How to edit WordPress Thumbnail picture online
I don’t find the picture editor in WordPress to be all that intuitive. Because I can’t be the only one out there that feels this way I figured that I’d walk through uploading a picture and show you how to edit it online. First off I wanted to let you know what version I am writing about. I am running version 3.0.1. I don’t see this changing too much in future version. I think these abilities are there since 2.5. People with WordPress experience will not need to read the first part of this article. You can skip directly to “How to Editing WordPress Thumbnail”.
Upload Picture to the WordPress Media Manager
I’m going to warn you this part of the “How to Article” is going to be VERY basic. To upload the picture to the Media Manager you must follow these steps:
1.) Log into WordPress (Duh!)
2.) Click on “Media” menu and then select “Add New”
3.) On the “Upload New Media” screen click the “Select Files” button.
4.) Select the file you want to upload to WordPress. I’m selecting the raccoon picture.
5.) Depending on the size of the file it will take some time. If it is really big WordPress automatically compresses the file for you.
6.) Rename the picture and hit “Save All Changes” button. This will complete the process of uploading the picture to the website.
Congradulation you’ve uploaded the picture to WordPress. Now onto part 2.
How to edit WordPress Thumbnail picture
This assumes that you just finished uploading the picture into WordPress using the steps above.
1.) You should now be at the Media Library
2.) Hover over the picture you just uploaded and click edit.
3.) Click “Edit Image”
4.) Under Thumbnail settings click “Thumbnail”.
5.) Make sure to select “1:1” Aspect ratio.
6.) Hold down your shift key and make the selection. Because you made the aspect ratio 1:1 the selection will be a square.
7.) This is the part of the process that I think is not the most intuitive. I would have thought if you just hit “Save” WordPress would save your selection! I then thought… Well what happens if you hit “Update Media”? I’ll tell you what happens. Nothing! Step #8 shows you how to save the selection. (Sorry for the rant)
8.)You’ve now got to click the “crop” tool button. This will finalize the crop.
9.) You can now hit “Save”.
10.) Click “Update Media”. You’re Thumbnail view should now be updated!
11.) You’re done!
I did exactly what you said to edit the thumbail image. After I hit save button, no change appeared in thumbnail image.
So I wanted to give it another try. But now whenever I go to edit same image again, it does not give me option to chose between “All image sizes, thumbnail or all image size except thumbnail” for that particular image.
I have that option for all other images but if I try to edit any thumbnail, that options is gone and there is no edit in thumbnail image!
Any suggestions?
Not sure. I just checked the steps I posted again and everything works as expected. Are you all up to date on your WP patches? – PS – Great article on how to make passwords.
Hi Jared,
First, thanks for writing this post. You’re right, this media thing in WP is completely unintuitive.
All that said, I’m having the exact same problem as Brijesh. It’s exasperating. I attempt the edit — in my case scaling — hit thumbnail … save … update and nothing happens, except the entire thumbnail panel disappears from the Edit Media page. I’m using WP 3.0.1 on Windows 7 machine, with Builder theme v2.6.5.
I haven’t installed ANY patches that I’m aware of. I wasn’t even aware there was such a thing. Where do I go to get them and how do I install them, please? Perhaps you could write another super-basic post for that!
thanks! This was perfect for me.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
I’ve been messing around with this for weeks and was getting really frustrated. This is THE MOST USEFUL post on this topic–even better than WordPress’s own help sites.
Thanks so much for sharing this. Your instructions are clear and perfect. Now I have thumbnails just like I want ‘em.
You’re welcome. If you really like it you could always tweet it or link to it on Facebook
I love extra links.
Thanks so much for this post. It’s exactly what I needed and probably saved me hours of frustration.
Thank you – I was also struggling with this.
I totally agree. This is not intuitive:
1. Choose Crop tool and drag area.
2. Click Crop tool again to actually crop.
Why on earth they didn’t do normal action & apply:
1. Choose Crop tool and drag area.
2. Click apply / save what ever to accept the cropping.
Hair maddening stuff, I’m in process of creating WP network for one client and non-intuitive stuff in UI causes just unnecessary support phone calls.
Well, this SOMETIMES works for me and sometimes it doesn’t work. Some of the times I hit the crop button in Step 8 and not a darn thing happens. Can you explain that?
Worked awesome, once I figured out what the hell I was doing! Thanks for the tut
Agree. Totally unintuitive! Got to step 8 and crop is still greyed out so I can’t crop….what am I doing wrong now?
Thanks for sharing this. You’re right, it’s not intuitive in the slightest! You’ve saved me a lot of headaches.