Media Library empty – wp-content/uploads has images

  • Resolved Toni

    (@tools4toni)


    10 years, 6 months ago

    Hi,

    SKIP TO BOLD TEXT FIRST. Save from a lot of extra blah blah.

    Info: I (re)built my sites on a fresh WPMS install a week or more ago. So, it was installed as 4.0.
    Problem occurred 2 days ago.
    I had not been working on the site.
    I read similar issues – but no responses.
    This is not a network issue WPMS – so I posted here.

    Preface to Problem:
    My students pulled up my site in class – I noticed images were gone.
    **Hours later**, I pulled up my site at home (as Admin) and got a message – in huge theme font – in the header, the home page loaded under the message. Then the page reloaded, no message.

    Message content?:
    I do not recall what the message said. I do not remember seeing “error”, I would have written or tried to copy. I may have missed it. The message had a long past 2014 date and 12:00 times in it, plus text.

    Problem:
    My Media Library is empty. The wp-content/uploads has images.

    Restored a Backup:
    (+) Images appear on the site, and in the Post Edit field.
    (+) Images have proper links to wp-content/uploads – when I hover to see link.
    (-) Media Library remains empty.
    (-) Image links report as “broken” – when I use a link checker.

    Any input, opinion, theory, is appreciated.
    I would like to understand any part of this – to avoid it happening again.
    Any advice or plugin to reconnect my images within WP structure – get images to appear in the Media Library.

    Thank you

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • The Media Library in WordPress doesn’t read the contents of wp-content/uploads/. Each image is actually an entry in the WordPress database containing info about the file, generated sizes, title, caption, etc.

    If you regenerated your site, I would guess that you did not properly migrate the database and the above info is missing. So while the images exist on your server and will load in your browser, they don’t exist in the database.

    Unfortunately I think there’s not much you can do unless you are willing to restore the site to a previous backup.

    Thread Starter Toni

    (@tools4toni)

    Hi.
    I did a restore from a previous backup. Not regenerated. So, I don’t know. Maybe a backup from even earlier? Otherwise I download the images and reload them into the posts? Oh no no no.

    I do not understand something – from my post:

    Restored a Backup:
    (+) Images appear on the site, and in the Post Edit field.
    (+) Images have proper links to wp-content/uploads – when I hover to see link.

    How is that possible?

    (Thank you for the info on the database fn!)

    Thank you

    Thread Starter Toni

    (@tools4toni)

    I managed to find an export to upload.

    I do not understand something – from my post:

    Restored a Backup:
    (+) Images appear on the site, and in the Post Edit field.
    (+) Images have proper links to wp-content/uploads – when I hover to see link.

    Like I said: the images exist on your server and will load in your browser, post edit screen, have the correct links, they still don’t exist in the database.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • The topic ‘Media Library empty – wp-content/uploads has images’ is closed to new replies.