If you are like me and you only have intentions of using the images you upload in their original Full Size, it makes good sense to disable the default Media Library Settings. This way WordPress will not be saving duplicate images of your original and thus using more space in your Media Library, making it bigger than it needs to be.
In the left side menu in your WordPress Dashboard, you will want to click on Settings and then click on Media. This will bring up your Media Settings for Image Sizes. It is here that you will make your changes so that you can free up future space for all images you upload moving forward.
In the above image you can see that I changed all of the Width and Height settings to a value of zero, (0), and I unchecked the box that says Crop thumbnail to exact dimensions. Now when I upload an image, no matter what its original Full Size is, that will be the ONLY image saved into my Media Library, see below image.
Changing these settings will work for all images you upload from now on, but what about all of those images that you have already uploaded. There are two options. You can use another plugin to clean up unwanted images or you can delete previously uploaded images and then re-upload them.
For me, both are not that desirable. I personally am not one to use a lot of plugins because more than 5 on a website will be another reason why a website will run slower. And I have so many images already uploaded. So it would be a long process to delete images and re-upload them again.
Though the latter is not that desirable an option, it is probably my best option and one that I could initiate over a period of time. Seeing how I have a file saved on my computer of all images I have ever used in all of my websites, this is something I could do over the course of time.
NEXT UP = The results of my changes to the Media Library Settings
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That is an interesting problem you are having. Once you get that image fixed, let me know if having only one sized image instead of duplicates, makes a difference. I would like to know.
You will however probably have to do another fetch as Google of that particular post and wait a couple of days to see if the change in the image has fixed the problem or not.
Ralph
Also do the images added in the new Content feature take care of size automatically or do they need to be fixed too.
Thank you for this training, Robert. Wish I would have known this before I had so many images. :)
As for images already uploaded there are no up to date plugins I know of that will cleanup the unwanted image sizes in your media library.
So going back and deleting then uploading the image again will fix the issue, but could take some time depending on how many images you have.
For me this is a process I will take my time with because it is not something that needs to get done right away. This is more of a cleanup that can happen over the course of time.
As for all future images you upload, just upload images that are pre-optimized to a size close to how you will use it in your website.
Then if you have the EWWW Image Optimizer installed, or another similar plugin, the image you upload will be further optimized automatically before being saved in the media library.
Did I answer your questions enough?
Anyway, I'd like to add a well-known and recommended plugin to my current site as a test to see how it works in removing 2/3 (not actually of course) of my Library. I really don't care what happens to this site version as it will be replaced in a week or so.
