Understanding and monitoring file size in WordPress is crucial for maintaining high performance and preventing issues from hitting hosting limits. This comprehensive guide will teach you several methods to check file size in WordPress using the built-in media library, plugins, cPanel and more.
Why You Need To Check File Sizes
There are a few key reasons site owners and WordPress administrators need to pay close attention to individual file sizes as well as overall disk usage:
Page Load Performance
Extra large files like high-resolution images, uncompressed videos and bulky documents can significantly slow down your page load times. By actively checking for these oversized bandwidth hogs, you can optimize them to keep sites fast.
Some real page load impacts from inefficient files include:
- Images not properly compressed or resized forcing extra bandwidth and browser render time burdens.
- Massive PDF documents acting as laggy chokepoints during page loads.
- Table bloat or inefficient database queries delaying delivery of surrounding page content.
Monitoring file sizes allows you to catch these performance offenders so you can fix them with compression, resizing, caching and other optimizations.
Prevent Hitting Hosting Limits
Most shared web hosting plans enforce hardcoded disk space and monthly bandwidth caps. If you go over those resource limits, everything from site crashes to overage fees can occur.
Carefully monitoring disk and bandwidth usage allows you to proactively upgrade hosting plans or remove files before butting up against ceilings.
For example if your current plan has a 10 GB disk limit and you notice usage creeping up to 8 GB, it’s wise to expand now before trouble hits.
Identify Files Needing Optimization
Checking file sizes doesn’t just prevent reaching caps – it also flags specific assets ripe for optimization.
By scanning your uploads for heavy files, you can target those exact items for fixes like:
- Image/photo compression & resizing
- Video transcoding into lighter codecs
- SVG optimization
- PDF downsizing
- Trimming bloated theme/plugin libraries
- JS/CSS minification
Finding the worst individual contributors gives you surgical optimization opportunities vs guesswork.
Control Disk Space Usage
Uncontrolled disk fill-up causes everything from site slow downs to outright crashes. Keeping tight tabs on WordPress file usage growth helps you prevent uncontrolled bloat.
For instance if you notice plugin assets or uploaded document archives expanding rapidly, you can clean up or delete those items before impacting site stability.
Ongoing monitoring instead of waiting for problems gives you chance to course correct.
So in summary — aggressively tracking file sizes with WordPress means you can:
- Pinpoint optimization opportunities
- Maintain site speed
- Avert hitting hosting caps
- Closely manage disk usage
- Keep additional costs in check
Without checks in place you’re flying site performance blind and risk major issues.
Checking WordPress Media Library File Sizes
Now that the critical importance of monitoring file sizes is clear, let’s explore available methods starting with the built-in media library.
WordPress records key details on every file uploaded through the media section including:
- Filenames
- Upload dates
- Contributors
- Attached posts
- Dimensions
- File sizes
This info is exposed in the attachment details accessible from grid view without any special plugins.
Accessing Attachment File Size Details
To access individual file size info:
- Log in to your site’s WordPress backend dashboard
- Navigate to Media > Library in the left admin menu
- Click on any file’s thumbnail to launch the attachment details modal
- Scroll down to see the file size listed in clean KB or MB units
For example, you can isolate an image from your library grid view and the side panel will now display stats like:
Attachment Display Settings:
- Size: Medium 800×600 (scaled)
- File Size: 487 KB (500,573 bytes)
So with a single click you get the compressed display size and true source file weight.
This works for all media from images, videos, PDFs and other documents to audio clips and more.
While convenient for one-off checks, clicking every file is impractical. Plugins add helpful management layers.
Media Library Gotchas
While built-in media library size reporting is handy for random checks, some limitations exist:
- No full site aggregation – singular file scope
- Displayed file sizes change when image edited & saved
- No sorting/filtering by file size out of the box
- No progress tracking over time
Running library totals and tracking changes requires 3rd party assistance.
Using Plugins to Display File Sizes
Due to its limitations, the native media library falls short for holistic monitoring. This is where helper plugins pick up the slack displaying clear site-wide file size totals.
For broad visibility beyond singular file checks, grabbing something like the WordPress Media File Size plugin gives you:
- Total usage summaries
- Sorting/filtering
- Bulk optimization tools
- Progress tracking
With extra context, you can spot storage trends and large outliers more easily.
