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Useful WordPress Media plugins

by bernt & torsten

Today I’m covering the media manager of WordPress, are you looking for a WordPress media plugins that will improve your web content. Then you should read on, maybe there is a media plugin for you that fits your requirements.

To make your content stand out, you need to use images, videos, and other media to enhance the user experience, evoke emotions and break up large pieces of text.

In WordPress, all media files get stored in the media library where they can be searched, edited, and removed if no longer needed. To make the media library even better you can add media plugins that improve your experience.

If you read on, I will take a look at a number of media manager plugins for WordPress that can make handling media files much easier.

Organizing media plugins for WordPress

Do you have a lot of files, do you need to organize them or making them accessible for content creation can be hard, especially if you use the default file name from your mobile phone or you forget to name your images. The following plugins will make keeping your media files organized much easier.

Media Library Assistant

Enhances the Media Library by introducing an advanced gallery shortcode that allows you to add not only images but other media files to your posts.

Media Library Assistant introduces taxonomies as well as the ability to add, remove, and replace them in bulk or via quick edit. It also improves the WordPress media search by including slug, ALT text, and image captions as search filters.

The plugin tells you where each media file is used on your site and provide information on file size and image dimensions. Media Library Assistant can process IPTC, EXIF, and PDF metadata so you will know when and where your images were created.

Enhanced Media Library

A better management for WordPress Media Library, lets you sort your library by file type. Plus you can create additional types for PDFs, documents, and other files.

Force Regenerate Thumbnails

WordPress creates several sizes of every image that you upload. This is so you don’t have to insert full-size images into your posts and pages which would slow downloading time. Instead, you can choose the smaller, more appropriate size.

Force Regenerate Thumbnails lets you process your entire image library and ensures that older image sizes get deleted and replaced with the desired dimensions. Completely automatic.

Media File Renamer

Media File Renamer will upgrade your file name according to its title. So important for SEO. Plus, it will automatically update the link in all places where the file in question has already been used. Nice job.

Enable Media Replace

Enables replacing attachment files by simply uploading a new file in the media library edit view.

Using External Media Files

While running a website, you will not always use your own media. In fact, most of the image material probably comes from external sources. To address this reality, there are a number of plugins that will make using external media much easier.

Add From Server

“Add From Server” is a quick plugin that allows you to import media & files into the WordPress uploads manager from the Webservers file. This is handy if you manually copy files to your media directory, running this plugin will add the image file name to the database.

External Media

Import files from third-party services (Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, Google Drive, Instagram, and any external file).

ImageInject

ImageInject lets you search the Flickr’s database directly from the WordPress backend and insert images with just a few clicks. This means that you have thousands of free photos under the Creative Commons license directly at your fingertips!

Google Drive Media Library

Mapping file from Google Drive into WordPress Media.

Remote Media Libraries

Remote Media Libraries lets you add media from external sources to your own WordPress library via YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Instagram, you name it. Insert them into your posts and pages just like you would with normal media files.

Add External Media

Add External Media lets you add media from YouTube and other sources directly to the media library, from which you can quickly add them to your content. It works with all services on WordPress’s oEmbed list.

Download Managers for WordPress

If you are in the habit of offering your visitors media files for download, there are specialized plugins to make the process a bit easier. Here are two of them:

WordPress Download Manager

WordPress Download Manager is a management system for files and documents hosted on your WordPress website. It lets you manage and track file downloads and can even function as an eCommerce solution for digital products.

Download Monitor

Download Monitor adds and removes downloadable media files to your WordPress site, sort them by category, tag or other taxonomy, and easily add download links to your content.

Download Monitor will track downloads and download attempts, and also allows you to restrict files for certain types of users. This plugin another good pick if you have a lot of downloadable content to offer.

Image Optimization for WordPress

The media library is often an area that slows down your site. The following plugins help you in resizing, compressing images files so your site works optimally.

WP Smush – Image Optimization

Reduce image file sizes, improve performance and boost your SEO using the free WPMU DEV WordPress Smush API.

Imsanity

Imsanity automatically resizes huge image uploads. Are contributors uploading huge photos? Tired of manually scaling? Imsanity to the rescue!

EWWW Image Optimizer

EWWW Image Optimizer will reduce the size of your images. However, instead of resizing your images, it does so by optimizing media files. That means doing away with unnecessary bloat and compressing image data.

Bulk Resize Media

Bulk Resize Media automatically resizes huge image uploads and makes sure the maximum upload size is respected for all uploaded images.

Conclusion

Media files often make up a large chunk of any WordPress site. With media plugins, you can improve the native media manager. From enhancing the WordPress media manager through taxonomies and other features over integrating external media to full-fledged download managers and image optimizers, there are many plugins to make your life as a WordPress admins easier. Just take your pick from the list above.

Let me know what is your favorite WordPress media plugin?