How To Clean Out Your Wordpress Media Library (I Shrunk It By 45%!)

[@jdreamhunter]

Thanks for this video! You're describing exactly my situation (couldn't create the staging site because of disk space issue, found that wp-uploads folder alone is almost 7 GB, so here I am looking for a solution).

[@BlogMarketingAcademy]

Run an image optimizer on it. It can help a lot.

[@jdreamhunter]

@@BlogMarketingAcademy I ended up regenerating thumbnails to remove unused sizes and reduced my site from 7GB to 2GB!

[@johnbaggen8054]

Thank you for this extremely informative tutorial. Step by step and clearly explained how to optimize a media library and keep your website clean and fast.

[@BlogMarketingAcademy]

Glad it was helpful!

[@noamazonas]

Very helpful.

[@lydialutz]

I see this is from a year ago. Instead of png to jpg, would you consider png to webp now? It seems like webp is so well used on all the updated browsers these days.

[@DesWalsh]

Thank you. Very helpful.

[@bfwaring]

Hello, is it possible to view all deleted media? Like one can do in Outlook. Thanks for your time.

[@BlogMarketingAcademy]

Don't think so. If you delete it, it is gone.

[@annagoral8908]

When I go to Media Library, the oldest media folder I see is Sept 2017. When I go to File Manager/ wp-uploads, the oldest folder I see is 2013 (has hundreds of very old pictures that I dont use anywhere + thumbnail, small and medium pictures). Why don't I see those old images in Media/library? How do I delete all those pictures? Can I just go ahead and delete all those old folders all the way up to Sept 2017 - what I see in the library? Please, anyone can help the beginner?

[@BlogMarketingAcademy]

Sounds like you've got a lot of files on the server file system that don't have corresponding entries in your Wordpress database. The way the Media Library works is that it is pulling all that stuff out of your database and it is supposed to have a corresponding file in your file system. In your case, you have one and not the other. If you're absolutely sure those older files are not in use anywhere, you can just delete them via FTP or via the File Manager (which your host is likely providing, I assume). You might want to download them to your computer first as a backup. But, then just delete them from your file system and you should be fine.

[@TomerBenDavid]

what's the best cheap stable hosting?

[@BlogMarketingAcademy]

Cloudways. That said, everybody's got an opinion. ;) Most hosts are OK.

[@rahuldinesh2840]

My media library was 50GB recently.

[@BlogMarketingAcademy]

That's a wee bit on the large side. ;)

[@DaneMorgan]

Also images that are graphics like a chart or illustration will comptrress better as .PNGs. really you only want to use .JPEGs for photographs.

[@BlogMarketingAcademy]

Sometimes. Really depends on the image itself. I usually do my photo editing/resizing in Affinity Photo. And when I export, I can see the target file sizes and choose what makes the most sense.

[@YesitisDex]

About time! You had so many dead links lol

[@BlogMarketingAcademy]

Where?

[@YesitisDex]

Blog Marketing Academy, I'm not going to go back and check for you. Plus, if you already cleaned it up then it should be good to go!

[@BlogMarketingAcademy]

Well, we try to clean them up whenever we find them. But, perhaps I should run the whole site through a fresh check. I'm sure there's still some. Thx for reminder.

[@YesitisDex]

Blog Marketing Academy no worries!