Write an analysis of Wordpress handling of media

Question: would you want info about WordPress v3.2 or v3.3?

I am a recent Drupal convert coming over from WordPress (and Joomla v1.5 before that, ugh), I think I may be able to help with this task. WP current/stable is v3.2, however WP v3.3-dev will focus on a considerable update to WP media handling, specifically drag & drop uploads. WordPress is quite consistent in their releases so v3.3 should be released by the end of 2011 - there is already good documentation on v3.2 media handling on the WordPress Codex. Let me know if you want me to poke around more at WP 3.3-dev media features.

WP 3.2 - http://codex.wordpress.org/Media_Add_New_Screen
WP 3.2 - http://codex.wordpress.org/Media_Library_Screen

WordPress v3.3 Media Handling Write-up

I decided to go with WP 3.3 as the (WP) code freeze was announced yesterday. So I'm a developer who has recently come from WordPress, I'm trying to get involved on novice issues and contributing around d.o. I still have some client websites running on a WP Multisite install, and I know WP better than Drupal, so I figured I could help with this and run through the new WordPress v3.3 media handling capabilities. Here's a quick & dirty rundown. Most screenshots are annotated or otherwise self-explanatory. Hope this helps, I'm happy to answer any further questions the best I can.

• Installed fresh WordPress v3.3-dev nightly build - http://wordpress.org/download/nightly/
• Installed WordPress Theme Unit test sample data - https://wpcom-themes.svn.automattic.com/demo/test-data.2011-01-17.xml
• Release notes - New in this version of WordPress is the Media Uploader.
• Images are stored by WordPress default in the following directory "wordpress/wp-content/uploads/YEAR/MO". This includes all sizes of the image.
• Default images sizes are:
  • 150 x 150 - Thumbnail (default setting = cropped)
  • 300 x 300 - Medium
  • 1024 x 1024 - Large

wordpress-3.3-media_01_settings.png

wordpress-3.3-media_02_media_library.png

wordpress-3.3-media_03_upload_new_media.png

wordpress-3.3-media_04_save_uploaded_media.png

wordpress-3.3-media_05_insert_media_buttons.png

wordpress-3.3-media_06_insert_media_modal.png

wordpress-3.3-media_07_insert_media_url.png

wordpress-3.3-media_08_insert_media_library_modal.png

wordpress-3.3-media_09_show_image_metadata.png

wordpress-3.3-media_10_gallery_drag_drop.pn

wordpress-3.3-media_11_gallery_edit.png

wordpress-3.3-media_12_gallery_front_end_display.png

wordpress-3.3-media_13_edit_image_within_article.png

wordpress-3.3-media_14_edit_image_modal.png

wordpress-3.3-media_15_edit_image_metadata.png

wordpress-3.3-media_16_media_library_edit_image.png

wordpress-3.3-media_17_media_library_image_editor.png

wordpress-3.3-media_18_image_editor_1.png

wordpress-3.3-media_19_image_editor_2.png

wordpress-3.3-media_20_attach_image_to_post_1.png

wordpress-3.3-media_21_attach_image_to_post_2.png

Wow, a lot of this is really nice. Sub, and +1 for stealing ideas. :)

Holy frigging fantastic work!!! GREAT job, drupleg!!

I'm going to cross-post about this thread to the http://groups.drupal.org/cms-feature-reviews group.

Awesome job!

Thanks for putting this here. As one familiar with Drupal but not Wordpress this is great to see.

Wow. Simply fantastic work!

Amazing. You win the award for best comment ever drupleg!

Nice!!

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone! I'm by no means an outstanding coder or patcher (yet), so it's great to know there are novice issues such as this that I can start contributing to.

To anyone else looking to get started contributing to the Drupal community, even if you're not a coder, see the Getting Involved Guide on how to help at any skill level, and look at how happy you can make these Drupalers by just taking a few screenshots :)

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Awesome work drupleg! A not to underestimate effort. How many screenshots are that? Marking them, perparing them and putting them on the spot. And even if I am also quite new here by myself, let my say Welcome!

But to come back to the title of the issue and the great idea of aaron to analyze image handling in Wordpress I am willing to put me on the bad side with some wormwood.

I set up 4 portfolio Wordress 3.x websites last year for filmmaker and music producer collegues of mine and would like to point out some things, which shall lead to why I think Wordpress is too limited and Drupal in comparison to it much more matured and mellow depending media management.

You may think now: yeah this is not helpful because we know how great Drupal is with that. But my concern is more about thereby neglecting certain strength of things which are already there, for the understandable wish to reach more audience or simply the wish to change something in the belief for the better. In multimedia business we call that improve it for the worse.

