Using the Media Library


This workshop is an introduction to the Media Library in WordPress. We’ll go over the Grid and List views of the Media Library, and how to navigate them. We’ll also do an overview of working within the Media Library.

Learning outcomes

  1. Learn what Media is.
  2. Learn what the Media Library is and what it does.
  3. Learn how to upload and manage Media.

Comprehension questions

  • What is Media?
  • What filtering options do you have when viewing the media library?
  • How do you view Attachment details?

Transcript

Hello, everyone, my name is Courtney and I have been a WordPress user since 2004. And a full time contributor to the WordPress open source project since 2016. I’m based in Portland, Oregon in the United States. So thank you all for joining me for this workshop today. In this workshop, we’re going to go over the Media Library in WordPress. It’s different views and working within it. So let’s get started. So what is media media consists of the images, video recordings and files that you upload in use in your site. Media is typically uploaded and inserted into the content when you’re writing a post or a page. So note that the uploading setting in the settings media screen This describes the location and structure of the upload directory where your media files are stored. If you do need to upload new media, even if that media is not related to a post or page, then you’ll need to use the media add new screen. Visit the media add new screen to install new media by clicking the Add New button which is found here at the top of the Media Library screen. Or you can select media add new from the left side menu. The Media Library screen allows you to Edit, View and delete media previously uploaded to your site. multiple media objects can be selected for deletion. And there are search and filtering abilities that are provided to allow you to find your desired media. The Media Library provides two types of views. One is the simple visual grid view as seen here. And the other is a conventional list view. You can switch between these views by using these icons at the top left of the Media Library page.

Let’s take a closer look at the grid view. In grid view. thumbnails of image, audio icons and movie icons are all arranged in the grid. There are a few options for filter in the grid view. At the top of this view, you can filter the media by media type and date. The all media items drop down allows you to select by media types, such as images, audio, video, and more. As well as viewing any media that is unattached to any posts nor pages. By default, all media items are selected and all of your media are displayed. Next, the all dates drop down allows you to select by date, which media are displayed in the grid view. By default, all dates are selected and all your media are displayed.

All the way to the right is a search box where you can enter a word or a series of words to search and display all the media that’s meeting your search terms. As you can see here, the search results are updated as you type.

To delete media items, click the bulk Select button at the top of the screen. Select any items that you wish to delete. Then click the Delete permanently button. Clicking the Cancel button takes you back to viewing your media.

In Media Library grid view, clicking on an image thumbnail audio icon or video icon will display an attachment details dialog. This allows you to preview media and make quick edits. Any changes you make to the attachment details will be automatically saved. You can also delete individual items and access the extended edit screen from the details dialog. Use the arrows at the top right of the dialog box. Or you can use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate between items quickly. Attachment Details change its its appearance and information by the media type. The left side of the dialog shows the image audio player or video player. The right side lists the media file attributes and optional data. Some of them are editable from this dialog. In at the bottom, there are three link menus. View attachment page shows the media in a simulated view of how the image would look when displayed in your theme. Edit more details, displays the Edit media screen where you can manage information about your media. And finally, delete permanently will of course delete the media. Also note specifically for image files that there is this edit Image button underneath the image. This allows you to make edits such as rotating, scaling, and cropping now let’s take a look at the Media Library ListView. This shows a table that lists all of your media by row the media are listed with the newest uploaded media first. This table of media contains the following columns. The first column contains a checkbox. That checkbox When selected selects that particular media to be processed by a bulk action. Next to the checkbox is the thumbnail. For images. This is a small image of the actual imedia. For some videos, and audio files, it will just show an icon. In the File column displayed in the form of a link is the title, which is the name of the media. Clicking the title link will open the Edit media screen. Below the title is the actual name of the file that holds this particular media. Next, to the right is the author displayed in the form of a link this is the author who uploaded the media. Clicking the author link causes all media authored by that user to be displayed in the table of media, thus allowing a bulk action to be applied to all media forgiven after the uploaded two column describes the title of the post or page that contains the media and the date of that post or page. Click on the title the view that posts our page and an edit screen. If the media was unattached to any post or page, and attached link will appear and when clicked this media can be attached to any selected posts or pages. If the media has been attached to more than one poster page, only the details of the first post or page will be displayed. Next is the comment bubble. Each media row has a common bubble with a number of comments for that media if it has any. If a media has any comments than the number of comments is displayed in that bubble, clicking on the comment bubble causes the comment screen to be displayed to allow moderation of those comments. And finally, the date column shows the date that the media was uploaded. Some column headings such as file, author, uploaded to and date. These headings can be clicked to sort the table of media in ascending or descending order. Hover over the column title like file. To see the up arrow or down arrow, you can click the heading to change the sort order.

