Thumbnails

Good to hear from you, and thanks for your question.

You can generate WordPress-style thumbnails for your older PDF documents on the Media/Assistant submenu screen. For more information, pull down the “Help” menu by clicking in the upper-right corner of the screen, then select the “Thumbnail Generation” tab on the left side of the help menu.

Basically, select the PDF documents you want to generate thumbnails for, select “Thumbnail” from the Bulk Actions dropdown control and click “Apply”. The “Generate Thumbnails” area will open and the “WP” thumbnail style is the default type. Click “Generate Thumbnails” and you should get the results you need.

I am marking this topic resolved, but please update it if you have problems or further questions regarding the thumbnail generation features on the Media/Assistant admin submenu.

Hi, David!

Thanks for the prompt response! I am glad I asked — I never would have found that by myself. ??

I did as instructed and the thumbnails were generated for some of the files, but others show the dreaded [X] where the image should be. I can’t see a correlation for those that didn’t seem to work.

I thought it might have something to do with those that were uploaded recently and those that were uploaded while I was still trying to figure out the IPTC import process, etc., and that *almost* seems to be the case, with the exception of one document.

Thanks!

Kris

Edited to Add: In going over those PDFs, I’m remembering now that I needed to go back and clean up all the inconsistencies in those uploads. I’m doing that now, and the thumbnail functionality is working just fine. Thank you! ??

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Ellsinore.

Thanks for your update and progress report. You mentioned “the dreaded [X]” in the post and then “working just fine” in the edit. Do you still have items without a working thumbnail? If so, can you post a link to one or more of them?

If you still have “[X]” items, does re-running the generation process help?

Thanks for any additional information you can provide.

Hi, David!

I did kind of make a mess of that, didn’t I? ??

Yes, I do still have the missing thumbnails and re-running the generation process doesn’t fix it. It worked on the newer ones, but not the older ones for some reason.

I’m having to re-upload the missing-thumbnail PDFs anyway. So if you want to take a peek and see if you know what’s up, that would be great. If you don’t get a chance, no worries! ??

Here’s the page: https://cousin-collector.com/blog/?page_id=690

And here’s one of the items: https://cousin-collector.com/blog/?attachment_id=940

Thanks!

Kris

Hi, David!

Well, now I’m having a real problem. ??

I get “Item 1017, has native thumbnail.” when I try to generate thumbnails. I’m guessing this error was appearing earlier, but I didn’t see it.

Now they’re mostly all gone. I don’t see any thumbnails in the directory where the PDFs reside — is there another directory I should be looking?

Thanks!

Kris

Hi, David — Last update for the night. ??

I’ve messed up a setting somewhere. I tried to generate a new thumbnail and did get the notification that the thumbnail was generated, but still the [X] rather than an image. I’m kind of lost at this point. It *did* work and now it’s not.

Thanks!

Kris

Thank you for working with me offline to resolve this problem.

The root cause of the broken thumbnails was MLA’s inability to handle PDF documents in subdirectories of “non-standard” uploads directories. In your site, the WordPress upload_path and upload_url_path change your uploads directory from the default /wp-content/uploads value, and your subdirectories do not follow the WordPress yyyy/mm convention. You are using FTP to add files to these directories and the Add From Server plugin to make files into Media Library items. This is all perfectly acceptable, but the current MLA version does not allow for it.

I have uploaded a new MLA Development Version dates 20170605 that corrects the problem and is working well on your site; no further action on your part is required. Anyone else who finds this topic and wants the fix can follow the instructions in this earlier topic:

Fatal Error after upgrading to version 2.53

Thanks again for alerting me to the problem and for working with me to test the resolution.

Hi, David!

Thank you so much for the help on this. I was able to “clean up” my media library in a matter of hours, rather than days, thanks to your attention to this special problem.

You rock! Thanks! ??