Getting Granular File Size Breakdowns
To install:
- Search for Media File Sizes and install + activate like any standard WordPress plugin
- Navigate to Media > Library
- Switch the admin toolbar view to List View
- A handy new Space Used info column appears
Now browsing media items displays individual file weights and sorts properly from largest to smallest. No more clicking around hunting!
Combined sizes also calculate in a dashboard widget giving you macro storage trends over days, weeks and months.
Alternative File Analysis Plugins
While Media File Sizes is great for pure focus on file weights, alternatives like the powerful WP Explorer integrate deeper functionality:
- Database exploration
- Filesystem browse
- FTP-style file transfers
- Disk analysis utilities
- Content searching
- Integrated optimizations
The more advanced tools can scan every corner of your WordPress environment beyond the media library.
So in summary, properly monitoring file sizes site-wide requires help from plugins – but gives you multi-angle intelligence no native tool offers.
What’s Using All The Disk Space?
To intelligently analyze file use on your WordPress site, you need understand what components consume storage in the first place.
While individual sites have unique profiles, these groups universally dominate disk space:
Media Library Uploads
Imported image, video, doc and other media files uploaded through WordPress consistently make up the bulk of disk usage on most sites. Just a handful of hi-res photos or large videos can quickly chew through available storage.
It only takes around:
- 300 high quality JPG photos
- A few uncompressed PSD files
- 10 minutes of 4K video
To eat 1 GB + of allocated disk space. While necessary for site quality and engagement, rich media files require close monitoring and management.
Plugins
Beyond user-generated media uploads, plugins themselves take up appreciable disk real estate.
Between the base plugin files, dynamic asset generation, cached data and orphaned leftover folders, they can accumulate substantial poundage.
Some particularly heavy plugins like sliders, galleries, forms, ecommerce and social apps bloat faster than others.
100 plugins averaging around 2 MB + 50 MB of other data per = upwards of 250 MB from plugins alone.
Themes
While lighter than plugins typically, themes still require disk space for structural files, templates, libraries and custom assets. Excessively bloated themes junk things up further.
Switching from a slim theme to one loading huge jQuery libraries, icon packs, img assets and tons of unused template files naturally shoots usage higher.
Since plugins depend on active themes to operate, the paired footprints combine.
So for example 150 MB of plugins + 250 MB of theme files = at least 400 MB eaten up.
Database Content
Beyond file-based usage in uploads, plugins and themes – the MySQL database also consumes disk space.
Every WordPress site has:
- Core tables like Posts, Pages, Comments
- Custom tables from plugins
- Revision tracking data
- Spam comments
- Post meta values
- Indexes
Over time the DB can experience file size creep from unused legacy data, inefficient queries and indexes.
While not as directly visible as media library usage, vital for holistic insight.
Caches
Finally, various application caches from tools like caching plugins, CDNs and server-level caches consume additional disk space.
As sites grow, cached page data, objects and assets pile up taking up incremental space unchecked.
Caches certainly optimize performance, but need management around purge schedules and size awareness.
So in summary – media, plugins, themes, database content and caches dominate disk usage from all angles. Isolating worst offenders in each category is key!
How To Find Large Files on Your Site
Now that you know the main origins of used space, we can dig into proactively locating actual oversized files wasting space on your particular WordPress site using tools for deep analysis.
The first step is exporting a complete file listing breakdown from the host showing sizes, dates and paths.
You have a few options for obtaining the entire filesystem index:
Full Site Download via FTP
If available, connecting to your hosting account via FTP and downloading the /wp-content/ folder provides an exact local copy for inspection.
You can use software like FileZilla (Windows & Mac) to securely connect and download /wp-content/ packing up:
- /plugins/
- /uploads/
- /themes/
- /cache/
Zipping and grabbing the whole set gives you offline ability to unzip and browse for large files with local OS tools.
Hosting Control Panel Archives
Alternatively, hosting control panels like cPanel offer 1-click ZIP archives of entire accounts or designated folders like /wp-content/ for download.
This has the same effect of packaging everything up for local extraction and sorting to uncover space hogs.
WordPress Explorer Plugin Reports
Skip manual packages by using the Explorer plugin to generate CSV or JSON reports containing full filesystem indexes ranked by size automatically.
The comprehensive overview flags bloated items for you programmatically.
Now equipped with target files/paths from disk analysis, we can optimize in surgical strikes.
