WordPress introduced their new media gallery in v2.5, and it’s been a royal PITA. I never saw anything wrong with the old system, but the powers that be felt it necessary to tinker with it. I was annoyed to find out that the default image posting size is medium (which is about 300px). I repeatedly told my writers to make sure that they were clicking on the full size radio button, but time and time again I saw that they had left it on the default choice of medium.

Determined to find a way to change the default setting, I poked around /wp-admin/includes/media.php until I found the code that needed to be changed. I’m basically moving the “checked” radio attribute from Medium to Full Size.

Find the following code in media.php:

" : '' ) . "<input type='radio' name='attachments[$post->ID][image-size]‘ id=’image-size-medium-$post->ID’ value=’medium’ checked=’checked’ />
<label for=’image-size-medium-$post->ID’>” . __(’Medium’) . “</label>
<input type=’radio’ name=’attachments[$post->ID][image-size]‘ id=’image-size-full-$post->ID’ value=’full’ />


And change it to:

" : '' ) . "<input type='radio' name='attachments[$post->ID][image-size]‘ id=’image-size-medium-$post->ID’ value=’medium’ />
<label for=’image-size-medium-$post->ID’>” . __(’Medium’) . “</label>
<input type=’radio’ name=’attachments[$post->ID][image-size]‘ id=’image-size-full-$post->ID’ value=’full’ checked=’checked’ />

And that’s it! Happy uploading with the new and improved WordPress media gallery.

p.s. If you don’t feel comfortable editing your media.php file, feel free to contact me, and I’ll send you a copy of my modified file. (Only applicable to people running v2.63!)