’t upload. After a little investigation, I discovered I have used up the entire 3 GB of free space in the image library, and that’s all I get. There is no more space, at least none of the free variety. “Minor setback,” I (naively) muttered to myself. “I’ll just remove some of the old images to make space for these new ones. Easy-peasy.” “Minor setback,” I (naively muttered to myself. “I’ll just remove some of the old images to make space for these new ones. Easy-Peasy.”
At this point, I am sure some of you more experienced bloggers are probably shaking your heads, as you should be, at the stupidity of my feeble logic (or what passes for it). However, I didn’t know that each image in the image library has its own built in “address” (if that’s the right word), and if an ill-informed and inexperienced blogger like yours truly, deletes an image from the library, that image is automatically deleted from any post it was a part of. Without thinking the entire process through, I just assumed (always a mistake) that the image doesn’t have an address (or whatever it’s called) while it just waits on the shelf in the image library for me to use it. Live and learn! But NOW I know, and, as they say, “Better late than never.”
In the past, my work flow has been like this:
- Process the pictures in Lightroom.
- Export the images I want to use from Lightroom to my hard drive.
- Upload them to WordPress.
- Start a blog post.
- Place the images where I want them to appear in the post.
Guess I’ll have to add another step to my work flow to resize my images, but I’m still looking for a tutorial to show me an easy way to do it. Suggestions anyone? If you have any helpful tips for me, I’m listening, just be sure to write them in simple sentences using only one or two syllable words because I’m not up to anything too technical at this point. Easy is the operative word here (I’m joking…honest. Well, sort of).
The best only good part of this entire debacle is that I got to have a chat with one of the WordPress happiness engineers, and he truly was helpful. That’s it for today. I’m done squawking. I’m headed to bed, resolved that today’s goals will be completed (you guessed it)…tomorrow.
Thanks for listening.
Carolyn aka Skip
SEEN ALONG THE TRAIL 
I’m a relatively new blogger and NO tech guru at all! So I’m not sure if what I’m about to say is the best advice. But… I don’t have Photoshop or Lightroom (maybe one day I’ll get them, I know all pros have them, etc…). I just edit my photos on a free app on my tablet. I tried several and finally found one I liked that produces nice results and functions well enough for me. And one of the unplanned side effects has been that the app automatically reduces the size quite a lot. So I don’t have to do it separately – it’s a fairly quick work flow all in all. But having said that, your post made me anxious to re-examine my photos and double-check the sizes to be sure!!
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I haven’t tried major editing on my iPad, so you are ahead of me. Sounds like it works for you, so that’s all good. Thanks for your comment.
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Thank you for the mention of my blog. Your summaries of the blogs you visited were very well written. One caught my eye, so I visited it.went there to take a look.
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Ouch, that was a hard lesson. Were you able to recover your images, or did you request to have your site restored to the latest backup. ?
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Oh dear, I can sympathize because I did this EXACT same thing a couple of years ago – not realizing that those photos were imbedded in the posts until it was too late!! So, it can happen to any of us at any age who aren’t well versed in the more technical aspects of blogging. I now resize my photos in my Windows live photo gallery before uploading them to Word Press.
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It is SO comforting to know that others have had the same problem. Thanks for reminding me of that, Amy.
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When you export photos in Lightroom, you can set a maximum size — I usually save the full-size image on my hard drive, in case I want it again, and export a version for my blog that’s no larger than 2000K (and even that’s big for use on the web; you could easily keep them under 1000).
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Thank you, Michelle. I’ve never paid attention to “file size” in the Lightroom export dialogue. How’s that for a foolish oversight? You can be sure I will be checking it now!
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One of the reasons I started a new blog (Breezes at Dawn) instead of renaming the old one (Life in the Bogs) was because I had run out of free space. Starting over is an option, but it can take a while to get everyone to move to the new blog (Breezes is my third blog on WordPress). One thing that might help is to go into your blog’s media library and find the drop down menu (where it says “All”) and switch it to “Unattached.” This will show you all the photos that are not attached to a blog post, and you can delete them if you’re not planning to use them. I have freed up a lot of space just getting rid of images I used for a custom header and don’t plan to use again. Even with resizing (mpcactions.com used to have a free action you can use in Photoshop and Lightroom that makes it easy to resize with one click), which I do, the free space given us by WordPress won’t last more than 3-5 years if (like me) you use a lot of images in your posts.
The other option is to host your photos elsewhere such as on Flickr. Instead of uploading them to WordPress, you just put in the URL of the photo on Flickr and that uses zero media space on WordPress.
