First time user questions

  • Resolved BJuniper

    (@bjuniper)


    8 years, 2 months ago

    Hello,

    I have a LOT of images to delete, it understandably took a good amount of time to index, and I would like to understand a couple of things before I hit delete for the first time. Your plugin identified 39,765 duplicates, and I believe that is about right. I’m very grateful to have discovered a utility that will do this work in bulk!

    After selecting Hide Duplicates that Share Files, I see images with indications of both Attached and Detached. Can you explain the attached and detached options/links? More importantly, how might that affect my decision in selecting files to delete? I see the options for ‘Delete Permanently’ and ‘Delete Preserving Featured’, but nothing about deleting detached only, for example. Might the preserving featured option just delete those that are detached? Might I have to go through my 3,900 pages of duplicates individually to choose only those that are detached? (I’m hoping not!)

    Generally speaking, would the recommended first-time-through deletions be Hide Duplicates that Share Files > Delete Preserving Featured?

    Is there an easy roll-back for me since I’ve indexed? I don’t see any options like that yet, but of course, I haven’t actually deleted anything as of yet.

    Also, will this clean up records in the database as well?

    This is my first time doing anything like this, I’m nervous about my site soon shutting down due to running out of space. (Generally, I’m usually nervous about everything. Oh, and I do have a post-index backup of my files and database in place). I look forward to hearing from you soon!

    Jim

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • Hi BJuniper,

    Thanks for downloading Media Deduper.

    The “Attached”/”Detached” indicator is something built-in to WordPress and is not something Deduper takes into consideration at all. What WordPress considers “attached” is not always what a human being would consider attached (see https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/media-library-attach-detachwhat-is-the-point/ for some discussion, for example) and so Deduper doesn’t try to use it to figure anything out.

    I do think the recommended first-time-through approach would be, as you said, Hide Duplicates that Share Files > Delete Preserving Featured. However, that can still lead to undesired data loss, as deduper only knows about “Featured” images and other other ways of using images in posts, such as in the post body or in a [gallery] or other shortcode.

    For that reason I’d recommend you make a full backup of your site, including the uploads folder and database, before deleting anything. Sounds like you’ve already got that, though, so I think you’re okay to proceed.

    Media Deduper will not only delete the media files, it’ll also delete the attachment posts from the database.

    Thread Starter BJuniper

    (@bjuniper)

    Just a quick note. My site is a video-on demand site, which at this time is primarily linked to YouTube. When I add a video, I might have 6-10 legitimate images of different sizes fore responsiveness. The file names reflect these sizes. (e.g. Videoname-sd-90×90.jpg, etc.) I don’t know if this comes into play, but I thought it would be worth mentioning. Thanks!

    Jim

    Media Deduper would know that filename-100×100.jpg is different than filename-200×200.jpg, but in determining duplicate media it actually just compares the originally uploaded file, not any resized/cropped variants.

    When deleting a duplicate, it should delete the original as well as any and all resized versions, though.

    Thread Starter BJuniper

    (@bjuniper)

    If I understand you correctly, this would remove the additional YouTube images that makes my site responsive, and I would need to regenerate my videos links?

    Also, your second paragraph makes it sound as though the original and resized versions are deleted. That makes it sound like everything gets deleted, which I’m sure is not the case. Can you please clarify for me? Thanks!

    Jim

    Sorry, sounds like I didn’t explain it well. Maybe an example would be best.

    Let’s say you added an asset to your Media Library called file1.jpg, and that your WordPress theme then generated a bunch of different resized versions to appear in different places on your site, like file1-200×200.jpg and file1-200×50.jpg and file1-400×400.jpg.

    Then nine months later you added the exact same file but it was named myawesomefile.jpg. Your theme would also create myawesomefile-200×200.jpg, myawesomefile-200×50.jpg and myawesomefile-400×400.jpg.

    Then you install and run Media Deduper. Deduper would see that myawesomefile.jpg and file1.jpg were the same file, and flag them as duplicates.

    So you go ahead and tell Media Deduper to delete the media item for myawesomefile.jpg. What will happen is that Deduper will tell WordPress to delete the “attachment” post, which means that the post in your media library will be deleted from the database, and that myawesomefile.jpg, myawesomefile-200×200.jpg, myawesomefile-200×50.jpg and myawesomefile-400×400.jpg would all be deleted from your filesystem. After that, file1.jpg and all its variants would remain in your filesystem and media library, but Deduper would no longer consider it a duplicate.

    Does that make sense?

    • This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by drywallbmb.
    Thread Starter BJuniper

    (@bjuniper)

    It does. Thank you for the clarification. Just for some additional back story, none of duplicates are from me posting the same video twice. There was a bug identified in the button/function that generates grabs the images and creates the post. All of my duplicates have incremental numbers appended to their file names.

    I’ll let you know how things go tonight!

    Jim

    No problem, sorry I wasn’t clearer earlier.

    Hope it goes well!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • The topic ‘First time user questions’ is closed to new replies.