WordPress® 24-Hour Trainer, Second Edition

19

Managing Media Files

You learned earlier that all media files you upload to WordPress are listed in the Media Library. In this lesson, I show you how to work with the library, both sorting and finding media files, as well as editing and deleting them. I also show you some administrative settings for media files.

FINDING FILES IN THE MEDIA LIBRARY

You've already seen how the Media Library works on the tabs of the Upload/Insert popup window. The Media Library screen accessed from the Media Library link of the admin menu, shown in Figure 19-1, is very similar.

One important difference with this screen is that you can see whether a media file is attached to a post, and if so, the name of the post with a direct link. To be attached to a post means that the file is listed in that post's Gallery.

Why is it useful to know if a media file is attached? If a file's not attached, you know it's available to be used in a Gallery, because media files can be attached to only one post.

If a media file is already attached and you want to use it in a different post's Gallery, you cannot simply unattach and reattach. But you do have a couple of options:

• Delete the file, which removes it from the first post's Gallery, then upload the file into the new post.
• If the image has to stay in the first post's Gallery, upload a second copy of the file (WordPress automatically renames it by adding a number ...