I recommend you use JPG images, unless the background of your image must be transparent.

JPG images are compressed much more efficiently and typically take up a fraction of the storage (ie - smaller file sizes) than their PNG counterparts.

If it's an image that is relatively small in size anyway, or required a transparent background - like an icon for example - then in that case the PNG is the right way to go.

You may also upload GIFs.  The filesize limit on all files is 64MB. No image should really need to be over 1MB for online use.  This is where JPG compression comes in handy.

NOTE: The website will take your uploaded photos (no matter the format) and automatically display them in the "webp" format, which is the recommended image format on websites for speed, quality, compatibility and efficient page load times.

While search engines are doing much better at reading text inside of images, it's still not recommended as a general rule of best practice.

The reason ... screen readers and responsiveness.

Older screen readers, which are most commonly used in an older demographic where software isn't kept up to date, cannot access the words used in the image.

Secondly, and this is much more common from what I see on YMCA websites, when you put text directly in the image, inevitably that text will be cut off on some screen size - whether large desktops, tablets or phones.

When in doubt, just let the image speak for itself and use headlines & descriptions for your words.

Alt text is required on most, if not all images found in Website Services.  This is for good reason...  Accessibility and Search Engine Optimization.

To keep it very simple, your alt text should be a concrete, accurate description of what the image visually conveys.

This means you should not use generic alt text entries like "Youth Soccer Banner Photo".  That is what the image means to you, not what it means to search engines or users looking at the page.

Instead, you may use "Middle school age boys and girls participating in Youth Soccer at the Music City YMCA".

That describes the image for screen readers, so someone would understand what the image is conveying... AND it gives good keywords for search engines to pick up on (youth soccer, music city ymca, middle school age, etc) to rank your image and landing page higher.

Here's a fantastic breakdown of how to write effective alt text for your images.

You'll have an easier time if you keep your files without spaces and special characters.  Having those in the filename can work just fine.  But in some older browsers and on some mobile phones, the empty spaces and characters can cause issues where the file doesn't show - or in some worse cases - removes the file from the server completely.

So instead of uploading a file named "Youth Soccer Fall ~ 2024.jpg". Please rename it to "Youth-Soccer-Fall_2024.jpg" and upload that image.  This will make life easier for you in the long-run, promise!

You can use the same principle for documents (PDFs).