Featured Images

Many of you will notice the image that appears associated with your article when it’s published on the front page. These images are called “Featured Images.” See Figure 1. Without selecting a Featured Image when editing your article, the website will use the first image in the article by default. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. But we require the use of Featured Images for all articles such as game reviews, hardware reviews, news pieces, etc.

Again, watch out for WATERMARKS.

To maximize the appearance of your article, please use the Featured Image option located below the box where Tags are inserted in the right sidebar. When selecting an image to use, rectangles work best, laid horizontally. In other words, images that are wider than they are tall appear best. Some distortion is inevitable*, but using a vertical rectangle or a perfect square results in a very weird picture. Although this used to be an optional task, the load of incoming reviews is simply too heavy for us to find and insert featured images for everyone’s articles. Since the game’s box art accompanies your header at the beginning of the article, your featured image and header image should be very different. For featured images, horizontally rectangular titles, concept art (with titles), or even start screens / title screens (especially on older games) are good choices.

Update: Several people have asked about what the ideal size is for a featured image. It’s a tough question to answer since WordPress does different things with the image depending on where it’s located. Featured Images are used all over the site: in the thumbnails on the sidebar, in the article itself, in the list of recent posts comprising the homepage, and in the slideshow itself. To our knowledge, it isn’t possible for an image to perfectly satisfy all of these conditions without being distorted and/or cut off, but we have learned a few things that may help. Note that it will be impossible to fulfill all of these conditions simultaneously, so take note of the suggestion below to make sure that the focal point lies in the center of the image. We are most concerned with how the image appears in the first two instances since they are the most visible.

When displayed at the top of the list on the homepage, where the image is at its widest, WordPress forces the image to be exactly 640 x 300 pixels. This breaks down to roughly a 2.1:1 ratio. (To figure out the ratio of your image, divide the width by the length. In this case, we’d put 640 / 300 into a calculator. Your answer is the first number in the ratio, and the second number will be 1.) So if your image is exactly 640 x 300, or smaller with a 2.1:1 ratio, it will fit perfectly. However, if the width exceeds 640, the height will automatically be sized to 300 with the width following accordingly, however the remainder will be cut off. If the image is anything under 640 x 300 no matter what the ratio is, it will be distorted as both width and height are set at 640 and 300 respectively.
When a post is not at the top of the list and placed side by side with others, the exact dimensions are 310 x 190 pixels, or a ratio of about 1.6:1. As you can see, this is different from the above, so even if your image is perfect for the above conditions, it will likely end up cut off when moved from the top of the list. Similar rules for cutoffs and resizing apply here. If your image satisfied these conditions, the width will probably end up being slightly stretched were it a the top of the list.
Thumbnails found in the lists on the sidebars are perfect 45 x 45 squares. In this case, images are resized to have a 45 pixel height, and their original aspect ratio is maintained, though the excess width is cut off the sides.
Within articles themselves, the width is again set at 640, but there is no limit on the height. Normally this won’t be much different than what appears at the top of the list on the homepage, however, if someone were to select a very large square, the excess would be blown up on the actual article page. Using a shape like this would also result in severe distortion elsewhere. If you’re sticking to “wide rectangles.” there shouldn’t be anything to worry about.
Slideshow images are again manipulated differently, with a fixed height of 400 pixels. What happens here is that the entire image is resized appropriately according the aspect ratio (no distortion), but the excess on the sides is cut off. Usually this results in a square much like the thumbnails; another good reason to keep the focal point in the center. The difference, however, is that the image isn’t forced to be 400 pixels tall, that is simply the maximum height.

This doesn’t answer every question about the perfect size for a features image, but hopefully it’ll provide some guidance. As a general rule of thumb, images with anything between about a 1.5:1 and 2:1 ratio should work out well enough.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

*Please note that depending on the exact proportions of your image, it is very likely that the top or bottom of your image may end up getting cropped out once your review is published. For this reason, we highly recommend that the focal point of your featured image is not located too close to the top or bottom, such as the name of the game or any other important characteristics.

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