Use with Media Library Folders

Hi bernardsmith,

If it’s the Media Library Folders by Max Foundry, I just tested it and it worked fine. It looks like that plugin doesn’t change the actual Media Library but adds a new folder structure. Given that, FRT operates in the Media Library and won’t be affected by that plugin.

So, you should be good to go!

Hi, thanks for the reply and the test. I’ve looked at the server file structure and it appears as if Media Library Folders moves images out of the Media Library year-month folders and into my user-named folders. But all the images are also still visible in the Media Library, so I’m not sure how it all works in the background. All those additional images that WordPress adds I can see on the server, so Force Regenerate Thumbnails will deleted all those not actually used anywhere on my site. And do you mean that those unused images that I see in my user-named folders will also disappear.

Am I right in thinking that the file structure we see for the Media Library and Media Library Folders are just different views of a deeper file structure?

Sorry if the question is stupid, just trying to understand, and thankful to you for replying so I can pester you.

No pester at all, we’re happy to help (which is why we wanted to help with taking over this plugin)!

I think I need to address something you said though, which might be giving you the wrong idea… FRT does not remove images that aren’t being used on your site. You would have to use something like Jordy Meow’s Media Cleaner for that. What FRT does do is delete resizes that aren’t being used anymore.

The best example I can give with that is if you are using something like EWWW Image Optimizer which can dictate which resizes to generate when a file is uploaded, FRT will the regenerate only the sizes you have selected and then delete the other unused sizes.

That out of the way, yes, from what I can tell with Media Library Folders, it’s just a different view of your actual folder structure, but, as far as I can see, it didn’t impact the functioning of FRT. But, unfortunately, it’s not going to get rid of images that aren’t used on your site (which it sounds like you are looking for). Again, for that, the only thing I’ve found that attempts that difficult process is Media Cleaner.

Sorry my use of words was not precise enough. I manage the images I use, and don’t have any duds in my Media Library. So I meant getting rid of all those resized images that WordPress adds that are not used on my site.

A couple of other questions. Just starting my blog, and I scaled down the image sizes, but not enough. So I’ve gone and scaled them down again. And I probably could scale them even more, but I’m happy now with my ‘routine’. But it did raise two questions.

First, I noticed a number of resized images, and I read that these are ‘better’ because they are smaller than the original, etc., etc. But in fact almost all the re-sized images were bigger, and often much bigger, than the original. Am I missing something?

Second, I noticed a really odd thing. I uploaded an image and WordPress made a scaled, and the usual resized versions. Then 3 days later it scaled all the resized images, i.e. even the 150×150 had also been rescaled. Any idea why?

Thanks for your time. I understand that Force Regenerate Thumbnails can also just work on one folder, so I can test it out.

Without looking at the specifics of your images, it’s really hard to say what could be going on, however, it can happen that smaller scaled images may end up being larger in filesize.

I’m not certain about your second question. That doesn’t seem like normal behaviour. Normally if you upload an image that is larger than 2560x2560px, WordPress is going to create a scaled version and append the filename with -scaled. However, all of the resizes should remain.

The advice concerning ‘recommended’ WordPress image sizes is a mess, some talk of kb others of KB, whereas kb is kilobits, and kB is the formal description for kilobytes. SquareSpace says keep images under 500 KB (meaning kB). So I started like that. I missed 3 images that were >1MB and they we scaled down substantially. However, as you mentioned any image of more than 2560px on one side will be scaled ‘down’. The reality was that I had about 40 images that were in the range 300-600 kB, and only one scaled smaller, a few scaled slight bigger, and several scaled substantially bigger.

I decided to crop and rescale all my images down to 1200px wide as recommended by Google, but I actually decided to stay on the 1280px width default. And I rebuilt the few posts I had written.

As examples I had one image of 426 kB that scaled to 524 kB and another that was 654 kB that scaled to 880 KB. With this second image at the same time WordPress generate six other resized images, from 2048×1536 down to 150×150. Another good reason for using 1280px or less as my standard. Then 3 day later I found each one of those resized image now had a ‘partner’ scaled image, and almost all were the same size, e.g. the 1024×768 was 212 kB and scaled it became 209 kB. This scaling of all images was specific to all the images in one folder created by Media Library Folders, but not in the others. I could not find any reason.

Interesting I rebuilt that one post (with out doing my coping and resizing to 1280px), and the same problem occurred 3 days later. Now most have again scaled ‘partners’ even the 150×150 resized images. But there are 4 images that were resized, but not scaled 3 day later. I am now going to run a series of test to see how to remove the extra scaling, and how to recreate it.

Huh, that does sound odd. It sounds like you could have something duplicating your images or, more appropriately, duplicating your thumbnails. Do you have any other plugin or theme maybe that could be doing that?

As I haven’t heard anything else about this in a while, I’m going to resolve this thread. Should you have more questions, please feel free to start a new one or reach out to us directly: https://ewww.io/contact-us/