Last
Updated: 01/03/2020
( 11 minutes reading )
In a lot of cases, the main static resources a website uses are the images displayed on its web pages. Performing basic operations with the images of your website, like scaling them, converting them to a different format, or generating thumbnails for them, requires additional software running on your local computer.
Thanks to cPanel, you can now perform these operations on images directly on your web hosting account without the need of the images being downloaded, edited, and then uploaded back again on the hosting account. In the couple of paragrahps of this tutorial, we will cover yet another great tool provided by the cPanel service - the “Images” feature.
In order to access the “Images” feature, you first have to ensure that you are logged in to the cPanel service. If you are not certain how to achieve that action then please follow our other tutorial on How to access cPanel the cPanel service.
Once logged in to the cPanel service, please locate the “Images” feature in the first group of cPanel features called “Files”.
After performing this action, you will then be redirected to a new page where you will find a brief explanation about each of the the functionalities supported by this feature along with links redirecting you the actual tools themselves.
As you can see, the available actions are:
Let’s cover these actions one by one and see how easy it is to edit your images in cPanel.
Let’s begin by accessing the “Thumbnailer” option. To do that, please simply click on the “Thumbnailer” link within the “Images” feature interface.
You will be redirected to a new page with a complete list of the files and folders on your Web Hosting account with HostArmada.
On this page, you will need to start selecting folders one by one until you reach the folder containing your website's images you want to create thumbnails for, so that the “Thumbnailer” can start doing its job.
Above the table section which is populated with your folders, you will see a navigation bar, showing your current location on the cPanel account. You should see a house icon and a slash "/" after it. This means that you are currently in your cPanel's home directory.
To start navigating through the file system, simply start clicking on folders until you eventually reach your final destination.
In our case, we would like to generate thumbnails for an image located inside the “uploads” folder of a WordPress website. To do that, we need to navigate to: "/home/hatutorials/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2024/", as shown in the screenshot below.
After we arrive there please point your attention to the actions column in the Images Thumbnailer table section. You will notice the “Thumbnail” action underneath. Since our image is located in the “05” directory, we will click the “Thumbnail” action corresponding to that folder.
When you click on the “Thumbnail” action, you will be redirected to a new page, which will allow you to set the dimensions for your thumbnails.
In our case, there was only one image in the “05” folder. However, in yours, there might be a lot of images. No matter the count, all thumbnails will be generated and stored in a new thumbnail folder which will be created inside the folder with images you have selected for thumbnail generation originally.
Depending on your needs, you should set the percentage that will be used by the “Thumbnailer” when processing the images and finally click on the “Thumbnail Images” button to initiate the thumbnail generation process.
Once the process is over, cPanel will provide you with an overview of the thumbnailed files and, of course, the location of the newly generated images.
Another great functionality of the “Images” feature is the “Scaler” action. This tool will allow you to scale selected images or a folder of images to specific dimensions or set a percentage of the width and height as a new size for an image.
Let’s review how this tool actually works.
First, you will need to access the action by simply clicking on the “Scaler” link in the “Images” cPanel feature.
Next, you will need to navigate to the folder where the images you would like to scale are located, as you did in the previous section for generating thumbnails.
When you arrive at the destination, instead of seeing the “Thumbnail” action in the table section, you will see the “Scale” action.
In our case, we will be scaling the image inside the “05” folder as we did in the previous paragraph where we showcased the “Thumbnailer” functionality.
Unfortunately, the “Scaler” action will not convert the bulk of images simultaneously, meaning that you will have to select the images for scaling one at a time.
To scale an image, please click on the “Scale” action corresponding to the image itself.
Performing this action will redirect you to a new page, where you can set a few things for the image you are looking to scale.
Let’s go over the available options so you can get a better idea of what they do:
Right below the scaling settings you will see the actual image that will be scaled in its new dimensions.
Right underneath the image, you will see an option to choose from. The option is “Retain a copy of the old image as:” and, as the name suggests, it will allow you to preserve a copy of the original image in the specified location. Please bear in mind that the image will have the same name. However, the “Scaler” will add an “old” prefix to the name so it can indicate which is the original image.
Finally, if you are ready to proceed with the scaling, please click on the “Scale Image” button.
The image will be then scaled based on the settings you have configured and cPanel will provide a message indicating the successful scaling.
Clicking on the provided link will open the image so you can check if it has been scaled correctly.
To convert an image from one format to another, you can use the “Converter” action of the cPanel “Images” feature. To start converting images, please click on the “Converter” link available in the “Images” feature.
This action will once again redirect you to a list of all the files and folders available for your cPanel web hosting account. From here, you will need to choose a file or a folder of files that should be converted from one image format to another.
For the purposes of this tutorial, we will convert all the images contained in the “05” folder from .png format to .jpg file format. Thus, please navigate to the mentioned folder the same way you did in the previous examples for creating thumbnails and scaling images.
Once you arrive at the destination, click on the “Convert” action underneath the “Actions” column in the table section populated with all the folders of your cPanel web hosting account.
Performing this action will redirect you to a new page with a drop-down menu and a single button.
Please use the drop-down menu to specify the new format you want to image to be converted into. When you select the format, please click on the “Convert” button in order for the conversion process to begin.
Once completed, the “Converter” will provide you with a summary of all the converted images, and with that, the conversion process will be completed.
Congratulations! You now know how to utilize the potential of your images fully! As you can see, using the “Images” cPanel feature will allow you to perform the most basic image editing otherwise done with external tools.
In case you are facing any difficulties using the “Images” feature, please contact our Technical Support team and ask for any further assistance you might need in order to achieve your goal!
Nikola is an accomplished tech-savvy extraordinaire with over six years of experience in the web hosting field. He started as a customer care representative and quickly rose the ranks to become a support supervisor and, eventually - the head of the technical department in HostArmada. His deep understanding of the client's needs, combined with his technical knowledge, makes him the perfect man to create the ideal harmony between client satisfaction and professional problem-solving. You will often find him creating helpful tutorials, articles, and blog posts that help existing customers get around.
Learn more about cPanel in the other tutorials that we have:
