The WP Media Manager is Absolutely Terrible

While I do understand the original poster’s gripe, there are some wonderful plugins that actually fix the issues he has with WordPress Media manager. Here are some great plugins

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/media-grid/ (see your media library as grid images instead of thumb, author, etc-easily toggle between the two views)

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

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

I think the new Media in WP is good. Just name your images before you upload them and you’ll find them easy. I have almost a thousand images in my blog and I have no trouble finding them because I’ve named them all.

@cromermusic

Well yes, but there are loads of people who have other things to do.

My clients have a business and their primary job is to take care of their business.

They want an easy solution with no hassle or too much learning about how to maintain their websites. They pay my bils so I need solutions for them which are extremely easy, because their skills lay soewhere else.

And even flat files CMS like “GetEasy”, which is very similar to WordPress, have a media management which allows users to create folders and subfolders.

So the request for a better media manager is in fact quite ridiculous because a system which is used so often should have this in it’s core.

It is just due to the [Demeaning remark moderated] that it isn’t there yet.

Very unprofessional to my opinion.

I’m generally OK with the file management capabilities of the media manager – at least as far as the way they work to show what images you have in a particular page or article. A lot of it also has to do with the way one organizes file naming when setting up image to upload – that helps with the search function. The thing that I find annoying, though, is that the image fields don’t map well as far as metadata is concerned from programs such as Lightroom – metadata for caption in that program ends up in Description in WordPress, which, of course, is useless as far as captioning large quantities of images – which, for my portfolio site, I need to have. I’ve installed plugins that others have mentioned that do this, but really, this kind of thing should, IMHO, conform to the standards out there for metadata processing. Particularly since these plugins seem to work well within WordPress itself, but not so well when using the image manager with particular tools and thems – the Studiofolio theme comes to mind as it’s the one I’m working with here at the moment. Core functionality rather than some extension might resolve these kinds of incompatibilities, as I can’t really expect plugins and theme developers to necessarily build tools that work with each other. I’d like to think though, that if the functionality was built into WordPress itself, it’d be more likely to work in themes, etc.

Cheers
Chris

To call the built in wordpress media “library” a library at all is to give it too much credit. Failing to provide proper management of files remains (in my opinion obviously) the biggest failure of wordpress.

cyberviews – Please stop swearing and calling moderators dictators.

The developers care. In fact, we have a lot of tickets that need even more expert coders to help out.

https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/component/Media

As of 9 months ago, the decisions has been to not create subfolders for media: https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/23594

Sure, we all are people and what is requested takes a lot of effort that can’t be proven as worth-it until someone actually tries it, but making the “decision” and closing the conversation so it’s not public how many are for it is a very characteristic dictatorship trait.
Such system demonizes the deciding end in eyes of discussion participants and creates a sense of conspiracy of some sort.

making the “decision” and closing the conversation so it’s not public how many are for it is a very characteristic dictatorship trait.

The conversation obviously was not closed as it’s happening (again) here. Only the Trac ticket was closed. That is simply the way in which Trac works.

Again, please drop references to “dictatorship”. Such name calling is detrimental to the community. If you want a greater say in the way that WordPress is developed, then join one or more of the development teams. That way, you can have real input.

Trac can still be commented on, actually, and it’s very public, but can be hard to find. That’s why I linked you to it, so you could learn how we process things that move from support/ideas to practical code, and then onward to new features. ?? you’re welcome to join, though I suggest everyone remember that calling names rarely needs you positive results, no matter the CMS. ??

Thanks!

Like others here I would like to see some improvements made to the way media is handled in WP to include the use of folders. Obviously (I would think) this need/wish/desire is known to the fine folks working on the next iterations/versions of WP and so I’m curious if there are any current plans/projects/updates that might be included in near-future updates?

Thanks!

I don’t know about any specific plans for the media manager (aside from some neat Audio/Visual work) but this is a great place to see what’s going on in development.

https://make.www.ads-software.com/core/

Just for perspective, I have at present 14,995 image files in a single WP install. I use a strict naming convention and I am able to search for files and find them instantly, as opposed to navigating through folders by successive http request until i find the right image which from my perspective would be really tedious. Because I have a strict naming convention I don’t even bother with tags.

I am interested in this discussion however as I am about to let other authors upload their own images and will need to look at:

1/. programatically forcing the naming convention; and
2/. restricting authors to browsing just their own images.

Off the top of my head the first one is easy to implement using Wp Toolset, the second one am currently looking into when i came across this post.

@johnmackay61: Can you give a little explanation about your naming convention? I’m curious about how you organize so many pictures.

100% agree with @ursinus . Media Libraries really lack folder feature. you can’t even put different file types in folders.