If you look after updating your own WordPress website, you’ve probably noticed that version 4.4 was launched recently (if you haven’t noticed, make sure you update today! WordPress updates often contain important security enhancements). There are a few new features (you can read about all the WordPress 4.4 features here if you’re interested) but one key feature has to do with responsive images.
What are responsive images?
A responsive website design is one that “responds” to each web browser’s window size and displays text and images (really, all content) as clearly as possible for all visitors to your website.
So if someone visits your website using their desktop computer and a large monitor, your website will look great and display your content in a clear, easy to navigate, easy to read format. If that person later visits your website using their iPhone, they should not have to “pinch” the screen in order to read your content—a responsive website design will automatically reformat the content so it is as easy to read on an iPhone as it is on a desktop computer (or laptop, or tablet, or…you get the idea).
As I’ve said in another post, having a responsive website design is also important for better ranking with Google search. In fact, your website will suffer in Google rankings if it is not mobile friendly.
How does WordPress 4.4 help with responsive images?
Regardless of your theme, every new image you add to a blog post or web page will now automatically be optimized to be responsive. You won’t need to do anything as WordPress 4.4 includes custom code to recognize your visitor’s screen size (based on their device) and then serve them the most optimized image.
When you upload a large image to your website, WordPress will still automatically create various sizes based on your settings. But with WordPress 4.4, you no longer need to set these smaller images for various screen widths (using CSS, for example); WordPress will look after this for you, automatically finding the most optimized size for each visitor’s device.
Why are responsive images important?
First of all, WordPress is the most popular platform on the web, so optimizing images means less cyber clutter.
More important for your business—since you want your web content to load as quickly as possible (especially on mobile devices)—having optimized responsive images means your website performance should see a noticeable improvement with WordPress 4.4.
And if your content loads faster, you’ll likely keep visitors on your website longer. Hopefully, that will result in more satisfied customers for you.
About Steady Digital
We provide a WordPress maintenance plan to ease concerns like:
- Is my website performing at peak performance so visitors get the best experience possible?
- Do I have regular backups of my website in case something happens to my web server?
- What if my website gets hacked?
- How can I get up-to-date, professional training so I can use my website better?
- Who can I trust to do the updates that are beyond my technical or creative abilities?
Tired of trying to maintain your own website? A WordPress maintenance plan might be the solution for you.
