Save Lots Of Server Storage In WordPress

I have been working with WordPress for the last six years and it has been a pleasant ride for most of the time. WordPress offers a lot, considering that it is free to use and I occasionally discover something new. This time it is how to save lots of server storage space in WordPress.
WordPress, as you may know, comes with capabilities to upload media, which in particular means images and photos. What many users do not know is that WordPress generates up to three additional resized images for each image uploaded. This depends on the size of the image.
WordPress generates a thumbnail image with a resolution of 150x150, a medium sized image with a maximum resolution of 300x300 pixels and a large image with a maximum resolution of 1024x1024.
If the uploaded image is larger than 1024 in width or height, then all three image resolutions are generated. That's a lot of additional storage space, considering that not all of those images are usually used in articles on the site.
If you have access to the server where WordPress is hosted, you can take a look at the wp-content/uploads/year/month directory to see that there are multiple resolutions available for each image that got uploaded in the past. Take a look at this screenshot for example.
If you look at the screenshot you notice that there are two and once even three copies of the original image on the server. In Ghack's case, the 1024 resolution is not used at all, wasting a total of 438 Kilobytes in this example alone. And that's only for one of the more than 9000 articles on this side. You can do the calculation but this seems like an awful lot of wasted storage space on the server.
So what can you do to reduce the number of copies that get generated during upload?
WordPress Image Generation
WordPress image generation is handled on the Settings > Media page in the WordPress admin interface.
If you visit the page you will notice three different image sizes that can be configured. These three image sizes are linked directly to the copies that get generated during media uploads.
Now for the tweak: Images will not be resized if you delete the size information in both the width and height fields. For example, if you only need a medium sized image with a maximum width and / or height of 500 then you can remove the resolutions from the thumbnail size and large size fields. If you do that, they will no longer be generated during media uploads. This reduces the number of files generated from a maximum of three to only one, which in turn means that a lot of space is saved on the server's hard drive.
You need to assess your situation first before you make changes. Some WordPress themes make use of thumbnails and display them on the frontpage and individual pages of the blog. If that is the case the thumbnail generation needs to stay. It is usually still possible to remove either the medium or large size to reduce the storage space per uploaded image.
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Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.