Media my month cleanup

  • I disabled the feature in Settings – Media – “Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders” in about 2016. We uploaded pictures and as you can imaging
    Its in the thousands. Then adding the smush plugin elevated the number of images to >10’000 and that is where the limit is for filezilla to display them.
    Recently about 4 month ago I enabled the feature again and have now the following path working: /wp-content/uploads/2019

    My question: since I am way over 10000 images in /wp-content/uploads , is there a plugin or a tool to move the images to “month- and year based folders”?
    – I assume the DB can be searched for the media URL and then be changed
    — maybe as a dryrun first and what it all would change first
    — maybe you can select year by year
    – could that have SEO related issues?

    thank you

    • This topic was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by mbeerli.
Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • How about this plan instead…

    Backup your media directory then go through and delete any unattached media files as they should still be in your backups if anything goes wrong like a delete of a needed file.

    On a related but different note…

    Install the broken link checker plugin and throttle it back to 480 hours after the first 72 hours. That should traverse your site in three days and report any missing image files we might have broke above. Throttling back should keep BLC in the game without being a burden on your server.

    On a third note…

    Keep your Filezilla around but install something like Total Commander for working with that backup file locally and handling any FTP tasks in a second ‘Pane’ on your local PC.

    I doubt Total Commander has a limitation on file directory size… maybe it does but I’ve never seen it yet. Regardless, the tree structured visualization should help you get a grip on those media files. I grew up on DOS using the old Norton Commander which Total Commander looks a lot like to me. That seems easy to use.

    Of course, we can’t support you from here on using Total Commander but I’ve never needed support with that myself and that site (Christian Ghisler’s) has some good info right there if you need it.

    Thread Starter mbeerli

    (@mbeerli)

    there is no unattached media, everything is attached to a post or page.
    Example:
    You upload one image and it gets smushed into multiple
    See screenshot

    It is not a cleanup in that sense, it is more a reorganization into folders.

    I don’t see anything in that screenshot that says anything about ‘attached’ or ‘unattached’. And that doesn’t look like a listing from the media dashboard (in grid mode anyway) either.

    Dashboard –> Media –> Library

    Regardless of any media files being attached or not the other two suggestions might be what you want… maybe not.

    The last one to possibly help with the huge file list and the second to catch any broken links if you do break something.

    You wanted a recommendation or advice and that’s what I’ve offered.

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by JNashHawkins.
    Thread Starter mbeerli

    (@mbeerli)

    the screenshot above just shows the additional files for each media(picture) uploaded. When I go to Media – Library and filter for Unattached I have about 15 files (which are the banner jpgs for the theme)
    So all Media is attached to a post or a page.
    So with clean up I mean move the files from the /wp-content/uploads/ to the /wp-content/uploads/xxx/xx folders based on the timestamp of the media file (jpg, png, gif, and so on)
    reducing the 15’000 files in that folder.
    But the database needs to be adjusted as well.

    Yes I noticed your suggestions but that is a lot of handwork.

    You wanted a recommendation or advice and that’s what I’ve offered.

    That Total Commander client I mentioned will let you select multiple files and move them where you wish while showing two panes of your site’s directories.

    My worry is you’ll move the files and lose the image link relationships which the BLC plugin will pick up on and assist you in repairing those instances.

    You could use a Search and Replace type plugin or APP on your database but I’m thinking that might be too confusing and probably lead to a bigger mess.

    Maybe, in the big picture, removing just 15 files might not be a big help but that’s 15 files you don’t need to worry with today.

    If you want a plugin to help manage those media directories then this looks pretty good to me but I don’t run it myself.

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/media-library-plus/

    If the above plugin doesn’t interest you then maybe this article will help.

    https://colorlib.com/wp/wordpress-media-library-management-plugins/

    I do use the Enhanced Media Library mentioned in this article on some of my sites where users other than myself need to work with media files. Mostly out of habit but some users say they like having it present.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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