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When you use WordPress as your content management system, the default image option will generate three different sizes. With the right plugin or the right theme, you may be able to get between 5 and 10 sizes out or every image. This may seem like a non-issue, at first. However, as your site grows, the additional images sizes can help increase your site storage and make it easier to back up your files. Here’s a quick guide to help you prevent WordPress from automatically generating images sizes.

Preventing Automatically Generated Image Sizes in WordPress

Before we go any further with this topic, it’s necessary to explain that default images sizes used in WordPress don’t harm your website, whatsoever. When you sign up with a top WordPress hosting provider you will most likely get plenty of storage space for thousands of images.

These additional default image sizes also don’t have any effect on your visitor’s experience. The additional images are stored during the upload process, which doesn’t change the user experience at all. Make sure you’re not dealing with any of the common image issues before you adjust the WordPress defaults.

Now that we got that out of the way, if you still want to prevent WordPress from creating image sizes, you can easily do this. Most WordPress users will only want to do this if they have thousands of images and they are struggling to back the site with a backup plugin. When you have thousands of images, it can slow down your backup plugin, which isn’t a good thing.

You will have also have the option to disable only the sizes of images you don’t plan to use. This can help to save space and make the backup process run smoother.

How to Stop the Default WordPress Images Sizes from Generating

It all starts with a basic understanding of how many different image sizes are created when you upload an image to your WordPress blog. The default WordPress setting will create a thumbnail, medium and a large image size. Your WordPress theme may also create other image sizes for the post thumbnails, sliders, featured image and other theme features.

The easiest way to discover which sizes of each image are created is by connecting to your FTP client or using the cPanel file manager. Just go to the following folder:

/wp-content/uploads/

Here you will see the different image files, which are stored in year/month based directories.

It will be very easy to see how many different sizes are being generated by WordPress once you access this directory.

The easiest way to change the default settings for the number of images created by WordPress is to access the Settings >> Media area within your WordPress Dashboard.

Setting the sizes to “0” will prevent WordPress from creating the default image sizes.

If you use a gallery for your images, you may not want to adjust the settings for the thumbnail at all. This is the size used for your gallery and if you make an adjustment, it might cause your gallery to stop working properly.

The other sizes (medium and large) can be adjusted to another size, if you prefer. To completely delete these image sizes, you will need to the line in your theme size code, which looks like this:

This code is usually found in your Theme Functions or functions.php file. This is found within the Appearance >> Editor section of your WordPress Dashboard.

Simply remove the line of code for the image size you no longer want to be created.

Along with this code, you will need to find the code containing set_post_thumbnail_size in the same function.php file. It looks like this:

If you remove this line of code, WordPress will stop generating the post thumbnail size.

You may find that your theme creates many different sizes, such as sliders, custom post types, post thumbnail and others. You only want to remove the code for the sizes you don’t plan to use.

We hope this post provided the right information to help you prevent the default WordPress image sizes from generating. If you’d like to provide us with feedback or you have any questions, leave us a comment below or join us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

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