‘Help! I’ve run out of media storage space on my blog and can no longer upload new photos, images or videos. What can I do?’
That was a question to me from Micheal, who blogs at Spo-Reflections.
Michael was happy to upgrade his WordPress plan to obtain more media space, but there are other things you could do if you find your blog running out of media space.
1. Upgrade your plan.
WordPress currently offers 6 plans.
The amount of media storage space you get varies. Click the following link to see the plans – ‘There Is A Plan For You.’ Pricing is correct at the time of publication of this post.
Each plan provides the following media storage space.
| Name of plan | Storage Amount |
| Free | 1GB |
| Personal | 6GB |
| Premium | 13GB |
| Business | 200GB |
| Commerce | 200GB |
| Enterprise | N/A |
However, only upgrade your WordPress plan if you absolutely need to. Do not get into debt by upgrading unless you can afford it, as there are other things you can do to free up media storage space.
2. Resize the size of your images and photos.
One of the biggest reasons bloggers run out of media space is that they do not resize their images and photos before uploading them to their media library.
There are several ways you can reduce the size of images and photos. You can reduce them using photo editing software or via the tools of your device you use to blog.
I use an Apple iMac and can change the size of photos and images by clicking on Tools – Adjust size on the menubar of my desktop computer. I do this before uploading them to my WordPress media library.
I recommend reducing image and photo sizes to 900 x 675 pixels.
On a Windows computer, you can use Microsoft Paint. Open your image with that program, then click on Resize. You can find this option on the middle-right side of the “Image” section at the top of the Paint window.
The WordPress media library also has editing software, but please note that if you reduce the size of an image or photo using this tool, the original image is kept in your media library when you reduce the size of the picture – thus, you won’t have freed up any storage space.
Large images can also slow down your blog’s downloading speed, negatively impacting your blog’s search engine rankings and overall user experience. So, I recommend you always reduce the size of images and photos before uploading them to your blog.
3. Do not upload videos to your media library.
If you include videos in your blog posts, uploading them to your media library can take up vast amounts of space.
To overcome this problem and free up all the space they take up, upload your videos to YouTube. Then add the YouTube block to your blog post and include the link to the video in the block.
Do this for any existing videos you have in your media library. Upload them to YouTube and add them via the YouTube block before deleting the original from your media library. This will free up large amounts of storage in your media library.
4. Delete images from your media library.
We can accumulate vast amounts of images and photos in our media library, many of which will become redundant.
Deleting these images will free up storage space. However, when you delete any images or photos in your media library, they disappear from the blog posts they appear on.
My blog post, ‘Are Your Old Blog Posts Damaging Your Blog? How To Stop It From Happening’ details why bloggers should delete old blog posts.
Deleting old, redundant blog posts containing images, photos, and videos frees up storage space. However, delete any images, photos and videos in your media library before deleting the posts.
If you’re unsure whether a post should be deleted, read my post, ‘Are Your Old Blog Posts Damaging Your Blog? How To Stop It From Happening,’ for advice.
5. Reduce the number of images and photos you add to blog posts.
While I recommend adding at least one image or photo to a blog post (because blog posts containing images get up to 70% more traffic), reducing the number of images and pictures will help save media space.
Before adding more images or photos, ask yourself if adding them to your post is necessary.
Let’s wrap it up.
- Resize your images and photos before uploading them to your blog’s media library.
- Upload videos to YouTube and use the YouTube block to show them on your blog posts.
- Delete old images and photos from your media library, but remember to remove them from any posts first.
- Do not resize images using tools in the media library, as this does not save storage space.
- Consider deleting old blog posts that are no longer relevant.
- Reduce the number of images and photos on blog posts. Ask yourself if they’re necessary.
How do you free up storage space in your blog’s media library? If you have any questions about this post, leave them in the comments section.
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I love your site, Hugh. I can see myself spending all day here reading tips and tricks with WP. lol
Thank you for directing me to this article. It answered some questions I had.
Right now, I’m self-hosted and I love the freedom I have, but I’m often hit with fees and upgrades and things from my hosting service. It’s getting old and expensive. I’ve toyed around with the idea of coming back to wp .com instead of wp .org. But I’m afraid to give up the control I have over what theme I use. I really like how my site looks, but I really am getting to the point I can’t afford it. My renewal is in January of 2025, so I have a little time to think.
Would love your opinion, if you’re able. Thank you. :)
Thanks so much for the excellent feedback about my blog, Kymber.
It’s difficult for me to give an opinion about self-hosting Vs WordPress,com as I have never had a self-host blog. WordPress does have a lot of themes available on wp.com, but it depends on which WordPress plan you have as to how many are included; otherwise you have to pay for many of them. I also like that WordPress takes care of everything for me if anything goes wrong. When things have, I’ve always found the folk at WordPress very helpful.
