Right now, all over the internet there are people clicking on images on WordPress sites for no purpose. Why?

As a mouse cursor passes over an image, they see a hand cursor, indicating that the image is a link to something. On clicking, to their surprise, all they see is an image of the image... They then need to use the browser’s back button to return to the web page.

This is NOT a good user experience because it undermines the convention that clickable images are real links. There may also be negative implications for search engine optimization (SEO).

Why does this happen?

This occurs because, by default, when an image is added to a post or a page from the media library, WordPress adds a link to an image itself if the writer forgets (or does not know about) the need to click the ‘No Link’ button at the time of insertion.

1.2.1

• Pointless update for WordPress 4.4

1.2

• Added requested text

1.1

• Fixed Linkss typo

1.0

• Cleaned up code and commenting.
• Added options page and menu items.
• Changed license to CC-BY 2.5.

0.2.1

• Actually fixed closing link tag not being removed.

0.2

• Fixed closing link tag not being removed.

0.1

• First released version.
• There may still be bugs, but I can't find any.

1. Download the latest zip file and extract the remove-image-links directory.
2. Upload this directory inside your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
3. Activate 'Remove Image Links' on the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress.
4. Optionally, click 'Settings' under the plugin name to change its settings.