The purpose of the Media Library Plugin is to facilitate the manipulation and grouping of images within the existing WordPress image library framework.

[Most recent Media Library Plugin updates]

August 31st 2011 – Release 3.3

• Added ability to order images within Gallery objects.
• By going into Galleries >> Options, you may now change the gallery shortcode used for viewing a Gallery object.
• Gallery objects now have Shiba Widgets support.
• The “Insert into Post” button should now appear on custom post types.
• Removed image parallelization option. As outlined in Google Page Speed, new browsers now allow more than two concurrent connections per hostname. As such, the image parallelization option is no longer needed.

When creating permalink structures, care must to taken to ensure that the new structure does not override existing post, page, category, and tag permalinks.

Key Features of the Media Library Plugin

• Adds a new drop-down menu to your existing WordPress Media Library. This menu will allow you to do bulk attachments to both attached and non-attached images.
• The interface you use will be identical to the existing Media Library interface, except now, you can do bulk attachments on any image object.
• Detach a set of images from their post so that they revert back to their unattached state.
• Enables image tagging and allows you to group images into galleries by using their tags.
  In this way you can include the same image into multiple galleries.
• In addition to images/attachments, galleries may also contain posts and other galleries. In this way, you group not only images, but also posts, galleries, and any combination of these object types. Here are some fun things you can achieve with expanded galleries.
• Freely order images, posts, and pages within a gallery.
• Gallery objects get saved into your WordPress export files. This allows you to keep a backup of your gallery objects, as well as move them from blog to blog.
• Expanded search that allows you to search for attachments and galleries based on titles, tags, and categories.
• View most-used tags for post, attachment, and gallery objects.

The Power of Galleries and Tags

Gallery objects are stored in the regular WordPress post database. In this way, you get to leverage almost all existing functions that are available for WordPress post objects including displaying your galleries using the WordPress gallery shortcode.

Here are three example galleries created using tags. Galleries are rendered using the WordPress Gallery shortcode and the Shiba Gallery Plugin.

Galleries created with the Media Library Plugin should also work with other plugins that support the WordPress gallery shortcode.

This entire plugin operates within the current WordPress Media Library framework so any tag changes will automatically be reflected in your WordPress gallery shortcode results.

If you want to extract images with particular tags using PHP, just include the tags in your WordPress get_posts command.

   $args = array( 'post_type' => 'attachment',
		  'tag' => 'tag-a,tag-b,tag-c' );
   $attachments = get_posts( $args );

Why Can’t I Use Tags in the Gallery Shortcode?

The Shiba Media Library addresses the media library back-end and sets up tag links in the WordPress database. I.e., there is a link in the database saying that a particular image is linked to a given tag.

For tags to work in the gallery shortcode, it must also be supported on the gallery front-end – i.e., by the plugin that renders your images. The Shiba Gallery plugin, for example, supports image tags.

However, most gallery rendering plugins do not yet support this extension because it is currently not part of the native WordPress gallery shortcode and is therefore not a standard.

Media Library Plugin Future Additions

• Allow your own image/attachment directory structure in addition to the WordPress upload directory.
• Import images from a URL folder or a local folder. [Pescadito]

Media Library Plugin Updates

The new version of the plugin only operates on WordPress 3.0 and above.

• If you are using WordPress 2.9, then please download Shiba Media Library 3.0.
• If you are using WordPress 2.8, please download Media Library Plugin 2.2.

• Shiba Media Library 3.2
  
  February 16th, 2011
  • Updated for WordPress 3.1, RC4. Tested on WP 3.0 and WP 3.1,RC4.
  • Fixed bulk trash operation on Gallery screen.
  • Permalinks now work properly on network activation and deactivation in WordPress Multisite.
  • Columns from other plugins are now properly added in the Media Library screen.
• Shiba Media Library 3.1
  
  January 17th, 2011
  • Updated for WordPress 3.1. Tested in WP 3.0 and WP 3.1,RC2.
  • Fixed numerous bugs in the gallery query system. Gallery types should now work properly.
  • Cleaned up the plugin so that gallery objects are now always custom post types. As a result the plugin requires WP 3.0 and above. If you are using WP 2.9, then please download Shiba Media Library 3.0.
• Shiba Media Library 3.0.3
  
  November 25th, 2010
  • Fixed bulk operations in the Google Chrome browser. Shiba Media Library now has its own menu in the media screen.
  • Cleaned up the gallery tagging system so that tagged gallery images can now be properly ordered with order, orderby, numberposts, and offset arguments. This makes it much easier to enable gallery paging.

• Shiba Media Library 3.0
  
  August 13th 2010
  • Added ability to append image tags in bulk as requested by Peder.
  • Re-enabled Insert into Post button even for images that are already attached.

• Shiba Media Library 2.9
  
  • Shiba Media Library Plugin is now updated for WordPress 3.0. It should work in 3.0 and 2.9+.
  • All your previous gallery objects should still work seamlessly in the new update.
  • Expanded image attachment and detachment functions are now better integrated into the standard WordPress Media Library interface.
  • You may set your gallery permalink structure by going into Settings >> Permalinks
  • Fixed PHP notices. Thanks to Writemcodeboy for alerting me to this issue.

• Media Library Plugin 2.7
  
  Added in the ability to parallelize your image links. This enables more images to be downloaded simultaneously, and improves page speed.

  Also fixed some bugs associated with the permalink creation function. In particular, I refined the regular expression for gallery attachment images and added more rules for validating the gallery permalink structure.
  

• Media Library Plugin 2.6
  
  As requested by Keoshi, I have added in the ability to edit your entire gallery permalink structure.
• Media Library Plugin 2.5
  
  I just finished making some large changes to the permalink redirect code. If you are having permalink redirect issues, in particular with your feeds, then please download the latest version.
  
• Media Library Plugin 2.4
  
  • Added most-used attachment and gallery tag views.
  • Permalink support and customization for gallery objects.
  • Expanded media and gallery search.
  • Plugin is cleaner and more secure.

  Thanks to A.M. for making many of the great suggestions that went into this plugin update.
  

• Media Library Plugin 2.3
  
  • Expanded gallery objects so that they may contain posts, pages, and other gallery objects; in addition to image attachments.
  • You may now assign thumbnails to galleries. This uses the Post Thumbnail system introduced in WordPress 2.9, so you will need at least version 2.9 and a gallery front-end that knows how to render posts to fully realize the power of this feature.
  • You can now navigate to gallery objects, just like you do with attachments. Gallery object pages are rendered using the gallery shortcode.

  ** Thanks to Keoshi for making many of the great suggestions that went into this plugin update.

• Media Library Plugin 2.2
  
  Fixed a bug in Release 2.1 where Trash links for posts and pages no longer work properly. This is an important bug fix so please download the latest version of the plugin.
  
• Media Library Plugin 2.1
  
  • Added bulk-actions, search, and date filter to the Manage Gallery screen. Now you can perform the same menu view operations on galleries as you can with posts and pages.
  • Integrated the Manage Gallery menu with the WordPress Trash system. Now you can move galleries to the trash, untrash, or delete them permanently.
  • Fixed various bugs with gallery links, trash links, as well as image tags. The gallery and tag system should now work a lot more smoothly.

• Media Library Plugin 2.0
  Allows you to tag your images. Through tagging, you can include the same image into multiple galleries.
• Media Library Plugin 1.0
  Allows you to re-attach multiple images to any post from the Media Library panel. Also enables bulk image detachments. Works on WordPress 2.8

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