It’s a tough decision you have, but at least you have another 10 months before you have to make one.
Thank you, Hugh. I see what you mean about not having had a self-hosted site before. One thing I miss about wp .com is how they take care of problems. I deal with a lot of things sometimes, being self-hosted, that I don’t understand. My hosting service has been helpful… if you catch the right person. I’ve sometimes had a problem and been told I have to pay x amount of dollars to fix it. But when I go back and speak to someone else, they just fix the problem and tell me there is no charge. So, I’ve learned to always get another opinion. They’re easy to get a hold of, which is a plus. But so were the happiness engineers when I was on wp .com.
I’m glad I have some time to think about this. Thank you for such a quick response.
You’re welcome, Kymber.
It’s good to hear that your host provider offers good service. Sometimes, getting the right person can be what it is all about when trying to get a problem fixed. i see too many bloggers having meltdowns when things go wrong, often before stepping back and thinking more about what may be causing the problem. In my experience it can sometimes be the user who is to blame, not the provider.
Yes, I agree with that, for sure.
I now upload all my full-size photo images to a free Flickr account. Then you can insert the url of a photo on Flickr into your blog post as a link. The image appears when you publish, and does not affect your space allowance on WP. As a bonus, anyone interested can view the full-size image on Flickr by clicking on it, and enlarge it greatly on that link.
Best wishes, Pete.
That’s another great way of saving media storage space, Pete. I think there is a Flickr block too. I’ll have to look into it.
Thank you!!! I saw this on D.G. Kaye’s blog. Great tips.
I’m glad they’ve helped. Thanks for coming over from Debby’s blog.
My pleasure!
Good tips, Hugh. My blogs are self-hosted but I try to remember to size images before uploading so I don’t have the problem. The host I use is one of the best and fastest.
Does your self-hosted company limit how much storage your media library has, John?
If they do, I’ve never reached it. :) Haven’t been putting up as many on the heaviest image site Eagle Peak Press in quite awhile. I have three blogs. I’ll get a test soon on the writing blog.
Very helpful as always Hugh :)
Thanks, Debby.
This is helpful Hugh. I do have a lot of images in my posts because they accompany the walks I take and long walks = lots of photos. I have used 9.3 of my 13 GB space … so I have to go to a “business level” or “commerce level” eventually to get the 200GB? Is that feasible as a personal blogger?
It’s down to you to decide if an upgrade is feasible, Linda. But what I would recommend is that you try the other options in this post before upgrading to see if you can free up any space.
I’m glad the post was helpful.
Hi Hugh,
I didn’t know there was a YouTube block. I usually copy and paste the YouTube link of my videos into my blog posts and that automatically adds the movie as well.
My travel posts are very heavy on photos. They often contain 50-100 resized photos. I’ve been blogging with WordPress since 2015 at the rate of approximately one post a week and I’ve never had media storage issues. I’m on a self-hosted blog, though… Not sure if that makes a difference. It must.
If that’s why I can keep adding thousands of photos, it might be a solution to switch to a self-hosted blog to create more space?
Hi Liesbet,
I guess it depends on the types of plans available for self-hosted blogs and the cost of them. I’d recommend bloggers who find themselves running out of media storage space first try some of the other options I have recommended in this post.
I’ve heard pros and cons for both self-hosted and WordPress.com blogs. I know of a few bloggers you have switched back between the two. I wouldn’t consider a self-hosted blog, but I know bloggers who love the freedom they bring.
This is most helpful, Hugh. I use Squoosh to compress images before I upload them to WP. I also regularly clean my media library, which is tedious because some images are used more than one time. If I delete old posts, I always find the image in the media library and delete it, as well, as long as it is not attached to another post.
You sound like you have all of this under control., Eugi. Well done. Most bloggers never house-keep their media library, resulting in them running of of storage.
I learned the hard way, Hugh. I use a lot of images and was running out of room.
Learning the hard way is often all about finding the correct way, Eugi.
Yes, I agree, Hugh.
Thanks for the tips, Hugh.
You’re welcome, Norah.
I could have sworn I got more space when I resized many of my giant hog images, Hugh, but yes, you are quite right that it adds more space. I likely saw the space expand when I deleted a bunch of old outdated images and posts. Because I host a photo challenge, I reuse some of my images for examples. Those I resize so they don’t hinder the viewer’s experience by loading too slowly. I pay for the premium package and to me, it’s worth it.
I use Picmonkey premium for my photo editing. Once I’ve edited everything to my liking, I download them to my WP media files and to my Dropbox for use on a Facebook Photo group I belong to. Having great photos on our blogs is important.
Excellent tips, Hugh!
