
You can insert images in the body of your Help Center knowledge base articles. When you insert images, they are added as attachments to the article. Large images are automatically resized to fit the width of the article.
Be sure to insert the image, as opposed to copying and pasting the image from another source, to avoid image issues. As an alternative to inserting images directly in your articles, you can host your images on a public file server and link to them.
To insert an image in an article
- In Help Center, create a new article or edit an existing article.
- Place the cursor where you want the image to appear.
- Do one of the following:
- Drag and drop the image into the body of the article.
- Click the Insert image button on the toolbar, then click Upload images and select your image.
The image file size limit is 20 MB.
Images are automatically adjusted to fit the width of the article, using a compression feature within CSS. It's a good idea to manually resize images that are more than 1600px wide, as the compression might cause the image to appear distorted in the published article. You also might want to manually resize images if you are using Web Widget (see Optimizing images for Web Widget below). - Click Insert in the dialog that appears.
The image appears in your article.
- Click Save.
If you have a closed Help Center that requires all users to sign-in, article images will appear broken in email notifications sent to users who are following your Help Center. This is a known issue.
Optimizing Help Center images for the Web Widget
To make sure the images in your Help Center articles display correctly in the Web Widget, it’s important that the images are added to the article at the desired size.
When Help Center articles are converted for viewing in the Web Widget, the article’s images are stripped of their attributes in the HTML tags (except for the src and alt attributes), and custom CSS rules are ignored. For most images, this isn’t a problem. However, if the original images are very big, and significantly resized in the HTML or in a custom CSS, they can appear awkwardly large.
Say, for example, you want to display an icon in your Help Center article. The icon’s original image is 300x300 pixels. To display it at a more reasonable size, the HTML is modified by adding the attributes width=“6%”
height=“6%”
.
In the Help Center article, the icon is 18x18 pixels, 6% of the actual image size. When the article is processed for the Web Widget, and the width and height attributes are removed, it goes back its original size and, even after being sized down to fit inside the widget, it’s too big for an icon.
Simply resizing the original image down to the size you want, rather than manipulating the size in your code, avoids this problem.
32 Comments
Hi there!
Thanks for this post, I've got a doubt though, once the image has been inserted into the article, is there any way of making it a hyperlink itself so the end-user can expand it to its original size?
I'm asking because sometimes we need to show a full-screen screenshot for step-by-step instructions, but as far as I can tell it's not possible to make it square within the page and preserve a readable size at the same time.
If not possible, is there any process I can follow to formally request?
Thanks!
Hey, Nau!
Apologies for the delayed response. As the article states, images are automatically resized to fit the browser window, so your customers could expand their window to maximum width. But the kind of functionality you suggest is not native to our product.
We don't take requests as such, but you can explain your problem in the Product Feedback topic. If you choose to post there, I do encourage you to read the guidelines on how to write an effective feedback post first.
Happy Zendesking!
"As an alternative to inserting images directly in your articles, you can host your images on a public file server and link to them."
How? Tried embedding a gif from imgur by inserting the html code but it didn't display the gif
Hey Vincent!
I did some testing of this on my end, and found that I was able to embed .jpgs, but .gifs didn't work. I'm going to check with some Help Center experts to find out if this is expected behavior. I'll let you know what I find out!
Hi Vincent,
I wanted to clarify "As an alternative to inserting images directly in your articles, you can host your images on a public file server and link to them." This alternative simply means that if your image is hosted on an external sever, you can hyperlink text within your article instead of inserting an inline image. When doing so, you would simply want to use the hyperlink button at the top of the text editor and insert the URL so it would like this..
Have a great day!
Hi,
I am trying to upload an image to my article but it just shows the name of the image and not the image (see screenshot below). I haven't had any issues uploading images up until now, what am I doing wrong?
Thank you!
Hello, Omer!
I'm very sorry that you're experiencing this issue with your image. I am sending you a ticket notification to your email so we can look in to this further. Thank you!
Hi,
I am curious about attached images. Is there a way to download them? I would like to be able to host them and then link to them so I can lightbox them. However, some of our articles have inserted images and I'd like to get at them without having to right-click and "copy image" over and over again.
Hi Barry!
You can do this via our API. There's an endpoint specifically for this purpose. You can find that here.
Hi there,
Is the API the only way to delete an unused attachment?
