Table of Content
- What is a WordPress Media Library?
- Key Features of WordPress Media Library
- How to Add the Media Files to a WordPress Website?
- How to Edit the Media Files?
- How to Insert the Media File into the WordPress Website?
- How to Organize the WordPress Media Library Through Plugins?
- FAQs Related to WordPress Media Library
- Conclusion
One of the most significant parts of any WordPress website is its media, whether it’s images, videos, or something else. In the immortal words of Fred R. Barnard (a popular Advertising Executive), “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Images and other media files enhance the user experience of a website, thereby improving the user session durations. Resourceful images also help ensure the website has a better ranking on the SERPs. That’s why SEO experts aim to include as many media files on the website as possible.
But to use the images and other media on the website effectively, WordPress developers need to understand the basics of the WordPress media library. This built-in WordPress library lets you upload, organize, and display various types of media files. That includes images, videos, and audio files.
So with this blog, you’ll learn everything there is to know about WordPress media library and how you can use it to add images and other media to a website.
Let’s start with what this WordPress feature is.
What is a WordPress Media Library?
The WordPress Media Library serves as a digital vault where website administrators can store, organize, and manage a diverse range of media files. These files encompass images, videos, audio clips, documents, and other multimedia elements. They contribute to the website’s content and visual appeal.
Think of the Media Library as a centralized repository. It’s carefully designed to simplify the task of incorporating media into your website. You can upload your media assets to the library just once instead of manually linking to external sources or repeatedly uploading the same files.
Then you can seamlessly insert them into various parts of your website as needed.
As your media collection grows, the WordPress Media Library offers efficient organization options. You can create custom folders, employ existing taxonomies, or use the categories and tags in WordPress to keep everything neatly sorted.
To access this feature, open the WordPress admin dashboard, select “Media,” and click on “Library.”
It will help streamline the incorporation and management of media elements. It fosters a seamless and visually engaging experience for both site administrators and visitors.
Key Features of WordPress Media Library
WordPress media library acts as a built-in repository where you can store and manage images and media files effectively. Here are a few key features offered by WordPress Media Library:
Upload and Storage: Users can upload media files from their computer directly to the Media Library. The uploaded media files are stored on the server in a designated directory.
Organization: The WordPress Media Library provides tools for organizing media files. You can assign categories, tags and even create folders or hierarchical taxonomies. It helps categorize your media content.
Search and Filtering: The library includes search and filtering options to help users quickly locate specific media files based on keywords, categories, or other attributes.
Thumbnail Generation: WordPress automatically generates thumbnails and different sizes of uploaded images. They are used for different purposes, like featured images, gallery displays, and more.
Editing and Metadata: Users can edit metadata associated with media files, such as titles, captions, alt text (important for accessibility), and descriptions.
Insertion into Content: When creating or editing posts and pages, users can easily insert media files from the library directly into the content using the “Add Media” button.
Embedding External Media: WordPress supports oEmbed. This technology lets a WordPress development company embed external media content like Twitter or Youtube videos simply by pasting the URL.
Bulk Actions: Users can perform bulk actions like deleting multiple files, adding categories or tags to multiple files at once. With the media library, users can even upload metadata in bulk.
Responsive Images: WordPress automatically generates responsive images for different screen sizes. It helps optimize the performance and appearance of the website on various devices.
Media Settings: Users can configure default image sizes, choose cropping options, and adjust other media-related settings in the WordPress admin dashboard.
Media Plugins: Developers and users can extend the functionality of the WordPress Media Library through plugins. It helps add features like enhanced organization, galleries, sliders, and advanced editing capabilities.
The WordPress Media Library is an essential tool for effectively managing and presenting media content on a website. It ensures that media assets are properly organized and optimized for the web. You can even seamlessly integrate them into the website’s design and content strategy.
How to Add the Media Files to a WordPress Website?
With the WordPress media library, you can add a variety of media files, like images, videos, and audio, to the website. The experts at a WordPress development agency follow this process for the same.
Step 1: Visit the WordPress dashboard.
Step 2: Click on “Media” and select the “Add New” option. That will open a new screen displaying “Upload New Media.”
Step 3: Click on “Select Files” to open a new files window.
Step 4: Browse through the various files on your local machine and select the suitable one. After choosing the file, click on “Open”.
At this point, you’ll see the media files in the library. Now you can edit the media file or upload it to your WordPress website.
How to Edit the Media Files?
The WordPress media library lets you edit the images, videos, and more to ensure suitability for your website. Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Open the Media Library through the WordPress admin dashboard. Follow the process mentioned earlier.
Step 2: After opening the WordPress Media Library, you’ll see a list of media files. Select and open the image that you want to edit.
Step 3: On the next screen, you’ll see a variety of options to edit the image file.
- URL: It’ll show the link to the media file.
- Title: It shows the name of the media file.
- Permalink: This media attachment page URL lets you add the media file as an attachment.
- Edit Image: Right below the image, there’s an “Edit Image” button to edit it. You can perform functions like rotating clockwise, horizontally, rotating anti-clockwise, flipping vertically, cropping, flipping, and more.
- Caption: This piece of text will provide an explanation of the media file.
- Alternate Text: It helps describe the image in just a few words.
