Dates in Media Library

The dates exist because attachment posts were found for those dates even if the related files no longer exist.

To remove the “orphaned” attachments, select one of the erroneous dates. The orphaned attachments will be blank, but selectable. Select any blank attachment, then click “delete permanently” on the right under where the thumbnail normally appears.

Hi bcworkz,

Thanks for your reply. I finally had a chance to try your suggestion a few minutes ago…

I never found any orphaned blank attachments…

I do have several unused images – but they are just sitting in the ‘Hold’ folder.

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1. A year ago(?) – I had removed all the Month/Year folders in the Uploads directory.

2. I now use the “Media File Manager” plugin to create folders and store 223 images – based on subject matter – within those 6 current main folders.

3. The Tearsheets folder has 12 additional sub-folders inside – to help manage the volume of images.

4. If I go the Dashboard, and select Media>Library – I currently get two choices in the upper left – Small or Large. Clicking on either – doesn’t have ANY effect. All 223 images appear.

5. If I click on the link (in the Upper Right corner) – “See the ‘old’ List View”, the display now changes.

6. Two choices are available – List or Grid.

7. If I go to the Dates dropdown, and select any of the 8 possible Month/Year items – this action has no effect. All 223 images still are being shown. The dropdown filtering isn’t able to work anymore – since there are no actual Month/Year folders structure – to tap into.

8. If I select List, all 223 images are listed (9 pages total).

9. This is where I realized, that upon looking at the Date column, and at various images that were uploaded over the last 2 years – their date entering the system – is what is being stored.

10. I’m guessing that if I’m able to change all 223 images to Today’s Date, then the Date dropdown selector – will then only show 1 item – that being “December 2016″…!

11. Hope this is a good answer (and understanding), to my own question… ??

kc

A few more things to add…

12. With the install of a new v2.1 theme update (from v1.0), yesterday I decided to change the creation date of all the posts – to Dec-25-2016, and adding 1 hour to each newer one. This did NOT change the time-stamp of any of the old images…!

13. Using FileZilla, I then looked at all the images in the Uploads directory. They all are time-stamped with the date (and time), when first processed by WordPress. The earliest going back to 2014.

14. Probably the best way to remove all those old dates, is to re-edit the original 223 images in pshop and save out a new smaller version (this could be done in a few days). Could also be an opportunity to make better croppings or to have a consistent file dimensions.

15. One could then delete all the old images in Uploads, and then upload and re-process the new ones – putting them back into their proper folders (using the Media File Manager plugin). Assuming the File_Names stay the same, when a Post or Page loads and seeks out the images to show, everything should work correctly.

15. The Date dropdown in Media Library – would then have only one month/year entry (for all the images)…

16. Sure would be nice – if that Dropdown selector had toggle switches next to it. One could search/filter by Name (with wildcard), Date, Size, Orientation, EXIF or IPTC data, List all Folders, Category and/or Tags…

17. And to have the ability to make Folders and move images around (have the power of the plugin – built in). Think it’s called File Management… ??

18. Maybe in WordPress v5.0…

19. Being a photographer since 1975 and a film-maker since 2011, I try to keep everything on my computer organized – for the sake of sanity… ??

kc

You can edit images any way you want and it will not change anything in the media library because the library is using data from the attachment post type associated with each set of images. (one attachment for all the various sizes of the same image). Not the images themselves. Things are further confusing for me because I’m unfamiliar with the manager plugin you’re using and how it may influence what you’re seeing.

There’s a bigger question. If the date filter is of no use to you and you don’t use it, is it worth trying to clear out the erroneous dates? I know it’s annoying, but can you just ignore it? Or does the plugin extend this filter’s functionality such that these dates are “in the way”?

I know you are not using the year/date folder structure, but all images and their associated attachment posts still have a date field that is used to build the drop down query. Despite the lack of a date based folder structure, could there be legitimate images that fall into those date ranges? If so, the drop down is working as intended even though it’s not meeting you expectations.

If there really are no images at all for those dates, removing the drop down dates needs to be done carefully. There’s a risk of corrupting other processes if this is not done correctly. For the purpose of removing the erroneous drop down picks, it might be helpful to temporarily deactivate the manager plugin and any other plugin that could influence the media library. Mainly so the library behaves in a way that’s predictable for me. We need to find some way to distinguish bad attachments from valid ones and ensure their removal does not affect other data that might be relying on it.

We could query for all attachments in each date range and confirm they have no image files related to it. That much can be scripted. The tricky part is if the attachment is associated with a post, that post may need a replacement attachment that relates to the proper image. There may already be one, or the current one may need to be corrected instead of deleted. I don’t know if that can be scripted. It’d be very tedious and time consuming to do this manually.

Your idea of toggle switches for various attributes is a good one, but some of the attributes you want to use would be difficult to implement. It’s only feasible to search by attributes that exist in the database. Some attributes only exist in the file itself and are not accessible with an SQL query. Most EXIF data for example. Doing so is not impossible, but it could be very expensive computationally to search through file attributes of thousands of images. SQL queries in comparison are lightning fast. There’s certainly room for improvement though!