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1. mothmenace
   Member
   Posted 4 months ago #

   Could someone please explain how the gallery works with the media library?

   I want to select a picture from the media library and put it in a post gallery. Unless I'm going mad, this seemed to work buy hitting 'insert to post', whereupon the img tag code would enter the post text and the image was added to the gallery panel.

   Now, in 2.8 this doesn't appear to work anymore.
   Can an image only appear in one gallery? If you delete a post with an image in its gallery, is that image freed up to be used in another?

2. Otto42
   Moderator
   Posted 4 months ago #

   I don't think this sort of functionality has changed, particularly.

   When you are writing a post, you have the opportunity to upload images. Any images you upload from there become "attached" to that post. A "gallery" is simply all the images attached to a particular post.

   So in that sense, an image is in one and only one gallery, because it can only be attached to one post, which is the post you were editing when you uploaded the image.

   Now, an image doesn't have to be only displayed in that post, you can select any image in the system and put it in any post. But it's only *attached* to a single post (or to no post at all, if you uploaded the image through the media library instead of through the edit post screen).

3. mothmenace
   Member
   Posted 4 months ago #

   Thanks a lot for explaining that, and it largely makes sense.

   In my experience, I am finding the relationship between posts and their attachments a little restrictive. To achieve layouts where images and text are kept separate, I have two options: use preg_match to grab all instances of <img> from the content, or not insert the images into the content, and loop through the post image attachments (the latter is preferable, as client can use drag+drop reordering etc).

   Sometimes I need to reuse images, or move them between posts.
   It would be really useful if the media library/attachments could have a one-to-many relationship with posts. I can't see a downside for it working this way.

4. syncbox
   Member
   Posted 3 months ago #

   It's a stupid interface, imo, in dire need of some user interface TESTING -- because anyone who did a bit of testing would have said:

   1) show a way to FILTER the Media Library so it ONLY shows those images that are associated with THIS post (or page)

   2) provide a way to select images from the entire Media Library to ADD as a gallery to this post/page

   3) provide a method to create a GLOBALLY accessible image gallery that can be selected in ANY post/page for insertion

   otherwise, you end up with what we have: a confusing display of many files and images that you can't tell if they are duplicated or not or whether they are even being used or not.

   Rather pathetic, given all the requests for a more useful and non-buggy function for uploading/inserting/deleting images and uploaded files.

   Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it feels like the basics of user-friendly interface design were just ignored in order to use the flashy ajax thingies... from missing functionality to the ever-annoying "close if you click anywhere" lightbox/thickbox? issue that often causes users to repeat an upload because they either aren't sure if it was completed or not...

5. sometimesisurf
   Member
   Posted 2 months ago #

   Pretty average really, I couldn't believe it could be that bad, I search for a fair while before I was convinced... Ended up hand coding a lighbox gallery that uses the scripts installed by one of the many available lightbox plugins. The plugin includes information on how to do this, as they obviously realise the standard gallery "feature" is pretty garbage - unless used in the simplest application. Don't change your mind or think in an efficient manner, "gallery" is not your friend.

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