How to Regenerate Thumbnails in WordPress
There are several common situations when we find ourselves in dire needs of thumbnail regeneration. Let’s say, for example, that you and your colleagues have been editing a post and can’t seem to agree on which image to use. You upload an image to the Media Library under one name, then you remove it and upload a new one, but use the same name. Someone comes along, complains the image is all wrong, takes it off and uploads the third image, again with the same name. What happens is that the system gets confused as to which picture is the right one and, instead of the latest picture, it displays the previous one.
Clearing the cache might help here, in addition to speeding up your website and improving its overall performance. Alternatively, you could regenerate your thumbnails to prevent such confusing situations from happening.
Another great use of the regenerate functionality is for when you change themes. Say you’ve recently switched to a whole different WordPress theme. Going through your website, you realize that some of the thumbnail images for your old posts are all wrong, distorted or displayed incorrectly. This happens if the new theme has different image ratios and dimensions than your previous theme. Some of the images may be saved in new dimensions and sizes, which may be quite different from your old theme. To fix this issue, you need to regenerate new image sizes and dimensions for all of your old, previously uploaded images.
Regenerate Thumbnails Plugin
That’s where the excellent Regenerate Thumbnails plugin comes in. Thanks to this cool little solution, you can fix all of your image display issues discussed above. In addition to the two situations described earlier, this plugin is of great use also when you add new thumbnail dimensions and you want all of your previous uploads to conform to those new dimensions. And, you can use it with both the old Classic Editor and the new Gutenberg one.
How to Use the Plugin
1. First, you’ll need to install the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin. Go to Plugins and click on Add New:
2. Search for Regenerate Thumbnails. When you find it, click on Install button.
3. When you have installed the plugin, you should activate it by clicking the Activate button.
4. Once it’s been activated, you can find in the menu on the left side, under Tools settings.
5. Click this button to regenerate all thumbnails:
6. And – wait for it! You shouldn’t upload any photos until regenerate is done. This may take some time, depending on the number of images you’re working with.
Conclusion
That’s about everything you need to know about regenerating thumbnails. As you can see, this WordPress plugin can be used in many different situations and works with Classic Editor and Gutenberg alike. This definitely makes it one of the more useful WordPress plugins on the market.
We hope that you found this article to be helpful. If you liked it, please feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
