Step 2: Your photos

Do all your uploading now, in one sitting. Every step after this one asks you to pick a photo, and picking is quick when the photo is already there.

Go to Content, then Media. Media has the full steps.

The checklist

1. Upload the lot

Put every photo you might use on the site into the library at once. You can pick many files in one go.

Photos straight off a phone are fine. A big photo takes longer to upload, and that is all. A small one cannot be fixed later, so send the big one.

Media walks through Upload to Library.

2. Describe each one

Alt text is a short line saying what is in the picture. It is read out to people who cannot see it, and search engines read it too.

Click a file in the library, type the words in Alt Text, and click Save. A few plain words are plenty: “A new white kitchen with a wooden worktop”.

Important

Write the alt text now, before the photo goes on a page.

The words are copied onto the page when you pick the photo. Change them later and the pages that already use it keep the old wording. Media explains how to fix that.

3. Group them into albums

An album is a set of photos shown together: one job, one year, one kind of work.

Open Gallery and you will find one album named EXAMPLE. It holds no photos, but its name is on your Gallery page for anyone to read.

• Open that album, rename it for a customer, and put your photos in it.
• Or move it to the Trash and start your own with Add New.
• Write a caption on each photo.
• Click Publish.

Name an album the way a customer would say it. “Kitchen fitted in Fairhaven” beats “batch 3”.

4. Folders, if you have them

Some sites have a Media Folders screen under Plugins. It keeps one job or one year together. If it is not in your menu, skip this and nothing is missing. See Media Folders.

Warning

Do not delete a file from the library to tidy up.

Nothing checks where a file is used first. If a page is showing it, that page is left with a broken picture, and the Trash cannot bring the file back.

An unused file costs you nothing. Leave it.

What done looks like

Click View Site, then open your Gallery page.

• Your work is on it, in albums with names a customer understands.
• Every photo you plan to use is in the library.
• Every one of them has alt text.

Next: Step 3: Choose your colors.