How to manage the URLs of the images of your WordPress blog

How to manage the URLs of the images of your WordPress blog?

Images are part of the media we use most in our articles. The problem with the media is that they are not always easy to handle especially when changing servers.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to update the URLs of your images on WordPress.

But before, if you have never installed WordPress discover How to Install a WordPress Blog in 7 Steps et How to search, install and activate a WordPress theme on your blog 

Then back to why we are here.

How to update the URLs of images on WordPress

This is one of the most common mistakes we see among some WordPress users.

What happens if the url of the website changes?

But first, we need to understand when a website URL is likely to change. Here are the three most common scenarios.

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1 - Move to a new domain name

The website URL is updated when you change the domain name. For example, Moz was previously known as SEOMoz. With their new brand, they had to update all URLs of existing images, PDF files, affiliate links, etc… from seomoz.com to moz.com.

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2 - Modifying the WordPress installation folder

The website URL also changes when you change the location of your WordPress installation folder. In fact, this is one of the most common cases.

WordPress installs in a default directory called blog. Many of the early WordPress users end up leaving the WordPress installation in example.com/blog. 

Only then realize that they want to move WordPress to the root folder i.e. example.com.

Once WordPress is moved to the root directory, the website URL changes from "example.com/blog" to "example.com". Any image, PDF (or any multimedia file) would look like this:

• ANCIENT: example.com/blog/ebook.pdf
• NEW: example.com/ebook.pdf

3 - Change between development and production servers

This is common on high traffic blogs or eCommerce websites where any mistakes lead to lower conversions. Migrating to a production server from a development server can be very straightforward if you are using managed hosting such as WPEngine or Flywheel.

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The problem occurs when someone uploads an image or links to a post using the development server URL. When you upload your website to the production server, the links from the development server are used for images that have been uploaded to the staging server environment.

Therefore, this should ideally be avoided. If you think people have added images to your development server (staging), You can apply what we offer you.

What are we trying to solve?

Now that we know when a WordPress website URL can be changed, let us see an example where there is a possibility of error. If the links that were generated automatically (such as affiliate links) do not present any problem.

However, links that have been added manually in articles and pages (such as internal links, image links, etc.…) Must be updated manually. 

We all use images in our posts and pages. A typical example of an image link is:

Http: //mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/annee/mois/nom-dimage.png

When the URL of your WordPress website changes, the source links for all images should also change to:

Http: //nouveausite.com/wp-content/annee/mois/nom-dimage.png

In this case, all images, all links (including inter-post links, multimedia files, PDF files, etc.) must be updated.

Okay, it looks like we've discussed the matter in depth. Now let's see how to fix the problem once and for all. As always, we have a WordPress plugin to help us out.

Velvet Blues Update URLs

First, download and install the plugin " Velvet Blues Update URLs ". For more details see our guide on How to install or add a plugin on WordPress

After activation, go to the page " Tools> Update URLs To configure the plugin settings.

Do you remember how we use the "Find and Replace" feature on Microsoft Word? Well, that's basically what the plugin does!

It finds the old URLs in the pages or articles and replaces them with the new URLs. This way the image links are updated on all of your articles.

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In addition, you can extend the functionality of the plugin to find and replace URLs on all links, snippets, attachments, custom fields, and metas.

Here are some examples of old URLs in your website:

• If you change servers, the old URL would be something like: "site.com"
• If you " modify / update The domain name, just use your new domain name.
• If you used 'https' as a protocol, replace'http' through 'https'.

In our example, we replaced the old URL of http://seomoz.com by https://moz.com. Once you have entered the old and new URLs, simply click on " Update URLs NOW ". The plugin scans all your articles and pages, applies the search and performs the replacement.

All your URLs will be updated.

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All you have to do is create the shortcode of the element to display, select the desired options, choose a WordPress theme and select one of the predefined color schemes, and the turn will be played.

This WordPress plugin is ideal for displaying and managing your testimonials as a responsive grid or as a dynamic slider.

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It is both a simple and very practical tool. When you connect to programs Amazon's Associates, get your affiliate id and fill it in the plugin. So, for each product, the plugin will check if it is available at the Amazon location you are logged into. This is how the Amazon Affiliates WooCommerce plugin works.

For example: You register for the program Amazon's Associates for Mexico, Canada and the United Kingdom. When a customer visits your website, on the product details page, they will be shown the availability of the product on the 3 websites ofAmazon. This way, your customers will know for sure whether a product is available or not.

In addition, you have 4 places on the product details page to display the availability box of a product in a country.

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 It has a free version that offers basic features, but its pro version boosts the performance of your website with the Lazy Load technique. You'll also be able to optimize it with Alt and Title attributes. 

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Its features are: rAutomatic filling of Alt and Title attributeslazy load support, the ooptimization of hypertext links, theupport images, thumbnails and other plugins, support multilingual, mautomatic updates et more ...

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