Media Library
Add a new media file button
Puts up a dialogue to drag or select a file
Folders Pane
This is the result of a plugin to add folders, this helps organise the media when there is a lot of it. When you load new media it appears in the “Uncategorised” folder, if you want to see all files select the “All Files” folder (this is the same as having no folders).
Selecting a folder shows you all the files in that folder, note folder names and categories work in the same way but are different taxonomies. For example the Uncategorized folder is not the same as the Uncategorized category, this can be confusing.
Filter and Search area
This controls what you see in the main body of the media page
Filter on:
- “All media items”, “Images”, “Documents”, Unattached, “Mine”
- “All dates” or the month they were uploaded
- Categories By far the most useful!
You can then apply Bulk Actions to the media you have selected in the main area this allows you to do mass deletions or add or remove a category to lots of files at the same time
Main area
Lists all the media that meet the section criteria (folder and date & category etc). The sort order can be changed by clicking the arrows on the headings Clicking a category in the file area further limits the section
Hovering over a file shows further options for that file:
- Edit
- Delete
- View
- Copy URL
- Download File
The Edit option Lets you
- Change the name (good for standardising names where filenames vary)
- Add a caption (useful for images)
- Add a description
- Change a thumbnail (added by Document Gallery plugin)
- Change the categories – this is the most important thing to do when you upload a file!
Categories
This is hierarchical, with the main categories being
- Document – specific types of documents
- Group – labels for group related material for use in query loops
- Image – specific types of image
- Topic – subject matter of image or document
- Year – future use to weed out old material
The categories should all have a description but don’t (Volunteers wanted!)
The categories are really important if you ever want to find something again to reuse it, it is a fundamental part of document (and image) management. We may also add tags later.