Do you want to add animated GIFs in your WordPress blog posts? Sometimes when you add an animated GIF in WordPress, it loses the animation and appears as a plain static image. In this article, we will show you how to properly add animated GIFs in WordPress.

Why Animated GIFs Become a Static Image in WordPress?

WordPress comes with an easy to use media uploader which allows you to add images to your WordPress posts or pages. When you upload an image using the media uploader, WordPress automatically creates several copies of that image in different sizes.

There are three default WordPress image sizes: thumbnail, medium, and large. It also keeps your original image in full size.

When creating new image sizes for animated GIFs, WordPress ends up saving only the first frame of the GIF.

Now if you add any of those image sizes into your post or page, they will be static GIF images with no animation.

Having said that, let’s take a look at how to properly add animated GIFs in WordPress without losing animation.

Properly Adding Animated GIFs in WordPress

First, you need to edit the post or page where you want to add the animated GIF and click on the Add Media button.

This will bring up the WordPress media uploader popup. You need to click on the upload files button and select the animated GIF file from your computer to upload it.

After uploading the file, select the ‘full size’ under the ‘Attachment Display Settings’ section on the right.

After that click on the ‘Insert into post’ button to continue.

WordPress will now insert your animated GIF in the post editor.

This full size image is the original animated GIF you uploaded to WordPress. You will be able to see the animation right away in the visual post editor.

You can now continue editing your post or save to preview it.

Bonus Tips on Using Animated GIFs in WordPress

Animated GIF images are usually larger in file size than other image files. That’s because they contain several compressed images used as frames to create the animation.

Adding too many GIF images on a WordPress page can slow down your website. See our ultimate guide on how to improve WordPress speed and performance for more details.

If you use Giphy to find animated GIFs, then you may find the Giphypress plugin to be very useful. It allows you to search the Giphy database from your WordPress admin area and add GIFs without leaving your site. For more details see our guide on how to add GIFs from Giphy in WordPress using Giphypress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add animated GIFs in WordPress. You may also want to see our list of 22 great WordPress plugins for managing images.

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