Uploading and managing your files

Every image, video and document you use on your website lives in the media library. It's one shared store per website: upload a file once, and you can pick it in any element, on any page, in any language.

Files are shared, not copied. The same file can be used on twenty pages. Delete it and it disappears from all twenty at once, and nothing warns you first. See "Deleting a file" below.

Uploading

Two ways, both in the file list:

• Upload file: opens your computer's file picker. You can select several files at once.
• Drag and drop: drop files straight onto the file list from your desktop.

Files land in the folder you're currently looking at, so open the folder first.

You can also upload from inside the editor: any element that asks for a file (Image, Video player, Photo slider, Photo gallery, the marker icon on a Map) opens the same library in a dialog, with the same upload button.

The limit is 20 MB per file. A larger file is refused with a message naming it. There is no limit on how many files you may store.

What you can upload

ClickWhale checks images and video by looking inside the file, not at its name. Renaming invoice.exe to photo.jpg doesn't get it in. A photo saved with the wrong extension is still accepted and stored under the right one.

Your file name is cleaned up on the way in. Accents are folded, punctuation is dropped, spaces become dashes and everything is lower-cased, so the file gets an address that works everywhere. Zomer foto (1).JPG is stored as zomer-foto-1.jpg.

Folders

New folder creates one inside the folder you're in. Click a folder to open it; the breadcrumb at the top and Back to parent folder get you out again.

Folders never appear in your website's page addresses. They do appear in the file's own address, which is the folder path plus the file name. Decide on a structure early: by section of the site (about, products, news) usually beats by date.

Removing a folder: the Remove folder button only appears when you're standing in a folder that is completely empty. Delete its contents first and the button shows up.

There is no rename and no move. A file stays in the folder you first put it in, under the name it was given on upload. To have it somewhere else, upload it again into the right folder.

What you can do with a file

Click any file and you get File information:

• The file's URL, with a copy button. The address you'd paste into an email, a newsletter, or a custom-code element.
• Create direct link: gives the file a short, permanent address you control (/menu) instead of its long one. Use it for anything you'll print on a flyer or a QR code, because you can point the short link at a newer file later without reprinting anything. The address can't keep the file extension, dots are stripped, but the download still opens as a PDF. See Short addresses for your files; they live under Manage → Settings → Link files.
• Delete.

Deleting a file

You're asked to confirm, and then it's gone. ClickWhale does not check whether the file is still used somewhere, and nothing on the pages that used it will tell you. An image element pointing at a deleted file renders as a broken image; a download button points at nothing.

So before deleting, think about where the file was used, and if you're not sure, leave it. Unused files cost you nothing.

Replacing a file

Uploading a file whose cleaned-up name matches one already in that folder overwrites it. That works for a document such as a price list, but not for images.

ClickWhale prepares images for the page: it resizes and crops each one to the size and shape the element asks for, and keeps that prepared copy. The copy is filed under the image's address, so an image replaced at the same address keeps serving the copy made from the old one, indefinitely, and for everybody.

So: give the new version a different name, then pick it in the element that shows it. For documents there is no prepared copy and overwriting works as you'd expect, which is exactly why a direct link is the better tool for a menu or a price list.

Preparing images

A photo straight off a phone is often 4000 pixels wide and several megabytes, and a visitor on mobile data pays for every one of them.

ClickWhale does shrink images on the way out. The Image size setting on an image element decides the width the visitor actually downloads, but it can only shrink what you gave it, and a huge original still costs you upload time and storage.

Practical rules:

• Resize before uploading to roughly twice the size it will be shown at. 1600 px wide is plenty for a full-width banner, 800 px for something inside a column.
• JPG for photographs, PNG for screenshots and anything with sharp edges, SVG for logos and icons.
• Keep it under about 300 KB where you can.
• Give it a descriptive name before uploading (team-photo-2026.jpg, not IMG_4821.jpg). The name becomes part of the address and search engines read it.

Alt text (the description a screen reader announces and a search engine reads) isn't set here. It's set on the element that shows the image: see Photo galleries and Photo sliders.

Common issues