just looking for sunshine
jesse | Oct 12, 2023
Over the last few decades, the television and computer screen industry has been increasingly influenced by Hollywood, due to demands from producers for consumer devices that can display high-quality movies and TV shows in the aspect ratio they were filmed in. Specifically, a massive shift has taken place from the previously common 4:3 ratio to the 16:9 ratio.
The effects of this have been huge, even outside of screens and devices. For example, even consumer camera manufacturers like Canon and Nikon have refactored their CMOS censors to support modern ratios for still photography.
But where does this leave bloggers?
Ultimately the big question has always been how to balance videos and photos — and common screen sizes — with web design layouts. The so-called 960 grid eventually moved on to bigger layouts like the 1200 grid, with support from players like Twitter’s popular Bootstrap framework.
WordPress is notorious for it’s stubborn insistence on backwards compatbility. This can just as often be a blessing as it is a curse, when it’s time to move on from old trends like media sizes.
To this day, WordPress core continues to ship with default media sizes of:
- Large: 1024 x 1024
- Medium: 300 x 300
- Thumbnails: 150 x 150
With the exception of the thumbnail size, these resolutions are almost hilariously bad choices for modern devices and web design layouts. I can’t think of any situation where you’d want to use a max-width of 300px these days. These sizes were chosen years ago, before HD screens were even being imagined.
Here’s what we currently build HoverCraft around, and what we recommend for most bloggers:
- Full: 1920 x 1280 (generally speaking this is best for uncropped media)
- Large: 1280 x 1280 (supports 1280 x 720 crops)
- Medium: 720 x 720 (supports 720 x 480 crops)
Choosing a thumbnail size is more difficult, because it depends on what you’re using those for. And again, it should probably be called “Small” instead of “Thumbnails” these days, yet another frustration. Here’s a few possible options:
- Thumbnails: 480 x 480 (if you want to keep the 16:9 train going)
- Thumbnails: 270 x 152 (a bit smaller but retains 16:9 also)
- Thumbnails: 270 x 270 (if you want square thumbnails but some mathematical relationship to larger sizes)
- Thumbnails: 152 x 152 (if you want smaller square thumbnails but still some relationship)
About the Author