Until a few years ago, a big portion of the screen space of many business and personal sites was limited to only simple plain text. However, that is not the scenario anymore. Site developers & professional designers have realized that devoting a good amount of screen space to media files can do wonders for their online business.
So as a result, screen space of most newly launched sites is equipped with interactive videos, pictures, and a combination of media files.
Professional WordPress or custom site developers often use media inserts in sites for the sole motto of breaking up the long paragraphs of texts. Also, most website developers & designers fill up the complete screen space of music, photography, and portfolio sites with the media files.
Expert website developers follow this practice because they are aware that websites filled with captivating and interesting media contents do have the unique ability to attract visitors and viewers.
Risk of Media Library Getting Disorganized
As you would probably know, media files on your WordPress site are automatically stored in the media library. The excellent news here is that you’ll be able to access the files whenever you need from the media library, but there’s a slight risk of your media library getting quickly disorganized.
This problem is commonly faced by website designers and professional developers who heavily rely on the media files to fill the screen space of their sites. This is where WordPress media library management plugins can work wonders for you.
These handy WordPress media library management plugins help web developers and web designers to manage all the media files at the back end with great ease. For instance, these WordPress plugins help developers to easily organize, categorize & even delete all the media files as they please.
Most website designers will definitely be familiar with the WordPress plugins such as WordPress External Media Grabber & Remote Media Libraries, but these plugins are exclusively dedicated to the sole purpose of pulling media files from external resources. In other words, these WordPress plugins can’t be used to manage the WordPress media library.
5 Plugins for a More Efficient WordPress Media Library
Let’s take a look at some of the major solutions to implement a more reliable and efficient Media Library. Here are five of the best WordPress plugins we recommend.
FileBird
FileBird’s way of organizing your WordPress Media Library is usually centered around folder creation & file management within your WordPress dashboard. The plugin creates virtual folders that you can also give descriptive names to for easy navigation.
One of the best features of FileBird plugin is its ability to create unlimited folders & even subfolders in the premium version, although the free version of this plugin is no slouch either. It has quite a simple intuitive user interface with the drag-and-drop capabilities to further ease the procedure of moving files into folders and then rearranging them. You can also create, rename, or delete your folders as you would on your desktop computer.
This WordPress plugin is also compatible with many other media library management plugins, themes, and website page builders. In general, it’s quite a powerful library tool that seamlessly combines the utility and ease of use.
Folders
The Folders plugin not only helps you to organize all your media files, but virtually your whole website – pages & posts inclusive. So, whether it’s a website page, blog post, image, or any sort of videos, you can effortlessly save them in the same folder or the subfolder. Likewise, it’s possible to copy all your files into multiple subfolders which can surely come in handy when you’re using the same files on different pages.
This plugin is an extremely powerful management tool that can afford you the same level of organization as your front-end experience on your desktop computer. It also includes a drag-and-drop feature that makes this WordPress plugin very easy to use. There is also a premium version costing 19$ per year, which lets you access more than standard ten folders, with many more additions.
Force Regenerate Thumbnails
Those users who are searching for a WordPress plugin that lets them resize pictures in their media library to desired dimensions would definitely fall in love with the Force Regenerate Thumbnails plugin.
When you upload a new picture to your page or post, different sizes of your image are generated and stored by the WordPress in the media library. This helps you to select the perfect dimension that suits your website or page, which will, in turn, reduce your loading time.
In some scenarios, website developers are forced to alter the dimensions of existing pictures on their page or website to make them feel good on a new theme or for other reasons. However, manually resizing these pictures is actually quite a tough and time-consuming task. That’s why it’s best to use the Force Regenerate Thumbnails plugin.
This efficient WordPress plugin helps you by automatically deleting images and then replacing them with new ones with your desired dimensions.
Export Media Library
Among all the media library management plugins on our list, Export Media Library gives the most highly-specific functionality. In fact, this plugin comes with only a single feature – exporting your WordPress media files as an archive (which is a .zip file). However, you can select the folder structure option that suits you the most.
You can either export your packaged media file as only a single folder containing all of your files, or create nested folders for your website’s content. The other selection is whether to compress your export file or not. By doing this, you will get a lighter file in size, at a cost of much longer processing time to create it.
Overall, this library management plugin isn’t going to make your day-to-day Media Library management any faster. However, it is going to work quite well in conjunction with other management tools on this list, especially if you’re moving your website.
Media Library Assistant
Media Library Assistant plugin is equipped with different shortcodes that can be used to organize, sort, and display your media files. The advanced gallery shortcode coming with this amazing plugin can also be used to add media files to your WordPress posts.
Another great feature is the quick edit functionality which enables web developers to edit, remove, and add the taxonomies in bulk. The inclusion of image captions, alt text, & slug in this plugin has significantly improved the WordPress media search feature capabilities.
The great thing about this media management plugin is that it gives users control over the content, markup, and style of each gallery by using markup and style designs. This excellent WordPress plugin is also capable of giving information regarding the size, location, and dimensions of several media files.
The Media Library Assistant plugin often incorporates the usage of EXIF & other metadata to find out where and when the media files were actually created. Since this plugin is integrated with Jetpack and other famous plugins, developers will be able to add special effects, thumbnails, & slideshows to their gallery.
Conclusion
The default WordPress media library is a great tool when it comes to uploading content to your website. However, after a while, you may find that you need more organization and features than what is provided by default.
Here are the five WordPress plugins we recommend to get a more efficient media library:
- FileBird: A powerful WordPress tool with easy-to-use drag-and-drop functionality.
- Folders: Organize site-wide content into the folders – pages, posts, & media alike.
- Force Regenerate Thumbnails: Resize pictures in the media library to desired dimensions.
- Export Media Library: Offer a method to export all your Media Library, and split the contents into custom folders.
- Media Library Assistant: Use shortcodes and extensive search filters to organize the Media Library.
We hope these media library management plugins will help you to manage your media files more efficiently. If you like this article – then don’t forget to share it on Facebook and Twitter. Happy reading!
