Curation and deletion

  • Resolved rd1970

    (@rd1970)


    8 years, 11 months ago

    I’d like to be able to curate PDFs in a single media library on our website, rather than have to link out to various external sites, where it may be really tough for people to find the information they need. Examples of PDFs stored in the library include:

    seasonal recreation guides
    momthly event calendar
    annual report
    quarterly program guide
    directory of seniors programs and services
    daycamps and summer camps for children and youth
    financial literacy and employment readiness workshop posters
    job fair posters
    seasonal park and attraction guides

    Does this plug-in allow media to be automatically expunged/deleted from the library according to an admin-set date?

    So “guides” could be grouped. Or, similarly, a user could search for “recreation” or “senior” and find relevant media.

    Uploading stuff as it’s fed to me isn’t that hard, but remembering to take stale media down so that it’s no longer accessible once it’s “past due” is a problem… I have one of those… what do you call them… oh, right. Life. 😉 A busy, busy life!

    So… For example, if the community librarian at our northeast branch sends me the PDF event calendar for June, I can upload it to the website, but I don’t want to have to remember to purge it/take it down July 1. Similarly, if a city-run summer camp runs July and August, I may forget in September to remove the PDF poster from the site. Old, indexed, no-longer-relevant info is a real turnoff, IMNSHO.

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  • Plugin Author David Lingren

    (@dglingren)

    8 years, 11 months ago

    Thanks for your question and for the details of your application goal; very helpful. I am on the road so this is a preliminary response.

    There is no standard MLA function to delete stale/obsolete documents automatically. You could define a custom field with an expiration date and add that field to the Quick Edit and Bulk Edit areas so the administrator can fill it in when documents are added to the Media Library. Once that’s done you can add a “meta query” to your [mla_gallery] shortcodes to omit expired documents from the gallery display.

    You could also use the Hooks MLA provides and write some PHP code to actually delete the items from the Media Library. The code could run whenever the [mla_gallery] shortcode is executed or (since it would slow things down somewhat) it could be run periodically by some sort of admin-invoked action. You could also simply sort the Media/Assistant submenu table on expiration date and manually delete the expired documents; that wouldn’t require hooks or PHP code.

    Let me know if the above makes sense and if you need more specific help. I will be able to do more when I return home. Thanks for you interest in the plugin.

    Plugin Author David Lingren

    (@dglingren)

    8 years, 10 months ago

    It has been seven weeks since my last post in this topic> I hope the suggestions I gave were helpful and you have found a solution that works for your application.

    I am marking this topic resolved, but please update it if I can give you any additional help. Thanks for your interest in the plugin.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

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