Will it work with WP Media Folder

Thanks for your question(s) and your continued interest in MLA.

As you discovered, MLA recently added support for Real Media Library in response to users’ requests. I am currently working on support for another, similar product for my next MLA version. In both cases, I was able to add [mla_gallery] support but the Media/Assistant admin screen required modifications to the other plugin. Their developers were able to complete that work without any problems.

The current MLA version does not support WP Media Folder, which adds many other features to the basic folder creation and management tasks.

I did find this old topic in the WP Media Folder forum:

Comparison with “Media Library Assistant”

I hope you understand that I cannot afford to purchase premium plugins and themes simply to support my own free plugin. Since you are a paid user of WP Media Folder, the best next step would be for you to start a support topic in their forum requesting that they consider adding MLA support. You are welcome to refer to this topic and tell them I would be happy to so what I can to help. They can contact me at my web site if they are interested. If you proceed, let me know how it goes.

You wrote “For me now, the most important thing is to be able to match the IPTC data entered in Lightroom to WordPress.” You may be interested in this excellent plugin (which MLA also supports):

Photo Engine (Media Organizer & Lightroom)
By Jordy Meow

As I wrote in your earlier topic, you can use MLA for its taxonomy support and for its ability to map IPTC, EXIF and XMP metadata to WordPress standard fields, taxonomy terms and custom fields. I have helped several MLA users do that with Photo Engine.

I will leave this topic unresolved for now to see if support for WP Media Folder is of interest to the people at JoomUnited.

Hello.

Thank you very much for your detailed reply.

I hope both integrations can happen in the near future. I will ask for it for sure in their forums. I have already asked them to support that elusive TAG / Keywords conversion . Title and caption are usually not a problem with many plugins, but don’t know why this keyword IPTC map is not considered that important to be included too.

I will take a closer look at Photo engine. I have seen in the past their Lightroom integration, but I saw how many things can go wrong and decided to stay away from it. I prefer to have my Lightroom catalog independent to my Media Folder in WP and shielded against anything that can go wrong with synchronizing from outside apps. But the PhotoEngine plugin with MLA combined if it can map those fields from IPTC to the WP/WooCommerce taxonomies that should be interesting.

Right now I am doing it with CSV sheets and it work. I import the Low res files to the Media Library (caption and title are respected but no tags) then import all the data needed for the WooCommerce site with another plugin. Then the Tags category and other ones needed for Woocommerce gets populated. But surely it would be much better if at least keywords could be there in the first place and already searchable in the database before I do all the slower CSV route.

I like very much the folder drag and drop facility of WP Media folder, also the gallery creation options and how easy to understand the interface is for a total rookie in WP like me . But at the same time I also like the very powerful features , specially in all this taxonomy support that MLA has. I really hope they can be interested in an integration to have the best of both worlds.

Thank you again for your support and time and patience it takes for users like me that have very little knowledge of the WordPress world and learning all its particularities.

Best regards

Cristian

I just uninstalled the WP Media Folder and installed your plugin but so far having a few difficulties. I have looked at the Photo Engine by Jordi Meow and I have not seen anything that might be useful for my situation. It synchs with Lightroom but I don’t want that for fear to break something, as I said before. Much prefer to maintain both databases of thousands of images separated and secluded.

So I have first activated all the checkmarks that contain the word tag. If I go to the image open it I can see that it has the product tags (those I have introduced manually in WooCommerce) . But the picture tags is empty even if the image has keywords as IPTC data.

I would be interested that both the product tag and the image tag would be populated with the keywords.

folder with screen captures

Also, when I try to make a search with any of the search fields (word train that is in the product tag) nothing is found. Don’t know why. I have tried different combinations and with both search boxes . The one of MLA and the original in the top right of WP Media, but they cannot find anything.

The left search bar has in the last field (NO TAGS) I guess that because here no image tags can be searched, but the other search field has many parameters to search (I marked them all) but also has no specific tags to search. What is it that I am doing wrong so no search works with the product tags that are there, and also why the picture tags field does not get recognized? I attach 3 screen grabs so you can see my backend configuration of the plugin and what appears as products tags.

Thank you very much for your help.

Thanks for your updates with the good news on your progress and surrent status. Thanks as well for the link to your screen shots; very helpful.

I understand your comments about Photo Engine and keeping the databases separate. I just wanted to make sure you knew about the plugin.

First, regarding the mapping of IPTC Keywords to product and image tags, you will have to define one or more mapping rules to copy the keywords embedded in the image files to taxonomy terms in the database. Here are the steps required for one rule; you can adapt them for additional taxonomies as you need to.