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Wow, great suggestions, Robin. Thank you for taking the time. I was completely unaware of the All/Unattached switch. Will do that asap. I rarely use Flickr; instead I host my photo galleries on SmugMug. I will have to check to see if I can upload to WordPress from there. I really enjoyed Life in the Bogs because of your location at the time you were posting that blog, but I am equally enjoying your current blog because I think I could settle down very happily on the Eastern Shore.
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ooooohhhhhhh revelation Thank you!
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Revelation? Really? I certainly hope it was helpful.
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Oh man, the photography processing schtick can be a pain-in-the-rear. You’re not the only one and I’ve been messing with images for years. Sometimes I just forget to resize images and then I try to upload them and it’s like wait, what? Anyway, your photographs are gorgeous. I took a quick look at the exif info of some of your photos and the file sizes really aren’t that big. It might help to resize the ‘long edge’ dimension to 800px instead of around 1000px.
Do you work on a mac? There’s a simple, free photo editor app called Fotor. If you don’t run your images through a ton of post-processing stuff and do basic things like contrast, brightness, etc then Fotor can do all that and resize your images in batches. I like it for creating images to put online if I don’t intend to do anything fancy to the shots, just because it’s simple, quick and I don’t have to think about messing with anything all that much. The software itself is super straightforward.
Best of luck!
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Thank you for sharing your experiences, Sam. Yes, I am on a Mac, and I have never heard of Fotor, so I will check it out. I generally do all my processing in Lightroom, which of course isn’t simple, but I love it.
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Hi Skip – there are several free image resizer programs that work pretty good. Give one of them a try. I think you’re doing great with the blogging!!
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Thanks, Camille. I’m still searching for the method that works for me. I will blog about it when I figure it out. As for the blogging, I am having fun…lots of fun. Keeping up with blogging and Blipfoto is a challenge. At the moment, Blip is suffering.
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Perfect timing. Thank you. This is something I am nearing, “the danger zone” flash back to Top gun! I have been putting it off so now you have made me realise I need to get on top of it. You have answered my first question about deleting photos. I wonder if you or anyone else knows is it possible to resize photos once they are in the media bank?
Thank you
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Yay for perfect timing. Glad it helped to answer a question for you. I’m still puzzling out how to resize. There are several suggestions from other bloggers here that I will check out. When I find the solution that works for me, I will post it in my blog. Thank you for your comment.
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Yes thank you. You have raised a really important point for people starting out! Now I am beginning to the slow process of going back post at a time and trying to resize pictures, upload the small files add to the blog and then delete the big ones! An ongoing project. I realised I was uploading really hefty files that can be used to just as good effect at about 1/4 of the size.
Luckily as I choose pictures for each post I tend to to put them as in there own labeled folder so I can find them pretty easily!
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Oh I have done exactly the same in the past then wondered (for quite some embarrassing time) why my picture was ‘broke’! I started resizing early on in the piece by necessity when I was in circumstances where upload speeds were mind numbingly slow. I used the relatively unsophisticated ‘paint’ which came with my computer as I am such a cheap skate 😉
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Hey, if “paint” works for you, that’s all you need. It’s good to know I am not the only person who overlooked the issue of file size when uploading to WordPress. Thanks for letting me know I have good company.
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I feel your pain, having suffered through a site migration and the subsequent chaos. There are many ways to resize images, but the Lightroom way is explained here: http://havecamerawilltravel.com/photographer/resize-images-lightroom#Exporting_from_Lightroom
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Thank you for the link. I will check it out today. Chaos is a very good word for my situation, but (I think) I am gradually coming out of chaos into a more peaceful and productive place.
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That’s funny. I was totally shaking my head when I read you deleted your images. I think I can help you resize your images. Once you post them, click the “edit” button (pencil, I think, next to the “remove” or “x”) and click on thumbnail, medium, or large. I think you can also resize it by clicking on it then adjust it with the corner squares so your image isn’t disproportionate. My blog mainly has words – like 99% – so images aren’t my strong suit, but I can get around.
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Thank you, Leanne. Not funny last night at almost midnight, but in retrospect, yes, there is humor in my “stupidity.” I hope people found it humorous and helpful.
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Sorry about your picture debacle. Technology can be very frustrating. Thanks for sharing because now I know not to delete pictures from the gallery that are in my posts!
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Thanks for the sympathy, Beatriz. I was thinking I may not be the only person who isn’t clear on how it works. I’m glad to know my story has helped you.
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