The WordPress media library is fairly decent for uploading multiple files at once from your computer. However, copying hundreds of files from another location on your server is another story.
You might think that you could simply drop the files into your uploads folder and have them appear in your media library. This is not the case, because WordPress will not recognize those files unless they come through the dashboard uploader.
The Add From Server plugin offers a solution to this problem. It allows you to import media and files into the WordPress uploads manager from any location on your server.
As you may be able to tell from this screenshot, in this situation I was pulling product files from the downloadables folder within a site using WP E-Commerce. I needed to move hundreds of audio and video files to a brand new WordPress installation where I will be using MarketPress, since it has superior handling for free products and discount codes.
The Add From Server plugin is the only solution I could find for the problem of getting WordPress to recognize media files in the library when transferred via FTP. However, if you know of another one, please leave a note in the comments.
Though the plugin appears not to have been updated for nearly a year, I can assure you that it works perfectly with WordPress 3.1.2. I thoroughly tested it by transferring hundreds of very large media files, and I didn’t receive any errors whatsoever. Without this plugin I would have spent hours downloading these files to my local machine and then re-uploading them to the new installation through the media uploader. Get your hands on the Add From Server plugin if you’re in the same situation and you’ll save yourself loads of time.
I would love to see WordPress add a similar drag-and-drop upload to what Gmail has. That would make things so much easier.
They have added this in the new beta.
How did you know what I needed tonight???? Thanks!
Excellent tip! It worked as advertised. Now, I’m just wondering: Why does this logical feature still require a plugin? Wny isn’t it a part of WordPress’ basic installation?
This also made me wonder why there isn’t an integrated FTP client for use inside WordPress similar to how the FireFTP addon works in the Firefox browser. I looked for a plugin and the closest one I found that looks like what I’m talking about is called My FTP. I’ll try using it later. If it doesn’t work well, I’ll post another comment here to share my opinion.
Amazing. Just what I needed. THANK YOU!
This plugin saved me hours. thank you very much! But I still have an issue with the MU upload quota. When I upload a file using this plugin, the upload quota is totaly ignored. Do you have any ideia of how to fix this?
Thank you very much – this is exactly what I was looking for.
Thank you so much for that Sara with an ‘H’, this has been annoying me for some time and just decided to search for a solution – thanks again – Sara
Oh my goodness, this is exactly what I needed. I had to reinstall my WordPress site after it was hacked. I downloaded all my media and then readded using sftp, but couldn’t see any of it in my media library. This fixed my problem even though I had to go through each subdirectory to select each file. Still the best fix I’ve seen. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you! This is precisely what I have been looking for. I have searching for days to find a way to upload via FTP and get it in my media manager.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks to Google and your excellent post I had a solution to my problem in less than a minute. THANKS!
Sarah, do you have any recommendations on preventing a wordpress site and my server from being bogged down with a ton of audio, video, and image files?
You might try hosting your videos with a 3rd party – ie. Youtube or Vimeo.
I’m using Amazon’s S3 service as a CDN (Content Distribution Network). As soon as I upload an image to WordPress, it is posted to Amazon’s servers and then served from there. Same for video and audio.
e.g.
http://lesterhein.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/lester-hein1-copy.png
becomes
http://d2472bm234ooxx.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/lester-hein1-copy.png
S3 support is also baked in to the (excellent) WP Super Cache plugin, so it only takes a minute to set up.
What about categories? I have a client who wants to bulk upload images, but also at the same time, assign them to specific categories.
Still works… WP 3.4.2… great stuff! saved me hours… thanks.
Thanks. I can confirm that it works with WP 3.4.2, too! Thanks for finding this VERY useful plugin and posting about it!
Works in 3.5.1! Thanks for the advice…