1. Go to the Settings/Media Library Assistant IPTC/EXIF tab.
2. If you want to apply the rule to new items as they are uploaded, check the “Enable IPTC/EXIF Mapping when adding new media” and “Enable IPTC/EXIF Mapping when updating media metadata” boxes.
3. Find the rule name that corresponds to the taxonomy you are using, e.g., Product Tags. You can click the “Taxonomy” view above the table to filter the display.
4. Hover over the rule/taxonomy name and click the “Edit” rollover action.
5. In the “IPTC Value” dropdown control select “2#025 keywords”.
6. Leave the “EXIF/Template Value” text box empty.
7. In the “Priority” dropdown, select “IPTC”.
8. In the “Existing Text” dropdown, select “Replace” to replace the current field content, or select “Keep” to retain any terms assigned by other means.
9. In the “Option” dropdown, select “Array”.
10. In the “Status” dropdown, select “Active”.
11. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click “Update”.

Once you define the rule you can update existing items by applying it to a single item, multiple items or all items:

• To map a single item, go to the Media/Assistant submenu and click the thumbnail of the item you want (or click the “Edit” rollover action) to get the Media/Edit Media screen. You can click the “Map IPTC/EXIF metadata” link to run your rules on this item, then look at the “Product Tags” text box to inspect the results.
• To map two or more items, go to the Media/Assistant submenu and click the checkbox next to the items you want. Then, select “Edit” from the “Bulk Actions” dropdown above the checkboxes and click “Apply” to open the Bulk Edit area. Click the “Map IPTC/EXIF metadata” button to run your rule on the selected items.
• To map all of your items, stay on the Settings/Media Library Assistant IPTC/EXIF tab and click the “Execute” rollover action for your taxonomy rule. This may take a while.

The first two methods will apply all active IPTC/EXIF rules to the selected item(s). This won’t be a problem if you have only the one rule, but the third method might be the best once you have other rules in place.

You wrote “Also, when I try to make a search with any of the search fields (word train that is in the product tag) nothing is found. That is because the search functions operate only on the database content, not the image files themselves. Once you have mapped your IPTC keywords to taxonomy terms things will improve.

MLA provides two ways to search by words and phrases in the names of taxonomy terms assigned to Media Library items. On the Media/Assistant screen you will see a “Terms” checkbox under the Search Media text box. Check that box to search in the names of assigned terms. You have already checked the “Term Search” box in the Taxonomy Support area to enable this. You can also use the more powerful “Terms Search” feature for more complex searches; click the “Terms Search” button above the Media/Assistant submenu table to activate that feature.

You can find much more information about mapping rules and taxonomy term searches in the Settings/Media Library Assistant Documentation tab.

Hello David:

Thank you very much for your detailed answer. Now I understand much more how this “taxonomies” assignment works and is needed so that the database understands. Before I thought, you just click the sections you want (IPTC,…) and the magic happens automatically behind the curtains. I was completely wrong and used so many years to apple and even windows 10 where everything is chewed 5 times, so user has no to make “decisions” has made me lazy.

I am sure WP will be like those systems some day as it keeps on developing and making things easier but right now plugins like yours is gold to make the different “languages” understand each other.

Something similar is happening on the backend in my Woocommerce store. I installed a powerful “advanced search” woocommerce Search plugin that searches everything you throw at it (keywords ,titles,any metadata) but once you go the backend the original Woocommerce plugin search engine takes over and you cannot find anything that was possible with the third party plugin that is the one that clients will see on the front end So they can find anything on the frontend and me cannot find anything in the backend
???♂?…..all this inconsistencies drive one crazy ????

Is thanks to people like you that we can advance in these fields full of mines.
I will give a go to all the indications you provided.

Thank you very much
Best regards

Cristian

Thanks for your positive comments and the notes on your progress.

I will leave this topic open for now in case you have problems or further questions regarding the metadata mapping process.

Hi David:

Really amazing plugin. Very powerful. Would have never understood it without your help but I can see how useful it is for my setup. I will not use WP JoomUnited anymore as without search capabilities it is of no use to mee. I have installed MLA with Real Media Folders, and it works great so far.

But I still am confused by a few things: There are many Tags taxonomies and I don’t know if I should put my IPTC Keywords in all:
Product tags I guess refers to Woocommerce? I have matched it with IPTC
Tags – I don’t know . Is this WP tags???
Picture tags This I have also matched with IPTC
Att Tags? I also don’t know for what is this one.

Should I march IPTC keywords with all this different Tags taxonomies.

Thank you for your help.

Thanks for the kind words and for the good news on your progress. Thanks ass well for the positive review you posted; good reviews and feedback are great incentives to keep working on the plugin and supporting its users.

I will respond to your questions regarding the many tags taxonomies in the new topic you opened:

Difference between Tags, att tags, product tags, picture tags

I am marking this topic resolved, but please update it if you hear back from the WP Media Folders team about MLA support.