Usually with most WordPress themes you can upload your header or background through your WordPress Admin Panel. You will find, though, that there are those certain times/themes that you need to go through FTP or through your File Manager in your Control Panel. So while you sit there scratching your head wondering, let me tell/show you how you do that.
These instructions are step by step with pictures. I blacked out any personal information in order to protect my files.
STEPS:
At the time you signed up with your host, you should have been given information on how to access your file manager area-which is located in some hosting packages in your Control Panel. If you do not have a control panel, you should have an area that mentions your File Manager. It should look something like this (again depending on your hosting package).
If you look at the 3rd icon in (named File Manager) you want to click on that file. Which will then open your file area.
You will see something comparable to this. If you see the plus next to public_html you want to click that in order to open the public_html section (this is where anything you publish goes out into the wild web).
Once you have clicked on that + sign you will see what is listed inside of your public_html folder. This public_html folder contains WordPress Site Files. You see the wp-admin, wp-content & wp-includes. For this tutorial we are going to focus on the wp-content file.
Now in this step I did open more than 1 folder-to save you from having to see 3 different images. First I clicked on the wp-content folders +, then I clicked on themes, then I clicked on the theme I am using, and lastly it opened the images file inside of that theme.
Now if you double click on the images file it is going to open up the actual contents of that file folder to the right of the folders listings. As shown below.
If you look up at the top there are different icons that will in turn do different actions for you. 4th icon in says Upload. If you click on that it will bring up a page which allows you to pick your file from your computer. Make sure you know where the image is in order to easily upload it.
*** Side Note*** If you are using a theme that is requesting you to upload your header via this method most likely in the Images folder there is a listing of ‘header’, so you will have to click on that in order to make sure the header image goes into the correct area. I have found this mostly in the Atahualpa theme. So in this case when you get to the images folder you will want to click on it, see the drop down and there will be a header file, double click on that one-and there is where you will use your upload button to put your header in. Also a side, side note (I delete their headers out of there so it is just mine in there).
Ok so once you have clicked on UPLOAD, this screen will show up. You will click Browse and find the image you want to upload into this folder (either on your desktop, pictures file etc) whereever you have it sitting. You will see in the bottom right hand corner (usually) it uploading and then it will say complete once it has successfully uploaded. Now your image will be listed in this images folder.
Again this is mainly when you can’t upload it through your WordPress set up. You don’t necessarily want to use this for uploading say ‘ad images’ as the media upload works great for that process. This again is more for the themes that require you to upload via your wp-content section.
In a separate post I will cover how to just upload to your ‘images’ file that is not inside of your WordPress set up (or for those that do not have WordPress) and just want to be able to upload their images directly to their site via their control panel area.
Did you find this helpful? Please leave a comment with any questions OR if for some reason I didn’t make something clear in my instructions!
**this article was previously written on another site of mine. I have re-written some of the content to better express my instructions.
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