Playground Page

The AltTexty Playground is your experimental sandbox, and your best friend for understanding and optimizing AltTexty’s AI-powered descriptions!

We strongly recommend using the Playground first before running large bulk generations or enabling automatic processing.

With the Playground, you can see exactly how different settings affect the alt text generated for any image from your Media Library, all without making any permanent changes to your actual image data until you explicitly choose to.

You can find this page under AltTexty -> Playground in your WordPress admin dashboard.

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The Playground Workflow: #

1. 1. Navigate to AltTexty -> Playground.

1. 1. Select an image representative of the types you have on your site.

1. 1. Experiment with different Brand Voice, Focus Mode, and Custom Instructions.

1. 1. Click “Generate Test Alt Text” and review the result.

1. 1. Repeat steps 3 & 4 until you find settings that consistently produce the ideal alt text for your images.

1. 1. Once satisfied, click “Save Current Settings as Default” to apply these preferred settings globally.

1. 1. Only then, consider using Bulk Generate or enabling Auto-generate on Upload, knowing you’ve fine-tuned the defaults to your liking.

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Why Use the Playground First? #

• • Understand AI Behaviour: You will see firsthand how our AI interprets your specific images and, in turn, all other images.

• • Test Settings: You will be able to experiment with different “Brand Voice,” “Focus Mode,” “SEO Context,” “Language,”  and “Custom Instructions” to find what works best for your images.

• • Preview Before Applying: Generate multiple versions of alt text for an image and choose the best one, or refine it.

• • No Risk: Generations in the Playground do not automatically save to your image’s alt text field. You are in complete control.

• • Single Alt Text Generator: This can be particularly useful if you want to have full control over an image’s alt text, especially with the Apply Alt Text to Image function.

• • Save Your Defaults: Once you find settings you like, you can save them as the new global defaults for the plugin.

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Using the Playground: A Step-by-Step Guide #

The Playground is divided into two main columns: Settings on the left, and Image & Result on the right.

1. Image Selection (Right Column – Top) #

This section lets you select an image from your WordPress Media Library, preview it with its filename and ID, and change it if needed.

• • Image Preview Area:
    • • “Select Image” Button: Click this to open your WordPress Media Library.
    • • Choose an Image: Browse and select any image you want to test. Click “Use this Image.”
    • • Preview: A preview of your selected image will appear, along with its filename and ID.
    • • “(Change Image)” Link: Click this if you want to select a different image from your Media Library.

2. Adjust Settings (Left Column) #

This section mirrors the “Generation Defaults” and the “SEO & Post Context Integration” options you find on the main AltTexty Settings page, but these settings will only apply to the test generation you run here except yu save it globally.

• • Brand Voice:
    • • Choose the desired tone and style (Neutral, Friendly, Professional, Descriptive, Minimalist, Technical, Journalistic, or Custom).
    • • If you select “Custom…”, a textarea will appear for you to describe your specific brand voice.

Playground Tip: Try generating alt text with “Neutral” first, then experiment with other voices to see the difference.

• • Focus Mode:
    • • Select how you want the AI to focus its description (Balanced, Overall Context, Detailed Elements).

Playground Tip: For a complex image, try “Detailed Elements.” For an image where the setting is important, try “Overall Context.”

• • Language:
    • • Select the language for the alt text you want to generate. It defaults to your site’s language or the global setting.

Playground Tip: Useful for multilingual sites or if you need alt text in a specific language for a particular image.

• • Custom Instructions:
    • • Provide specific instructions to the AI for this test generation only.

Playground Tip: If your image is a product, you could instruct: “Mention the product name ‘XYZ Widget’ and its main color.” If it’s a graph, “Describe the key trend shown in this bar chart.”

3. Generate Test Alt Text (Left Column – Bottom) #

• • “Generate Test Alt Text” Button:
    • • Once you’ve selected an image and are happy with your settings, click this button.
    • • It will be disabled until an image is selected.
    • • A spinner will indicate that the AI is working.

• • “Save Current Settings as Default” Button:
    • • If you’ve configured the Brand Voice, Focus Mode, Language, SEO Context, and Custom Instructions in the Playground and love the results they produce, click this button.
    • • It will save these Playground settings as the new global defaults on the main AltTexty Settings page.
    • • A spinner and status message will confirm the action.

4. Review Result (Right Column – Bottom) #

• • Generated Alt Text Result Area:
    • • Textarea: The alt text generated by the AI based on your selected image and parameters will appear here. This text is read-only.
        • • (Note: Any global Alt Text Prefix/Suffix you’ve set on the main Settings page will also be automatically applied to this preview).
    • • Status Message: Below the textarea, a message will indicate if the generation was successful or if an error occurred.
    • • “Apply This Text to Image” Button:
        • • This button only appears after a successful test generation.
        • • Action: If you like the generated alt text, click this button to save it as the actual alt text for the selected image in your Media Library. This will overwrite any existing alt text for that image (after saving an initial snapshot if it’s the first time AltTexty modifies it).
        • • This also updates the image’s AltTexty history.

Thank you.