Images and alt text

In this post, I will look at adding alt text when uploading images, as well as adding them after they have already been embedded.

Alt text can be added to images in the following ways:

  1. Added during the initial upload process (best!)
  2. Added directly to a post after the upload
  3. Added to the media library after upload
    This change will NOT apply alt text to any posts/pages that already include the image. It will only be applied to future uses of the image.

Alt text not added upon upload

The following two images illustrate what happens if you change or add alt text in the Media Library, after the image has already been added to a post/page.

  1. To start, no alt text was added at the time of upload. The image was added to the post without any alt text to start. I later updated the alt text in the Media library to show “First Mate Piggy”.
  2. The first image includes alt text that I manually added to the instance of the image in this post, after the upload process had already been completed, “Alt text added after”.
  3. The second image includes the alt text that had been added in the Media library (“First Mate Piggy”) – all subsequent additions of this image will have this as the default alt text.
Alt text added after
First Mate Piggy

NextGen Gallery plugin

This plugin is used to add new gallery and image display functionality. Note that it does not work with the WordPress Media library – it is its own separate library.

Next Gen block: Basic image browser

DSC2813

Image 1 of 5

Next Gen block: Basic Thumbnails

Next Gen block: Slideshow

Next Gen block: Tag Cloud

Featured image

This post’s featured image is actually a NextGen featured image, with an image pulled from a NextGen gallery (instead of the WP Media Library).