6. Your images
Images are compressed automatically when you upload them, so you never need to shrink a photo first. Upload the good version — the site handles the rest.
Photographs are usually the heaviest thing on a website, and heavy pages load slowly. Your site deals with this for you.
6.1 What happens when you upload a photo
It is compressed automatically — made smaller to download without looking worse — and resized versions are generated so phones receive a phone-sized image rather than a full desktop one. None of this needs starting; it happens as the file lands.
6.2 What is yours to do
- Upload the good version. Straight from your camera or phone is fine. You do not need to shrink it first, and you should not email it to yourself to make it smaller — that quietly ruins the quality.
- Give the file a sensible name before uploading.
lavender-harvest-2026.jpghelps people find you in search;IMG_4471.jpgdoes nothing. - Describe the picture in the alt text box when the site offers it. It is read aloud to visitors using screen readers, and search engines use it too. One plain sentence is plenty.
6.3 One thing worth avoiding
Do not upload enormous files — a 40-megapixel photo or a print-resolution PDF — for something displayed small. The site will cope, but the upload will crawl. Anything up to a few megabytes is comfortable.
6.4 If an image looks wrong
If a photo appears stretched, blurry, or cropped oddly, that is usually the shape of the original rather than a fault. Send it to us and say where it should go — reworking an image so it sits properly is quick for us and fiddly for you.
Still stuck?
You have a steward, not a ticket queue. Reach out and a real person from the valley will answer.