Discussion Forum

jesse.glaves

Member

Registered: June 28, 2014

Posts: 124

Media Management

More robust media management. Perhaps a file manager in the backend that is accessible through the control panel, as opposed to being limited to file manager access while editing content. The file management could allow moving of files (assets) into organizational folders. Cut/paste or drag single or multiple files. Folder/file permissions. Image editing.

timbuckingham

Administrator

From: Baltimore, MD

Registered: April 2, 2012

Posts: 974

Re: Media Management

We've had a few people ask for the file manager being its own tab as well, so it's on the radar for sure. Honestly, it's not a personal passion of mine so it's on the backburner (not slated for BigTree 4.2 anyway). I know there are also a lot of image manipulation libraries for PHP but I don't know if we would add anything other than maybe a free form cropper into the file manager.

One thing that is in the 4.2 dev branch is the ability to upload multiple files at once into the file manager, so it is getting something!

jesse.glaves

Member

Registered: June 28, 2014

Posts: 124

Re: Media Management

The image manipulation is actually less of an issue. The current image cropping and resizing that you've built into BigTree is already really useful. The biggest thing is organization of content, and folder permissions would be icing on the cake. Like you mentioned, I imagine a tab to the file manager from within the control panel. It would have the ability to create folders, cut/copy/move assets into those folders. Perhaps I'm missing something, but once a file is added to the file manager, there is no way to move it, correct?

I know this adds a lot of difficulty to the current file management, media integration schema, but it would be very useful. Images could be assigned asset ids:

/path/to/image.jpg --> /asset.php?id=xxx

Great to hear about the multiple file uploads! This is something that I really look forward to before going live with our new site that I'm designing on BigTree. I just decided to give up a big $$$ CMS in lieu of BigTree, and this and the aforementioned feature request are some of the features that my editors are accustomed to. Some of my editors add 20+ files at a time (i.e. PDF packets for meetings). I would definitely hear about it if they had to upload each file individually. How will the multiple file upload option deal with multiple images? Specifically, cropping multiple files. Will it walk the user through a step-by-step process cropping each image individually?

Last edited by jesse.glaves (July 10, 2014 11:51am)

timbuckingham

Administrator

From: Baltimore, MD

Registered: April 2, 2012

Posts: 974

Re: Media Management

You're right, there's no way to move a file to a different folder after it has been uploaded.

As far as multiple file uploads, right now they are only in the File Manager window. Since there's no crops (just thumbnails) for File Manager images, image cropping isn't an issue at present. I'm planning on adding multi-upload support for Photo Gallery field types -- it would be similar to the existing workflow, you'd just get a window with thumbnails and a caption field for each file uploaded. Crops would behave the same as if you had uploaded one image at a time into the photo gallery (you'd walk through each image doing each of its crops).

For a list of files (like a ton of PDFs with a title each) you'd probably need a custom field type. Sounds like one that's worthy of making though. I'll add that our Basecamp list of possible launch extensions for 4.2!

jesse.glaves

Member

Registered: June 28, 2014

Posts: 124

Re: Media Management

Very cool. Can't wait to see/contribute to the extensions functionality of BigTree.