Optimizing Images & Media Files
Discovered oversized media files hogging space can undergo a number of optimization procedures to shrink down including:
Manual Image Compression
Using desktop tools like Photoshop, GIMP, ImageOptim, TinyPNG and more to selectively re-compress or resize obese photos and raster images.
This surgical approach prevents losing quality in properly sized images.
Bulk Image Optimization Plugins
Server-side solutions like EWWW, ShortPixel, Optimus, Imagify and Smush mass optmize existing media libraries plus new uploads automatically.
JPG, PNG, GIF and PDF documents all see major reductions from 40-80% via intelligent lossless and lossy reduction techniques.
Video Transcoding
Large videos hog storage from massive lightly compressed formats.
You can re-encode using Handbrake to transcode RAW high bitrate videos into far smaller MP4s and WEBMs without perceivable quality loss.
Unused Media Deletion
Manually clearing out unused media clutter like expired images, unnecessary hi-res graphics, stale video clips, outdated library items and other wasting assets.
Deleting unneeded media avoids endless accumulation.
So targeted optimization and removal keeps media libraries tight.
Optimizing Plugins
Rooting out the particular plugins hogging space allows you streamline by:
Removing Unneeded Plugins
If any unused, overlapping or outdated plugins are identified, wholesale deleting them reclaims space immediately.
Removing unneeded tools avoids leaving leftover unused files after neglect and deactivation.
Adjusting Plugin Settings
In the case of currently needed plugins, adjusting settings can reduce generated data volume.
For example, limiting the number of stored revisions, cache duration, database rows retained and related settings directly govern disk space consumption.
Tuning asset generation settings balances utility and efficiency.
Forcing Manual Data Purging
Plugins with logging, reporting and tracking focus build up associated data volumes rapidly.
Look for data purge abilities on bloated tools to forcibly clean up caches, logs and records on your own timing.
Freeing vast swathes of reclaimable data while maintaining core functionality.
So uninstalling, configuring and purging are the 3 pillars for plugin optimization.
Trimming Database Bloat
Beyond file clutter, database swell also subtly eats up disk capacity both directly and indirectly.
Every post, page, plugin table and cached value occupies storage which maps back to used space.
DB bloat particularly grows from:
- Spam comments
- Excessive revisions
- Bulky indexes
- Transient record accumulation
- Unoptimized queries/tables
Luckily, database queries themselves don’t consume disk space directly. But inefficient DB operations chew up CPU cycles and memory which indirectly slow down and even crash fully utilitized hosting resources.
So even without hitting a disk ceiling, a bloated DB causes problems.
Tools like wp-optimize help clean up tables and overhead for lean operation.
Pairing database streaminling with filesystem control covers all usage fronts.
Avoiding Future File Size Issues
Proactively catching and fixing existing file size problems is only half the equation. Equally as important is configuring WordPress safely to prevent unnecessary bloat surging back quickly.
You can mitigate risk of fast-growing apps and uploads by:
Configuring Upload Limit Quotas
Set file size caps on uploads to prevent massive single files choking systems. For example, blocking any image upload over 5 MB or video over 100 MB protects from user negligence or missing compression.
Upper limits force best practices.
Scheduling Data Purging
Automatic cache clearing and unused data removal at set intervals keeps things trim in all plugins and systems without Admin interference.
Don’t allow endless automatic accumulation.
Restricting User Image Uploads
Prevent dangerous user behavior allowing giant uncompressed RAW graphics or 50 MP photos by regulating dimensions and formats via .htaccess rules or plugin policies.
Keep images reasonable.
Monitoring Growth Trends
Finally, always continuing general monitoring for suspicious new spikes and patterns allows you adjust restrictions dynamically as changes warrant.
Early flagging of trend shifts prevents repeating previous bloat issues.
So intelligent restrictions and change awareness minimize chances of size issues cropping back up.
Final Tips For Managing WordPress File Size
Getting out of control WP file sizes back on a diet is an iterative process requiring initial cleanup and ongoing prevention. Use this guide to fully understand the origins of disk usage, find optimization opportunities and control future runaway accumulation.
The core takeaways for sustainably managing WordPress file sizes:
- Check sizes individually via built-in media library
- Install storage analysis helper plugins
- Frequently calculate total usage across the filesystem
- Proactively identify and optimize oversized file types
- Put intelligent restrictions and purging in place
- Continuously monitor size trends over time
Keeping your WordPress site lean through file size optimization and awareness leads directly to winning performance, cost and stability benefits. Use these tips to push back against content bloat!