As a designer and programmer here at 10up, I have the unique opportunity to see my design through from the first wireframe to the fin

al product. There’s nothing that makes me grimace more than turning control over to a client only to see the design fall apart with use. Ensuring that as little as possible is “breakable” is on top of my quality assurance list. WordPress’s native, customizable image sizes is a common cause of breakdowns.

How I use image sizes in designs

Nothing disturbs my blank white canvas in Photoshop until I have set the grid and guides that will determine the structure of the layout. As I begin to flesh out the design, image placeholders find their way in, and they’re always made to fit within those guidelines. Common placeholders include a featured slider image, a thumbnail for the main index/search/archive post list view, and a special size for the “image” post format. Most of the time, I want images used within posts and pages to use these same consistent sizes so that the layout stays as clean as possible. Call me OCD, it wouldn’t be the first time. (Editor’s note: all great designers are a bit OCD!)

I could create predefined image sizes for each call to an image attachment (and I often do at least one or two of those), but defining an endless set of sizes has a real performance toll every time an image is uploaded, not to mention the bloating effect on the upload directory. If I define 5 custom sizes, and we add that to the 3 default sizes (thumbnail, medium, and large), we wind up with 9 sizes, counting the original. That’s 9 images generated every time an image is uploaded to the site. I always try to avoid the weight and clutter by using the default image sizes.

Enforcing the image sizes

It may have crossed your mind that this breaks my own OCD rule, as administrators can adjust default image sizes from the Media settings page. But wait – that’s what this post is all about! Let’s get to some code.

First, we need to ensure that the customizable default sizes (thumbnail, medium, large) are set the way we want. You may be tempted to just drop the necessary update_option() functions into your functions.php file. It’s okay, I did, too, until one of my teammates, Helen, helped me find a better way. We can actually save on performance and only run those functions once by hooking into 'switch_theme' – which fires when your theme is activated. That’ll look something like this:

add_action( 'switch_theme', 'themename_enforce_image_size_options' );
function themename_enforce_image_size_options() {		
	update_option( 'thumbnail_size_w', 180 );
	update_option( 'thumbnail_size_h', 180 );	
	update_option( 'thumbnail_crop', 1 );
	update_option( 'medium_size_w', 390 );
	update_option( 'medium_size_h', 390 );
	update_option( 'large_size_w', 660 );
	update_option( 'large_size_h', 660 );
}

Since this code only runs on activation, we also need to ensure that an administrator won’t override these settings later. To do this, we’ll use a filter that WordPress applies before saving a new option value: 'pre_update_option_{$option}'. (Props again to my girl, Helen!)

add_filter( 'pre_update_option_thumbnail_size_w', 'themename_filter_thumbnail_size_w' );
function themename_filter_thumbnail_size_w( $newvalue ) {
	return 180;
}
add_filter( 'pre_update_option_thumbnail_size_h', 'themename_filter_thumbnail_size_h' );
function themename_filter_thumbnail_size_h( $newvalue ) {
	return 180;
}
add_filter( 'pre_update_option_thumbnail_crop', 'themename_filter_thumbnail_crop' );
function themename_filter_thumbnail_crop( $newvalue ) {
	return 1;
}
add_filter( 'pre_update_option_medium_size_w', 'themename_filter_medium_size_w' );
function themename_filter_medium_size_w( $newvalue ) {
	return 390;
}
add_filter( 'pre_update_option_medium_size_h', 'themename_filter_medium_size_h' );
function themename_filter_medium_size_h( $newvalue ) {
	return 390;
}
add_filter( 'pre_update_option_large_size_w', 'themename_filter_large_size_w' );
function themename_filter_large_size_w( $newvalue ) {
	return 660;
}
add_filter( 'pre_update_option_large_size_h', 'themename_filter_large_size_h' );
function themename_filter_large_size_h( $newvalue ) {
	return 660;
}

If you’re worried about administrators getting confused when they try and change the option – only to have it pop back to its prior value – you can always hook into admin_enqueue_scripts and add some CSS or JavaScript to hide those input fields.

Conclusion

Using these blocks of code, we can set and enforce these core WordPress options with the smallest performance hit possible. Of course, the 'switch_theme' hook and the 'pre_update_option_{$option}' filter can be used together to easily control any option. I’d love to hear about your experiences with image sizes and thoughts on this code, so please leave your feedback in the comments below.