Search Results for 'regenerate'

Why WordPress + Newspaper creates ~27 image sizes

Two things are happening at once:

1️⃣ WordPress core creates image sizes

By default WordPress generates:

thumbnail

medium

medium_large

large

plus retina variants (2x)

2️⃣ Newspaper theme (tagDiv) adds many custom sizes

Newspaper is optimized for:

blocks

sliders

modules

mobile / tablet / desktop

retina (2x)

So it registers 20+ custom image sizes, which is why every upload explodes into ~27 files.

👉 This is normal behavior for Newspaper — not a bug.

What image sizes does Newspaper REALLY use?

In practice, Newspaper mostly uses these core groups:

✅ Commonly used sizes

td_696x0 → main article featured image

td_1068x0 → full-width layouts

td_300x220 → small blocks

td_534x462 → medium blocks

td_80x60 → widgets / lists

Retina (2x) versions of the above

⚠️ Many other sizes are edge cases (rare modules, legacy layouts, demos).

Option 1 (Recommended): Reduce image sizes SAFELY ✅
Step A: Disable unused sizes via code

Add this to functions.php (or a custom plugin):

add_filter(‘intermediate_image_sizes_advanced’, function ($sizes) {
$allowed = [
‘thumbnail’,
‘medium’,
‘large’,
‘td_696x0’,
‘td_300x220’,
‘td_534x462’
];

foreach ($sizes as $key => $value) {
if (!in_array($key, $allowed)) {
unset($sizes[$key]);
}
}

return $sizes;
});

📌 This:

Keeps only important Newspaper sizes

Stops WordPress from generating the rest

Option 2: Disable Retina Images (Huge win 🚀)

Newspaper creates 2x images by default.

Turn them off:

Newspaper → Theme Panel → General Settings → Retina Display
➡️ Disable Retina Images

💡 This alone can cut image generation almost in half.

Option 3: Use a plugin (Easiest, no code)

Install Disable Media Sizes or Perfmatters.

Then:

Disable unused WordPress sizes

Leave Newspaper core sizes enabled

⚠️ Don’t blindly disable everything — Newspaper needs some sizes to avoid layout breaks.

Option 4: Regenerate after cleanup (IMPORTANT)

After changing sizes:

Install Regenerate Thumbnails

Regenerate

Delete old unused thumbnails (plugin or server cleanup)

❌ What NOT to do

Don’t disable all td_* sizes

Don’t edit Newspaper core files

Don’t rely only on CDN offloading (it hides the problem but doesn’t fix disk usage)

Best setup for Newspaper (my recommendation)

✅ Disable Retina
✅ Keep 6–8 essential sizes only
✅ Use Bunny / CDN for delivery
✅ Use WebP/AVIF

This keeps:

Layout intact

Disk usage low

CDN fast

I have the EWWW image optimizer installed. I have regenerated the thumbnails and the issue is still there. It’s not just in the post template page – it’s also on the home page of the mobile, the thumbnails are all over the place and look incorrectly sized.

Hi Calin,

Thanks for your tips regarding the recommanded thumbs settings. Your suggestion to regenerate would works if those thumbs where on the sae server in our uploads folder. That is however not the case.

Simply put: we have no thumbs. We only have one size (full or 1920) on Google Drive. Inside the _wp_attachment_metadata rows in our postmeta each thumbnailsize for our theme is described and shown if needed, but it does not fysicly exsist anywhere. It is just the one Google Drive image served in different sizes described in that table. There are about 13 sizes and each size is described twice in one row. There is one row for each image and there about 35.000 images. You can do the math for that is over 910,000 seperate rules in postmeta,

Example of _wp_attachment_metadata (first few lines of one row only):

a:7:{s:5:”width”;i:2560;s:6:”height”;i:1394;s:4:”file”;s:40:”Isolatie-Foto-gemeente-Altena-scaled.jpg”;s:8:”filesize”;i:317478;s:5:”sizes”;a:19:{s:6:”medium”;a:6:{s:4:”file”;s:79:”https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1425AFrPRIGp9vQy9TsJIg8W9A1X2G1vo&sz=w300″;s:5:”width”;i:300;s:6:”height”;i:163;s:9:”mime-type”;s:10:”image/jpeg”;s:8:”filesize”;i:10721;s:3:”url”;s:79:”https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1425AFrPRIGp9vQy9TsJIg8W9A1X2G1vo&sz=w300″;}s:5:”large”;a:6:{s:4:”file”;s:80:”https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1425AFrPRIGp9vQy9TsJIg8W9A1X2G1vo&sz=w1024″;s:5:”width”;i:1024;s:6:”height”;i:558;s:9:”mime-type”;s:10:”image/jpeg”;s:8:”filesize”;i:71200;s:3:”url”;s:80:”https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1425AFrPRIGp9vQy9TsJIg8W9A1X2G1vo&sz=w1024″;}s:9:”thumbnail”;a:6:{s:4:”file”;s:79:”https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1425AFrPRIGp9vQy9TsJIg8W9A1X2G1vo&sz=w150″;s:5:”width”;i:150;s:6:”height”;i:82;s:9:”mime-type”;s:10:”image/jpeg”;s:8:”filesize”;i:3789;s:3:”url”;s:79:”https://drive.google.com/thumbnail?id=1425AFrPRIGp9vQy9TsJIg8W9A1X2G1vo&sz=w150″;}s:12:”medium_large”;……… etc.

So, you see that the image sizes need to be cleared inside the database and can not be regenerated.

Thanks for your reply.

To be clear, for https://imgur.com/PajVRJT, please press the 2nd button in thumbnail regeneration plugin. Did you see if these td_xxx sizes image can be generated in server in your test? Thank you.

My expericence: thumbnail regeneration plugin can show the td_xxx sizes in dashboard page but cannot regenerate those images in server in real run after pressing the button.

As I said before:
Normally we only want to regenerate thumbnail for MAIN image only (but not gallery/secondary image) for td widgets usage.

Force Regenerate Thumbnails seems regenerate for ALL images which cause uncessary inodes/usage in server. Please advise any plugin/options to regenerate thumbnail for MAIN image only, thank you.

Please press the 2nd button in thumbnail regeneration plugin to see if these td_xxx sizes’ image can be generated in server? Thank you.

My expericence: thumbnail regeneration plugin can show the td_xxx sizes in dashboard page but cannot regenerate those images in server in real run after pressing the button.
(FYI, the thumbnail regeneration plugin not updated for 2 years)

Yes, I did tested with Regenerate Thumbnails plugin and found an related issue:

Disabling “tagDiv Standard Pack” plugin will remove all the td_xxxx thumbnail sizes in thumbnail regeneration plugin (can show it but cannot regenerate image), even though we can select thumbnail sizes in theme panel of td. (eg. 265×198 and 741×486 for mobile theme)
When I enable the “tagDiv Standard Pack” plugin again and the regeneration return to normal.

Please check and advise, thank you.