Long gone are the days in which websites are a text-only experience. These days using different types of media to improve web content is not only possible but mandatory.

Using images, videos, and other media is important to enhance the user experience, evoke emotions, break up large pieces of text, and emphasize points made in the post. It’s no wonder the demand for free stock photos has dramatically increased.

In WordPress, all media files get stored in the media library where they can be searched, edited, and removed if no longer needed. Recent updates have greatly improved this part of the WordPress backend.

However, while that is true, there are still things to be improved. Therefore, in the following we will take a look at a number of file manager plugins for WordPress that can make handling media files much easier and more comfortable. So your content can shine even brighter.

WordPress Plugins for Better Media Organization

Depending on how active your site is, you might quickly accumulate large numbers of images and other media files in your library. Keeping track of these and making them accessible for content creation can be hard, especially if you forget to name your images or have other such lazy habits. The following plugins will make keeping your media files organized much easier.

 1. Media Library Assistant

This next plugin also enhances the WordPress media manager with a few very useful features.

First of all, it introduces an advanced gallery shortcode that allows you to add not only images but other media files to your posts. The plugin also includes style and markup templates that let you control the look and feel of your galleries.

Apart from that, 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 can also tell you where each media file is used on your site and provide information on file size and image dimensions. Lastly, Media Library Assistant can process IPTC, EXIF, and PDF meta data so you will know when and where your images were created.

2. Enhanced Media Library

To make your files more searchable, Enhanced Media Library allows you to create an unlimited number of categories. It then adds the ability to filter your media files by category to the WordPress media manager.

Additionally, it lets you sort your library by file type. That means if you only want to see your audio or video files, you can do that, too. Plus you can create additional types for PDFs, documents, and other files. A Pro Version with additional features is also available.

3. Media Library Categories

If all you need is a way to add taxonomies to your media files, this plugin might be the one for you. With Media Library Categories you can assign categories and subcategories to your media files in bulk or on an individual basis.

Once you have done that, you can filter your files with a newly created dropdown menu. If you are working with post taxonomies on a regular basis, you will feel right at home. It doesn’t get much easier than this.

4. Media Tags

This plugin works very similarly as its predecessors. It adds an additional field to the media manager to add tags to each file. The plugin will display which taxonomy is already associated with the image in question and also suggest additional ones. Bulk editing is available as well.

Another functionality of the Media Tags plugin is the ability to manage user roles for media files. It gives you complete control over which type of user can do what in terms of media management. It’s very useful for multi-author sites.

5. Force Regenerate Thumbnails

As you are probably aware, 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 down loading time. Instead, you can choose the smaller, more appropriate size.

However, especially when changing a theme, it can be necessary to create new custom image sizes for your site. For example, if your content area has gotten wider or smaller. Doing this manually for all images would be pretty cumbersome.

This is where Force Regenerate Thumbnails comes in. This lets you process your entire image library and ensures that older image sizes get deleted and replaced with the desired dimensions. Completely automatic. Pretty neat, isn’t it?

6. Media File Renamer

We all know how to edit image title, caption, ALT tag, and description, but what about the file name? Is there another way to change this than renaming the file on your hard drive and uploading it back to WordPress?

As a matter of fact, there is. This handy plugin 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.

7. Enable Media Replace

One of the most tedious tasks in running a WordPress site is replacing an image—deleting the old one, and then uploading the new version with the same name. There are more fun ways to spend your day.

Thankfully this plugin shortens the entire affair. Now if you have a new version of an existing file, you can simply replace it. Just go to the edit screen, hit the ‘Upload a new file’ button, choose a file, and you are done!