Upload Images and Files

Adding an image or file is a lot like adding a new page or folder to the site:

1. Go to the proper folder (usually the Images folder) and click on the Add New . . . drop-down menu
2. Select Image or File from the menu
3. Next, you'll be taken to the edit screen for that content item
4. Fill in a Title and Description
5. For images, try to use the complete file name for the title (i.e. mypicture.jpg)
   
6. Browse to find the image or file on your hard drive
7. Push Save to finish

Tips for Preparing Images

Before you are ready to add a new image to your Plone website, you need to consider a couple of things. Many images, as you find them, are not ready to be uploaded and used online. Many are too big and must be resized or compressed before it is appropriate to include them on your website. Here are the three guidelines for preparing images:

1. How big is the image? This is the the actual dimensions of the image in pixels. For the most part, any image larger than 250 pixels square is going to be too big to include on a webpage. 150 pixels square is a typical size, good for staff photos and the like. To resize images, you'll have to use some type of image software like Photoshop or XnView.
2. What is the filesize of the image? This is how big the image file is in bytes, usually expressed as kilo- or mega- bytes. Images much larger than 50Kb are not recommended as they will make your site difficult to access for people using a dial-up internet connection. To make image files smaller, you may need to apply compression.
3. What format is the image in? This refers to the file type of the image, such as, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP and so on. For the best results, stick to JPEG and GIF as they are the best supported formats around the world. The difference between JPEG and GIF lies in how they render image information and how they handle compression. It's too long of topic to go into here, but you can better familiarize yourself with these formats with the Preparing Images for the Web tutorial.

Tips for Files

Just to be clear about definitions, when talking about a File in the context of Plone what we mean are things like a Word, Excel, PDF, MP3, or MPEG file. In other words it is a document that you intend your site visitors to download and view locally on their computer. When considering files, there are two possible scenarios for how they will be used:

1. You may have some content that you wrote in a Word document and want to put that content on a webpage. As long as the content is fairly short, you would want to simply create a page, and then copy-and-paste the words onto the webpage.
2. Sometimes though, you really do want your site visitors to download a copy of the file. You usually aren't going to post a Word document for download unless the document is really long (like a 50-page report or something). The other file formats mentioned above usually ARE posted for download, especially PDFs and Excel documents.
3. To allow your site visitor the chance to download your file, use the Internal Link and create a link from a page to your file. When you do, indicate in the link text what the file type and size are. For example: Download our annual report (PDF 1.5Mb).