How to Add an Image from Your Computer to Your WordPress.com Blog

By Lisa Sabin-Wilson from WordPress For Dummies, 5th Edition

Images can add a lot to your WordPress blog posts. Chances are you have some images on your hard drive that you would like to include in your blog posts. To add an image from your hard drive after you click the Add Media button, follow these steps:

Click the From Computer tab.
Click the Select Files button.

A dialog box opens, letting you choose an image from your hard drive.
Choose an image or multiple images to upload.
Click Open.

The image uploads to your web server from your computer. WordPress displays a progress bar on the upload and displays an image options box when the upload is finished.
Edit the details for the image(s) by filling in the fields in the Add Media box:
- Title: Type a title for the image.
- Alternate Text: ALT tags help search engines find and list your site in their directories. Type a description of the image if you can.
- Caption: Type a caption for the image (such as This is a flower from my garden).
- Description: Type a description of the image.
- Link URL: Type the URL you want the image linked to. Whatever option you choose from the following three options determines where your readers go when they click the image you’ve uploaded:
  
  None: Choose this if you don’t want the image to be clickable.
  
  File URL: Readers can click through to the direct image itself.
  
  Post URL: Readers can click through to the post that the image appears in. You can type your own URL in the Link URL text box.
- Alignment: Choose None, Left, Center, or Right.
- Size: Choose Thumbnail, Medium, Large, or Full Size.
Click the Edit Image button to edit the appearance of the image.
- Crop: Click this button to cut the image down to a smaller size.
- Rotate counter-clockwise: Click this button to rotate the image to the left.
- Rotate clockwise: Click this button to rotate the image to the right.
- Flip vertically: Click this button to flip the image upside down, and back again.
- Flip horizontally: Click this button to flip the image from right to left, and back again.
- Undo: Click this button to undo any changes you’ve made.
- Redo: Click this button to redo image edits that you’ve made.
- Scale Image: Click this link to see a drop-down menu that you can use to set a specific width and height for the image.
Click the Insert into Post button.

The HTML code needed to display the image within your published post is inserted automatically. The Add Media window closes and returns you to the Add New Post page. Alternatively, you can click the Save All Changes button to save the options you’ve set for the image(s) and then return at a later date to insert the image(s) in your post, without having to reset those options again.

Along with inserting just one image into your post, you can use the media uploader to insert a full gallery of images. Instead of clicking the Insert into Post button, click the Gallery tab at the top of the Add Media window.

You can configure the options for each image by clicking the Show link to the right of the image. When you’re done, click the Insert Gallery into Post button. A short piece of code is inserted that looks like this: [gallery]. That piece of code tells WordPress to display your gallery of images inside the post you are about to publish.

The interface that WordPress.com uses for file upload is Flash based. Adobe Flash contains a specific set of multimedia technologies programmed to handle media files on the web. Some browsers and operating systems aren’t configured to handle Flash-based applications.

If you experience difficulties with the media uploader, WordPress gives you a handy alternative method. In the media uploader, click the Browser Uploader link to upload files in an interface that is not Flash based.