You have a good photo of your team, or of a finished job, and you want it on the Services page next to the paragraph that describes it. You open the page, click about, and either nothing obvious happens or the photo lands at full width in the wrong place, with the text stranded below it.
Once you know where the settings are, it takes a minute to add an image to a WordPress page, put it where you meant it to go, let the text sit beside it and make it link somewhere useful. If your page is built with Elementor or another builder, the ideas are the same but the buttons differ; there is a note on that near the end.
Before you start
- Prepare the file. Resize it to roughly the width it will be shown at and compress it. A photo straight off a phone is far bigger than any page needs.
- Give it a sensible file name.
team-kolkata-office.jpgis easier to find later thanIMG_4471.jpg. - Know which editor the page uses. Open the page from Pages → All Pages and click its title. If you see blocks and a plus button, you are in the block editor. If you see “Edit with Elementor” or a similar button, the page belongs to a builder.
How the Library, featured images and image sizes relate to each other is laid out in our overview of how WordPress handles images and files. This post sticks to placing one picture on one page.
How to add an image to a WordPress page, step by step
- Open the page in the editor and click where the image should go, for example at the end of the paragraph before it.
- Press Enter to start a new block, then click the + button (or type
/imageand press Enter). - Choose Image. An empty Image block appears with three choices: Upload, Media Library and Insert from URL.
- Pick your source (more on the three below). The photo appears in the block.
- Fill in the Alternative text in the block settings on the right. If the sidebar is hidden, click the settings icon at the top right of the screen.
- Click Save draft, or Save if the page is already published (older versions label that button Update), then view the page to check it.
A quicker route works too: drag the file from your computer and drop it between two paragraphs. WordPress uploads it and creates the Image block in one go.
Upload, Media Library or URL?
Upload sends a file from your computer into the Media Library and places it. Use it for a new photo.
Media Library opens the window of everything already uploaded. Use it when the photo is already on the site, so you do not create a second copy. You can search by file name or title at the top of that window.
Insert from URL shows an image that lives on another website, without copying it to yours. It looks convenient, but if that site moves or deletes the file, your page shows a broken image, and you may be using a picture you have no right to use. Recent versions of the editor add an Upload to Media Library button to the toolbar for such an image; if you have permission to use the picture, copying it into your own Library that way is safer.
Placing it: alignment and size
Select the image and look at the toolbar that floats above it. The Align button offers options such as None, Align left, Align center, Align right, and in many themes Wide width and Full width. Which ones appear depends on your theme.
- None or Align center puts the image on its own line, with text above and below.
- Wide and Full width let the picture spread beyond the normal text column. Good for a single strong photo; poor for a small one, which will look stretched.
- Align left or Align right floats the image to one side so the following text flows beside it.
For size, the sidebar has Width and Height boxes, an Aspect ratio choice and, for images from the Library, a Resolution menu with Thumbnail, Medium, Large and Full Size. Resolution picks which of the copies WordPress made is actually loaded. For a floated image beside text, Medium is often enough; for a wide photo, Large or Full Size. Dragging the blue handles on the image also resizes how it is shown, but not the file being loaded.
Wrapping text around the image
This is the part that trips people up. Text only wraps around an image that is aligned left or right, and only the blocks that come after the image wrap around it.
- Place the Image block directly above the paragraph you want beside it.
- Choose Align left or Align right.
- Make the image narrower than the column, for example with Medium resolution or a width of about a third to half the column.
- Preview on a phone. On a narrow screen, a floated photo can squeeze the text into a strip a few words wide. If it does, centre the image instead, or use another layout.
If you want the picture and text side by side in a neat block that stacks on mobile, the Media & Text block is often better than floating. The walkthrough of the Media & Text block shows how to set it up.
Making the image link somewhere
A photo of a product can link to its page; a logo of a partner can link to their site. Select the image and click the Link button in its toolbar. Depending on your version, you will see options to link to the image file or the attachment page, a box for any address you type, and Enlarge on click, which opens a larger view over the same page (some earlier versions called it Expand on click).
- For a link to another page, type or search for it, and turn on “Open in new tab” only if leaving your site is genuinely what the visitor wants.
- For a larger view, Enlarge on click is usually nicer than linking to the bare image file, which strands the visitor on a blank screen. Our post on the click-to-enlarge lightbox explains how it works.
- When an image is a link, write the alt text to describe where it goes, not just what it shows.
Captions and finishing touches
To add visible text under the picture, click Add caption in the image’s toolbar (or click just below the image) and type. Keep it short and useful, such as who is pictured or where the job was. Under Styles in the sidebar, most themes offer Default and Rounded corners. Duotone and other filters appear in some themes; use them sparingly on photos of people or products.
Alt text deserves more than a moment’s thought. The way to write it, and what to do with purely decorative images, is in our guide to adding alt text to images in WordPress.
Classic editor and page builders
If your site still uses the Classic Editor plugin, you place the cursor in the text and click Add Media above the toolbar. In the window that opens you choose the file, set alignment, a “Link To” option and a size in the right-hand column, then click Insert into page.
In Elementor and similar builders, you drag an Image widget into a section and choose the file in its settings panel. Alignment, size and link live in that panel rather than in a toolbar. Changes are saved with the builder’s own save or publish button, not the WordPress one.
The rest of this post assumes the block editor. The other jobs that come with running the site, from settings to users, are mapped out in our complete WordPress guide.
When it goes wrong, and how to undo it
- Wrong image or wrong place: press Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on a Mac) to undo, or select the block and use Replace in its toolbar to pick another file.
- Image vanished after saving: open the page’s revisions from the sidebar and compare. Usually the block was deleted by accident.
- Upload fails: the file is too large for your server or in a format WordPress does not accept. Resize it, save it as a JPEG, and try again.
- Looks blurry: the Resolution is set to a small copy, or the original was small to begin with. Choose a larger Resolution or upload a bigger original.
Frequently asked questions
Can I put two images side by side on a WordPress page?
Yes. The simplest way is a Columns block with an Image block in each column, or a Row block containing two images. The Gallery block also works if you want several photos in a grid with matching spacing. On phones, columns normally stack, so each picture ends up full width one above the other.
Why does my image show at a different size on the live page than in the editor?
The editor tries to match your theme, but not always perfectly. The live page uses your theme’s content width, its own spacing and sometimes its own image rules, so an image can look larger or smaller once published. Always check the live page and a phone view after saving, and adjust the width setting if needed.
Does adding an image to a page attach it only to that page?
No. The file goes into the shared Media Library and can be used on any other page. WordPress records the page where it was first uploaded, but that is only a note in the Library list. Removing the block from the page does not delete the file from the Library.
Can I add an image inside a paragraph, in the middle of a sentence?
Yes, for very small images such as an icon. In a Paragraph block, use the down arrow in the toolbar for more options and choose Inline image. It sits on the line like a word. For anything bigger than an icon, a separate Image block is easier to manage and looks better on phones.
A photo that refuses to sit where you put it, however you set the alignment, usually means the theme or builder is overriding the block, not that you did something wrong. Adjusting how a theme lays out images is the kind of change our WordPress theme customization service deals with.
Next in this series: How to Add Alt Text in WordPress, and What to Write
