Media File Size upload issues

  • I have a wordpress site hosted on GoDaddy. I have several images I want to upload. For test purposes, I have an image that I have resampled to various sizes (pixel dimensions). The sizes are 1000x, 2000x, 3000x, and 4000x on the longest side.

    The files sized 1000x, 2000x, and 3000x all upload fine. The file sized 4000x throws an error on upload, with WP suggesting the file is too large (though it does not exceed the 32MB file size limit set by PHP on the site). Despite this error, the file DOES upload and shows in the gallery (and in the file system of the host).

    TWO questions:

    1. in my settings/media page, I have the defaults set (thumbnail 150x, medium 300x, and large 1024x). Clearly, these settings seem to have no effect on the actual files I’m able to upload, so what is the purpose of this ‘settings/media’ page?
    2. When I look in the actual file system on the server in the uploads folder, for every image I upload, I see SEVERAL images created. Eg, when I uploaded the file that was 2000x, the result was SIX files, with the following appended to the file names – 1024×768, 150×150, 1536×1152, 300×225, 768×576, and finally the original file. When I uploaded the file that was 3000x, I got the same six files as above, PLUS one with ‘scaled’ appended. That’s a LOT of images from one original! What process is creating all these alternatives? While these alternatives exist in the file system, the ‘media gallery’ shows only the one image. When I placed the image in a post, it was the ‘Scaled’ one that got used; I have no control over this. Interestingly, when I uploaded the 4000x version, I only got THREE file variants – 225x300x, ‘scaled’, and original.
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  • Thread Starter steerpike58

    (@steerpike58)

    I did some further research and found that when an image is uploaded to WP, a pair of entries get made in the ‘post_meta’ table. The ‘_wp_attached_file’ meta_key gets meta_value’ of the ‘scaled’ version of the file (so that’s the ‘primary’ image reference) and the ‘_wp_attachment_metadata’ meta_key gets a reference to the 225×300 version and the ‘scaled’ version, but NOT the original. So even though the 4000x version was uploaded, it looks like it is never referenced within the database and so is a huge waste of space. Am I understanding this correctly?

    It seems like the logic is – upload the file; create multiple size variants; reference ‘most’ of those variants in the ‘wp_attachment_metadata’ entry, but not the ones over 2560x in size.

    I’m really curious where the logic is that decides what size variants to spin off!

    thank you

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