- Description: WordPress experts use it to explain the media file.
- Delete Permanently: As the term suggests, you can use this option to delete the media file permanently.
After editing these options and completing the above-mentioned steps, click on Update. It will save the changes on the image or other media files.
How to Insert the Media File into the WordPress Website?
Uploading or inserting the media files onto the pages and posts of WordPress websites can proceed through the following process:
Step 1: Visit the WordPress Dashboard, click on Posts, and select “Add New” to upload the media file to your WordPress website.
Step 2: Then, search for the media block and click on “Add Media” to choose the media file from the library section.
Step 3: Now, from the Media Library, select the most suitable media files and click on the “Select” button at the bottom right.
There’s also an “Upload Files” that lets you upload the media file directly from the local device.
How to Organize the WordPress Media Library Through Plugins?
Let’s say you have been using the WordPress Media Library for a long time. Then there is a good chance you have uploaded a lot of media files in the library. So it can be a little challenging for WordPress programmers to keep a record of all of them.
What’s even more frustrating is that this CMS doesn’t offer much built-in management for the same. But don’t worry; WordPress has a variety of plugins that can help manage the WordPress Media Library more effectively. Choosing the best WordPress plugin will help you better organize your website’s media files.
#1 FileBird
FileBird is a powerful organizational plugin that adds folder-like structures to the WordPress Media Library. It helps users efficiently manage their media files by allowing them to create folders and subfolders. So they can easily drag and drop files for better organization.
Here are a few features of the FileBird plugin:
- A friendly user interface to drag and drop upload the files (in bulk) into the folders.
- FileBird has a Smart Context Menu for creating, renaming, or deleting the folders with a right-click.
- It supports media migration from other media library plugins like Enhanced Media Library.
With FileBird, users can navigate through their media files in a more intuitive way. That makes it an excellent choice for those with large media collections.
Active Installations: 100K+
#2 Folders
Folders is a user-friendly plugin designed to enhance the Media Library’s organization capabilities. It enables users to create folders within the library to neatly categorize and sort their media files.
Here are a few key features of folders:
- It lets you create multiple folders simultaneously (but make sure to separate their names with commas).
- You can undo your last action in the Folders plugin at the click of a button.
- The media replacement lets you automatically replace the old media with the new one throughout the WordPress website.
The plugin provides a clean interface for managing files and folders. That makes it easier to find and use specific media assets when creating content.
Active Installations: 60K+
#3 Media Library Categories
Media Library Categories adds a layer of categorization to your media files. This plugin extends the default WordPress Media Library by allowing users to assign categories to their media files.
Here are a few key features of Media Library Categories:
- Taxonomy filter to segregate the media files in the library of your WordPress website.
- Media Library Categories includes Bulk action to add, modify, or delete several media categories simultaneously.
- This plugin lets the experts at a WordPress web development company add, edit, or remove categories from the media items.
Users can then filter and sort media items based on these categories, simplifying the process of locating and using specific files across various posts and pages.
Active Installations: 20K+
#4 Media Library Assistant
Media Library Assistant offers advanced features to enhance the management of media files. It provides options to add metadata, captions, and descriptions to files directly from the library.
Here are a few key features of Media Library Assistant:
- An inline Bulk Edit to add, remove, or replace the taxonomy terms for several attachments all at once.
- You can assign IPTC, EXIF, PDF, and XMP metadata to the standard WordPress fields, along with custom fields and taxonomy terms.
- This plugin gives you complete control over File Upload extension/MIME Types, Post MIME Types, and file type icon images,
The plugin also supports custom taxonomies, shortcodes for displaying media, and the ability to search for media based on various criteria, making it a comprehensive solution for media organization and retrieval.
Active Installations: 70K+
#5 Real Media Library
Real Media Library introduces a visual folder structure to the Media Library, allowing users to create folders and organize their media files in a more intuitive way. With drag-and-drop functionality, it’s easy to rearrange files within folders.
Here are a few key features of Real Media Library:
- The direct-to-folder upload feature lets you choose a particular folder as the destination for uploading the file.
- This plugin offers advanced upload management. So when you are uploading a file, you’ll see a modal. That shows the current status, upload speed, and remaining time of upload.
The plugin also supports gallery creation from folders. It simplifies the process of building image galleries on your website.
Active Installations: 70K+
These plugins address the need for better organization, categorization, and management of media files within the WordPress Media Library. Their features go beyond the default functionality. They cater to users with varying levels of media assets and organization requirements.
But if you want some custom functionalities in these plugins or completely customized plugins for WordPress Media Library, we recommend you go for our WordPress plugin development services.
FAQs Related to WordPress Media Library
Conclusion
Every WordPress website needs ample images and videos to ensure the users understand the context of the content more effortlessly. That’s why you need the WordPress Media Library to manage all the different media files on the website.
This feature-rich library is seamlessly integrated into the WordPress ecosystem to ensure a harmonious pairing between the text and multimedia. But if you add too many files to this library, it can be a little challenging to keep track of them. So you can use the WordPress plugins like Folders, FileBird, and more to manage them effectively.
Now, if you want any help with the WordPress Media Library on your website, get in touch with our experts today!
