Lots of media files on your website can drain your server resources and lead to slow loading times. This may result in a poor user experience (UX) and keep your site out of the top search results. Luckily, \ud83d\ude0e you can extend WordPress and host images externally to prevent this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
When you set up WordPress functionality to host images externally on your site, you can gain all the benefits of using quality media while avoiding the negative side effects. Thanks to a plugin like Optimole<\/strong>, you can easily offload your media to cloud storage with the click of a button.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this post, we’ll take a closer look at why you might want to spare WordPress and host images externally<\/a> instead. Then, we’ll show you how to do this in three simple steps<\/a>. Let’s get started!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n When you host images on WordPress, you have to add them to your WordPress Media Library. This isn’t a bad option for websites with a few images and small amounts of traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, if you have lots of images, your Media Library<\/a> can quickly exceed your hosting plan’s storage limits, which can mean that you will need to upgrade to a more expensive plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u231b This can be true even on unlimited storage hosts<\/a>, as they usually have a “fair use” policy when it comes to storage<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Plus, serving those images adds extra work for your server, together with added bandwidth usage alongside the storage usage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You’ll enjoy a number of benefits if you decide to extend the functionality of WordPress and host images externally. Here are just a few of the possible advantages:<\/p>\n\n\n\n What’s more, when you decide to extend WordPress and host images externally, you can also migrate your site<\/a> more easily in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead of needing to migrate all of your images to the new host (which can take a lot of time to do for a large Media Library), all you need to do is point your host to the external storage location.<\/p>\n\n\n Now that you know a bit more about why you might want to extend WordPress and host images externally, let’s take a look at how you can do it. One of the easiest options is to use a plugin like Optimole<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This powerful plugin is built for image optimization. It enables you to compress, resize, offload, and deliver images via an image content delivery network (CDN)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Basically, it can handle every part of image management and optimization on your site, including hosting those images externally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By using this combined approach, you get the benefits of hosting WordPress images externally while also still ensuring fast performance thanks to the built-in CDN.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy it’s smart to host your images externally<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
How to host images externally on your WordPress site<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
Step 1: Install and activate the Optimole plugin<\/h3>\n\n\n