Under screen options in the upper right corner of the screen. The number of media displayed per page is determined. If more than one page in media is available. There are two double arrow boxes to move to the first and last page. These are grayed out here because I only have two. You’ll also notice that there are two single arrow buttons here to move you to the next or the previous page. Finally, a box showing the current page number can be used to enter a page to directly display

this screen options allow you to choose which columns are displayed or not displayed. Clicking on the screen options tab shows a list of the columns with the checkbox next to each column. Check the box for each column that you want displayed in the table or uncheck the box to not see that option. In addition, the number of media items to display in the table of media can be set. Click the Screen Options tab again, to close it. above the table. In the upper right is a search box where you can enter a word or series of words and hit enter. This will search and display all the media that meets your search terms. At the top of the list view, you can filter the media by media type, and date, just as we saw in the grid view. The first drop down allows you to select by media type, and the second allows you to select by date which media are displayed in the table. Clicking the filter button applies the settings that you select in the drop down menus.

This screen allows bulk actions to be performed on one or more media selected in the table. For bulk actions to be performed on multiple media at once. Those media must first be selected by using one of the following methods. To select one media entry at a time, click on the checkbox to the left of the media entry. It’s also possible to keep selecting more media by checking their respective checkbox. To select all media in a given table, check the checkbox in the tables title or the footer. Of course unchecking. The header or footer title bar checkbox will cause all entries in that table to be unchecked. A reverse selection means that checked items will become unchecked and unchecked items will become checked. The reverse selection is accomplished by holding down the Shift key on your keyboard, and then clicking the header or footer title bar checkbox.

Actions describe the process to be to be performed on particular media. There are two styles of actions that will be referred to as bulk actions and immediate actions. Bulk actions can be performed on one or more media at one time. Once those media have been selected. Bulk actions are available when appropriate as choices in the bulk actions drop down menu.

As seen here.

The only bulk action that’s allowed is delete permanently. immediate actions are performed immediately on an individual media entry. hovering your cursor over the media row reveals the edit, delete permanently and view options. The available actions are as follows. Edit displays the Edit media screen. This action can also be initiated by clicking on the media title. Delete permanently, well that deletes the file. Delete permanently is available as both a bulk action and an immediate action. View presents the media in a simulated view of how the image looks when displayed in your theme. This is only available as an intermediate action. For unattached files in the unattached filter view, the attach action is displayed. By clicking this link. The media can be attached to selected posts or pages.

Clicking attach will show you the attach to existing content dialog box. From here you can select a post or page that that media should be attached to you can search For the page or post by typing in a search term and clicking Search, or you can simply select a post or page by clicking the radio button next to its name. Click Select invert to attach media to a post or page. After one or more media are selected, and after a bulk action is specified, the Apply button performs the given action on the selected media. Click the Apply button to execute the bulk action that’s specified in the actions pulldown on the selected media. Remember, prior to executing actions, one or more media must be selected as described before. Thank you for joining me for this workshop. Hopefully you’ve learned more about the Media Library in WordPress and the basics of using it. To learn more about getting started with WordPress. Please check out the other workshops in the course that’s called start publishing with WordPress. Thanks again for joining me and I hope you have a good day.

Workshop Details


Presenters

Courtney P.K.
@courtneypk

I’ve been using WordPress since 2004, and have been a full time sponsored contributor to the WordPress open source project since 2016.