How To Upload Files To Your WordPress Site

There comes a time in every WordPress users life that they will need to upload a file to their website. From images, videos, or even PDF documents, there needs to be a way to get them on your server. Thankfully, this is a pretty simple and straightforward task. WordPress makes it easy for anyone to upload files to their site, and we’re going to show you how.

There are two main methods for uploading files onto your WordPress site. The first is using the built in dashboard to upload files directly to the site.

Login to your website’s administrator backend. Once logged in, use the navigation menu on the left and hover over the menu item labeled “media”. Click on the submenu item labeled “add new”. This will direct you to a page that allows you to upload all your media files.

Simply click the “Select Files” button in the middle of the “Upload New Media” section to select the files from your hard drive that you want to upload to the site. It’s really as simple as that. Using this method is a great way to upload a lot of files to the site at one time. By default WordPress allows you to “bulk upload”, making it easy to upload tons of images and files all at the same time in one action.

One word of caution to note however. Many web hosts put limits on the size that file uploads can be. This limit not only applies to mass file uploads, but when attempting to upload a single file that is over their allotted amount. If this is the case with your site, simply contacting your web host provider can clear things up. If you’re not using shared hosting and are on a VPS (virtual private server), you can check our previous article on how to increase the max upload file size in WordPress to fix this yourself.

The second method we’re going to look at today how to upload files to your server using FTP. If you’ve never heard of FTP before don’t worry, it’s pretty simple. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It’s a standard networking protocol for the transmission and transfer of files from one computer to another.

Unlike the previous method of using the built in WordPress dashboard, in order to use FTP, users must have an FTP client. While you can get away with running a website without using  FTP, if you ever plan on doing any serious customizations to your site, or writing custom code  to enhance it’s functionality, knowing how to use FTP to upload files is going to be crucial.

The image above is of a highly popular and open source FTP client called FileZilla. You can grab a copy of the client by heading over to filezilla-project.org. Using this client, you simply input your website’s hostname, your username, and password into top section of the client. Don’t know what information to use? Your website’s hostname is the name of your website or it’s ip address. For the username and password, simply login to your cpanel (assuming you’re using a shared host) and find the section labeled FTP to create the necessary login credentials.

After you’re logged in, you can click the button at the top labeled “Quickconect”. Looking back at our above image, the left side of the program shows your local computer and file system. This is where you select the files you wish to upload to your website. The right side of the client is very similar, with the only difference being that instead of your local computer, it represents your web server or website.

To upload files to your host, simply select the files on your local computer (you can select multiple by highlighting or holding down ctrl and left clicking) then right click and select upload. It’s really pretty simple and straightforward.

So now you have two methods in your arsenal for uploading files to your website. Which method is better than the other? Well it really comes down to personal preference. For uploading images in bulk, I personally prefer using the built in WordPress dashboard. If I’m editing code or writing plugins, well FTP is the way to go. If you need help uploading files to WordPress, contact the team at Chillybin today.