I dealt with a situation yesterday where someone needed to remove a sponsors logo from the footer of their site because they were no longer receiving sponsorship from the organisation. They were not sure how to do it, so they located the image in the media library and deleted it. It solved the problem of removing the image from the bottom of the site, but created a new one. The code was still there, and a little symbol appeared along with the text “footer-logo” next to it.
I have not generally given information out about the footers. There is a reason for this; it generally seldom changes, and in most cases it is specially written code rather than created through the Widget menu option under Appearance. So it is not easy to edit, and with current security running on most of the sites, you cannot edit it anyway without compromising the security.
So if you need a footer changed let me know and I will change it for you.
What happens when you delete an image
The media library contains images, and is a centralised location for storing media that is available throughout the site when you are creating pages and posts (news items). To insert an image into your page, you first upload the image to the library, and then insert it into the page. Or if the image is already on the site you just insert it into the page. The action of “inserting” is not quite what it seems. Technically when you insert an image, some code goes into the page which tells the browser that an image is required which it needs to get from the library. So really the image is not in the page, but a reference to the image is. The editor shows the image in the page because it is a WYSYWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get).
If you subsequently go into the library and delete the image, the reference to it is still within the page. The page; when it is built will still attempt to retrieve it. Only it is now missing. What you will see in your browser will generally vary, but it will be a small icon to indicate something is missing, and if there was some “Alt Text” with the image, that will appear on the screen too.
What you should do
It is generally not recommended to delete things in the media library unless you have deleted the page that referenced it. This is in case you delete something by accident. You may find it is difficult to recreate it, or restore it, depending on what action you have taken.
So follow these steps if you want to delete an image.
1). Locate the page where the image is present. Delete the page, post, or edit it to remove the image. Update the page. Test it to make sure it has disappeared.
2). Go to the media library and search through the images until you locate it and then remove it.
If you follow these two steps you will keep your site in tip-top condition.
With only one or two exceptions, most of you do not have large sites and therefore would not need to do a spring clean to clear out old redundant material.
I can’t locate the page
If you are stuck, drop me a line, and tell me what you are trying to do and I will see if I can help resolve it for you. Go to this page to contact me.