Hi Tami,
Can you clarify what you mean by an "unused" attachment? Also is this about images in articles, or attachments on tickets?
Hi Nicole,
I'm referring to images used in articles. I've used the API to delete them, but was wondering if there was a way to do it without having to fire up the ol' command prompt window.
Hi Tami -
You should be able to just go into the article, select the image, and hit "delete" - unless I am misunderstanding your question?
Hi Nicole,
I mean delete them completely from the system, like you can do with assets on the customization page. Not just delete from an article.
Hey Tami!
If you go into the Edit Article screen and select the Add Image icon, you'll see two tabs: Article Images, which shows the images in use in the article, and Unused Images, which are images that were uploaded but never inserted into the article. You can delete unused images from that second tab. Let me know if that doesn't answer your question.
HI guys!
Is there any way to delete the (very ugly) tiny grey border that appears when we upload an image into an article ? Thanx!
Hi @Nevoux,
There is no such border initially when you upload an image into an article unless the border exists in your image or you have added it using some CSS.
I cannot tell you exactly how to fix that without looking at the code or the HC but you can try the code below and let us know if it works for you.
Thanks
Hi @Nau,
We have figured out how to display original size images, see: https://podpora.shoptet.cz/hc/cs/articles/360003160331-Doprava-a-platby .
We can add more info if someone is interested.
Ondřej
Not sure if this will be of assistance but this is the code I add.
Click the source code button to get at the underlying HTML and put it where you need it. I like it because it gives the end user the option to click the image to make it bigger if there are details in the screenshot the can't make out.
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://[public server]/[file name]" rel="lightbox"><img style="border-width: 1px; border-style: solid;" src="http://[public server]/[file name]" alt=" "/></a><a style="font-size: 10px;">click to expand</a></p>
Cheers,
Barry
Thanks for sharing your solutions, Ondřej and Barry!
Hi guys!
I am wondering how to add borers to all images inserted in articles. I want to avoid doing it manually for every print screen. Could you help with some guidance?
Hi @Maria,
You can put the below code at the bottom of your style.css file:
Let me know if you face any issue.
Thanks Diziana
Is there any way to better sort images in the Insert Image pop-up?
I uploaded images from my local drive all at once, but now that I look at them in the Insert Image pop-up, there is no way to sort by name, date, anything. I have to look at each picture and file name.
I'm importing a LOT of articles, so this is getting very tedious. Any tips?
Hey Amy,
I did some digging around on my end and it doesn't look like there's a way to change the sorting order for images you're uploading to Guide. Since this functionality does not exist currently, I would recommend creating a post in our Guide Product Feedback along with your use case to help gauge interest from other users as well as provide visibility to our Product Managers.
We greatly appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback :)
Thanks again!
Is it possible to replace an image that is used in five different articles in one place? Instead of having to open each article and replace it?
Hey Molly,
There's no native way to accomplish this unfortunately. You'd most likely need to create a script using our API to replace these images.
Hope this points you in the right direction!
Hello,
It seems there was a recent change in Guide where if I now paste an image into my article I get the image upload/select popup. It's nice that my images are now being uploaded when I simply paste, however, I am noticing more of my images are now distorted and blurry.
Previously, the majority of our images uploaded as is looked good in the article. Was there also a change related to sizing? I see an article suggesting that all images be edited to 1600px before uploading. Unfortunately, to do this properly our team would need to use an editing tool like Photoshop.
Any suggestions? Things were working great before we noticed this recent change to insert images.
Thanks!
Hi Jaime,
I tested this on my own account but I was unable to replicate the issue with quality being distorted. Can you replicate from an Incognito window by chance? I'd also confirm there weren't any changes made to your Guide theme that would affect the quality of your images being uploaded.
Cheers!
I'm wondering if there is a way to add at alt tag to an image when it is uploaded. I see that the file name is added to the code as the alt tag, but we are unable to use that for the standard of accessibility compliance that we are required to meet by our clients. Is there a way to adjust the alt tag at the time of upload?
Thanks!
Andrea
Hey Andrea,
You can actually edit your articles to insert an alt-text for the images. When you are on the Edit Article page, click on the Source Code (<>) icon and look for the codes for the images. These codes usually have alt=" " and that is where you can input the alt text.
Let me know if that doesn't get you the results you're looking for.
Cheers!
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