Hi Thomas!
WordPress attaches its media uploads in the database, to a post type called attachment, and they named that post type “Media.” This post type creates pages for each attachment you upload, and they carry little to no value to your site.
In some cases, these pages are of such thin content that they can bring your site down in SERP. This is where the noindex option for attachment comes in, and we enable it by default in The SEO Framework.
Now, this option doesn’t prevent indexing of the media files themselves. Again, it’s only for the (useless) Media post type’s pages.
If you wish crawlers to stop indexing images, then please see this answer: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35308.
There, Google explains that you need to add this to your robots.txt file:
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /
Alternatively, you can use this entry, which affects more crawlers:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*.jpg
Disallow: /*.png
Disallow: /*.gif
Disallow: /*.svg
With that, a complete robots.txt file for WordPress should look a bit like this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
Disallow: /*.jpg
Disallow: /*.png
Disallow: /*.gif
Disallow: /*.svg
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Now, Google has registered a plethora of different warnings and errors in their Search Console. If you need assistance with that, I need the warning displayed as verbatim, including the affected URL(s). Often, when you click on the warning, Google tells you why they encountered an issue, and sometimes they link you to a fix.
As for your final question, since TSF v4.0, you can override the global robots settings on a per-page and per-term basis. The SEO Bar should advise you on the status.
