
This is where you enter ALT tag information in PhotoMechanic for WordPress
For the past week I’ve been trying to figure out how to add ALT metadata to my images that would be recognized on upload by WordPress. I THOUGHT WordPress stripped everything but my caption, headline and copyright. Today I had this astonishingly simple epiphany, just have a look at one of Nordica Photography’s sublime images inside of Photo Mechanic. There it was, “Iceland Photographer”, the same ALT text from their page. It turns out WordPress pulls the ALT tag info from Photo Mechanic’s “Title/Object Name” field under the “Status” section.
Of course, there are other ways you can ALT tag your images prior to posting on WordPress. Nordica Photography personally recommended Storyboard along with the following promo code “wayupnorth10” that will net you 10% off. (I’m assuming using that promo helps them out so it’s the least I can do in return for their time… and metadata 🙂 I haven’t tried Storyboard yet because I’m hesitant to drop $90 without a “try before you buy” or some money back guarantee. Then just today I found out BlogStomp is also capable of ALT tagging. It seemed you had to go through their blog editor to make it work though. I wasn’t patient enough to figure out how to get it to connect to my WP page and honestly, if I’m going to invest the time into writing ALT tags then I want them to be embedded into the original images otherwise for future use. So, I’m happy I found a way to add all my metadata including ALT tags for SEO to my original images using PhotoMechanic. I’m eager to see how my images start ranking in the near future.
— February 19, 2016 Update —
I started noticing that some of my ALT tags stopped auto populating when uploading to wordpress and it was driving my nuts. After countless experiments I came to the conclusion that images exported out of Light Room would auto populate alt tags written by Photo Mechanic while most images that didn’t go through a LR export process did not (such as the PNGs I converted to JPG via PM). Eventually I realized that the “Add embedded IPTC (XMP will always be written)” check box in the Photo Mechanic preferences was not checked. Now everything seems to be working again!
Thanks so much for sharing this! I am a new user of Photo Mechanic (I’m a blogger as well as a photographer) and would not have ever thought that the title would be where that ALT tag resides. I agree with your thought regarding having the ALT tag live WITH the image (I love Blog Stomp, but haven’t come comfortable enough to use their editor).
Thanks!
Seng
This is an awesome feature.. had no idea you could do that in PM.. thanks for posting!
Thanks Dylan as I just mentioned to Clive, I think WordPress now pulls ALT data from somewhere else because this trick doesn’t seem to be working anymore 🙁
Hi Greg, Thanks for this post. I’m trying to add alt texts as directed in your post, but my text only shows up under the Image Title in WordPress. Has PM been updated since your post breaking your workaround?
Hi Clive, I think it is WordPress who has changed where it reads the ALT tags from now which is unfortunate 🙁 Do let me know if you find a work around!
Thank you Greg for a tip – I didnt know that.
Does it still work for you? I haven’t blogged in a while but last I tried it seemed wordpress stopped recognizing the alt text in that field.
Did not work for me either 🙁 The Title/Object section now populated the “Title” Section of WP. Thanks for posting anyways!
Yes, unfortunately they changed something on the wordpress side and it seems this method no longer works. I bet there is a plugin that would help, just don’t have time to figure it out right now 🙁
Holy crap, thanks for this! You are a life saver! I love you! ok, you get the point haha
Lol, did it work for you? I think this stopped working a few years ago and now I can’t find any meta space that works.