When you resize an existing image within the media library, WordPress creates a link to the original, Terri. You can no longer see the original image, but you’ll see a link saying ‘revert to original’, hence it’s kept the bigger image (just in case you want to go back to it).
I agree that having good quality images and photos on a blog post is a must. Poor quality images do nothing but put people off from revisiting.
What would be nice is for WP to give us access to all image files to do what we want with them.
By the way, I sent my opinions back to WP about the extra steps to have links appear in a new window. So far doing the extra steps aren’t bad, just 3 more clicks.
I agree. It would be so much easier to be able to delete that bigger image and to get rid of the ‘revert to original’ link.
I agree about the new steps to get to the ‘open in new tab’ setting. It is a few more clicks, but easy once you know how to get to it. It’s coming naturally to me now, Terri. I don’t have to second guess.
Yep, adding the links aren’t too bad now. 3 more clicks. It could be worse! Our blogs are a lot of work, LOL!
I do most of these things. But I have two questions:
1. Can you reduce the size of your pictures after you have uploaded them to the blog’s media library?
2. If you have duplicate photos, if you delete some of them, will they be deleted from the blog they were on? (ie I have a number of photos of my book covers in my media library and would like to delete some of them but am worried they will then be deleted from the post they were featured)
Yes, you can resize images and photos after you have uploaded them into your media library, but the original image is also kept, so you’ll be using up even more storage space. It’s not something I advise you to do, unless you have loads of free storage space left.
Any images or photos you delete will be removed from the posts you have attached them to. If you need to remove the duplicates, I’d recommend creating a new image and replacing all the duplicates with the new image. Once you have done this, you can delete all the duplicates.
Related to this, I have duplicate images on my blog because sometimes, I have to scroll back months or years in the media library to find the image.
Is there any way to organise the media library other than by the date the image was uploaded? This would really help!
I think I’ve just thought of one solution, which is to make reusable blocks of my book images. That way, I could keep using the same image.
Any other tips would be more than welcome!
I recommend giving every image or photo you upload a name and a description. Then, use the search bar in the media library to search for photos and images. I do this to all my images and photos, and it helps me locate ones I want to reuse.
I’ve written about reusable blocks. They are a great time-saver. Here’s a link to the post.
Thanks! That makes sense.
Thanks for the Black Friday tip, Hugh.
I have four years worth of pictures uploaded. I’ve only recently on your advice resized them to smaller file sizes.
Though it will take some time, I’m tempted to go back and resize some of these very large file sizes. (5-20 megs)
Where are you resizing the images, Kevin?
I’d resize from my originals on my hard drive.
Upload them to WordPress.
Remove the large files from WordPress media which should also remove them from the affected blog post.
Then install my new, smaller sized pictures into each of those posts.
Boy that sounds like a lot of work already. 😂 But at the other end it’s money saved.
Good to hear you are resizing them before uploading them to your WordPress media library. And it’s good to hear you are replacing those larger images with smaller ones. It may seem like a lot of work, but think of all that media storage space (and money) you’re saving.
I need to do this as well.
Hmmm… Thoughtful and informative. I’m new. Well, not brand new. I’ve been here a couple of months now. I have a premium package. Didn’t realize there’s such a huge difference between that and the business package though. I’ll keep these points in mind. Some stuff I want to upload is in PNG format which can be big files. Perhaps I should consider an alternative…
I’d recommend resizing any images before uploading them to your media library. The majority of mine are 900 x 675 pixels, and the quality is still excellent.
Only upgrade if it’s absolute necessary for you to do so. Last year, WordPress slashed the price of all their plans on Black Friday. I got an extra 40% off, so it may be worth waiting until then if you do want to upgrade.
You caught me. I thought you’d run out of space – should have known better. Great tips Hugh. I’m not bad at resizing my photos and I do try to keep the site “tidy” by deleting old posts and related images
Great to hear, Brenda.
Resizing images and photos is always best done before uploading them to your blog. Good to also hear you’ve no fear in deleting posts that are no longer relevant or are outdated. Don’t forget, though, that you still need to remove any images and photos included in those posts from your media library, as deleting the post does not remove them.
I will. Thanks Hugh. I am considering upgrading, but not because of the media allowance. As you say, there are better ways to manage capacity.
There are, Brenda. I’d always consider one of the options in this post first before upgrading to get more, storage.
Great recommendations Hugh for freeing up storage space for your blog and these tips do help your website to not suffer from unavailability of space. For me, I have never uploaded videos on my media library which is why I always have space because videos take up vast amounts of space yet images on the other hand have less space and can be resized videos need editing only💯📲
Thank you.
I would not recommend anyone uploading videos to their blog. They take up far too much space. And images and photos should always be resized before uploading them to your blog. Otherwise, not only do they take up lots of storage space, but they also slowdown the downloading of your blog.
Thanks for these useful tips
You’re welcome.