In our website we use Drupal's Media Manager to handle our images - and our videos, audio files and documents (files) in one consistent user interface.
The Media Manager brings with it the Media Library which makes it easy to re-use existing media - upload it once, use it many times.
Media Manager adds a Name and a Thumbnail image to the file we upload, and sometimes some Alternative text, or (our choice) a Keyword to help classify the media item.
Naming a media item
The Name is a description of the media item.
It is important to give a meaningful name to each media item as the name will be often what we search for when wanting to find an image. It may be similar to the file name, or quite different.
The name should not include the file extension (.jpg, docx etc).
It should not include a revision number/date (but the file name should).
For example if the filename is "EMS Synod Data Privacy Notice 20240327.pdf" call the media item "EMS Synod Data Privacy Notice". Doing this means that when we need to update the policy document to say "...20241015" all we have to do is change the file contained in "EMS Synod Data Privacy Notice". All the links to it anywhere in the website are automatically updated.
If you upload your camera image DSCF12345.jpg give the media item a useful name like St Andrew's church, Chesterfield.
Images and documents will also have a keywords field to allow you to classify them (similar to the category field in resources). You will be able to apply more than one keyword. e.g. church, interior; screenshot, gutenberg.
I will soon add a filter to the media Library to allow searching by Keyword.
There are several media types available.
- Audio
for audio recordings - Document
for documents (pdf, word-processor, spreadsheet, presentation ) - E-Letter
just for E-Letter pdf - Image
for images (photos and screenshots) - Remote Video
for a video hosted on Vimeo or YouTube - Video
for a Video hosted on our site. As videos are very large files, I can not see many of these being hosted.
All of these can be attached to any content type - e.g. in "Resource+" (but this requires Admin action to set it up on the content type) or embedded in a Gutenberg enabled content type (Article+, Page+) so they display inline or show as a link for download. (this may require Admin action to add or remove permission per content type)