Drupleg will agree with me, that you easely find out what the problem is of Wordpress image handling. Which is surely in fact good presented to the admin from the first impression, but not really good ingrained from a more indexing point of view. And it simply appeals more because of the cooperate design possibilities in a static point-to-point and easely themable admin solution like Wordpress is. In comparsion to a very flexible and options filled scalable administration layer in Drupal, which will never look that beautifully modulated and fitting unless you start a longer admin UI theming progress. It reminds me of the neverending discussion why Apple computers appeal more and make users believe that Apple computers are more robust and more powerful. Which is not true. (Says somebody who has used Apple macs since their exist).

I am not deep enough into the database structure of Wordpress to go in more details, but by trying to import 200 articles from a Wordpress site to a Drupal 7 site, it took me 2 months to find a solution which is successful in a neat sequence. Why? One of the biggest problems was, that the images were not fields. There were in fact nicely viewable and easely to insert in the articles in Wordpress, but are badly managed in the database nore is there something like a file registry layer to do anything else with it than reattaching them to another article, cropping, rotating (who ever needs that?) etc. Maybe pretty for some, but limited. And static. Only from the admin UI point of view of course. From the code's side of view, all is possibe in mostly every system. This is not the question, I think?

The media handling in Wordpress never felt quite modular too me. And having images in the body allone, makes the whole design of a site very unflexible. And as of thinking with the D.R.Y principle, if the file is already there I should be able to do more with it or be able to redesign the whole mark up from the scratch anew. In Drupal I go to the field management and can change the whole markup how the image is integrated in the content type for the whole website or certain areas with one/two mouseclick(s). Because it is a field! (not to mention entities arriving, my new pet subject, as some may think now :- ) - - - Not being able to do all that hurts especially when you find out, how horrible the html markup from the inserted images in Wordpress is, and when you want to change that for all 200 articles recursively, you are lost.

Additionally to Druplegs awesome overview, I think it could be useful to hear more about the handling behind, to reach aarons goal. What I can't say much worthwile about is, what are the differences in database structure for media handling in comparision to Drupal causing the disadvantages I wrote about?

All I can put in additionally is, as far as I can see, there is no info about quality of the cropped or converted image in Wordpress admin UI, nor which dynamic graphic php libraries are supported, nor is there any option to adjust the conversion quality or plug in any other php lib. Correct me if I am wrong.

@drupleg Awesome! This must have taken quite a bit of time... thank you very much! Your enthusiasm is inspiring!

Also, subscribe!

So are we going to have another Media module UX sprint like Acquia did for the Views 3 UI rewrite? We just had one a few weeks ago. http://groups.drupal.org/node/173749

@mparker17: Are you reading Drupal.org? ;-) I help you with a link
from a news on Drupal.org frontpage:

Stop subscribing, start following

WordPress v3.3 released, finalized with a "consolidated" media button rather than the multiple buttons show in the beta versions.

Automattic does make some slick promo videos too, seems like I should be having a whiskey and a cigarette after watching this promo...

http://wordpress.org/news/2011/12/sonny/

I went to a Drupal meeting last month and I got laughed at when I said I thought Drupal installs would eventually overtake wordpress. Progress like this makes me wonder about my commitment to the platform and the communities ability to solidify a long term vision and development drive. I'm glad to see discussions like this one happening, I'm just wondering if we're going to end up with another camel to add to the collection.

all about wordpress and its comparison

Seriously, I don't see the point here over all. It says ... "You can always learn from others" ... which I would underline immediately in many situations before and well, that's basically right and should have been considered in many many other situations, but here?? C'mon. They have been sooo many situations, where there was NO need to reinvent the wheel at all, but we does. But now look at this: You stear over to a wanna-be-sexy toy, which doesn't hold what it promises and suddently you want to jerk the wheel violently and take some ideas of it over? That makes NO sense. Are we talking about UI? UX? DX? DB handling? In Drupal, having tools like media, entities and custom fields reflected in seperate database structures at hand is far far far miles away better than this crappy wordpress concept, which may look easy in the first moment (click, drag ,drop ... plopp) but what falls on your feed when you try to export structured content with images and its urls. Or if you decide to make a page just showing the first article images with links to the content. THIS costs me ONLY 2 mouse clicks in Drupal. Good luck in wordpress with that task! And I know what I talk about. In general: everything is possible everywhere, but it depends where you would like to have more easy life. Drupal is definitely NOT supposed to be a blogging toy. And I hope it willl never become one.

... Sorry I don't get it.

I use both Drupal & WordPress over 5 years, I used WP as CMS and it definitely make clients happy. It's my impression.

In Drupal, having tools like media, entities and custom fields reflected in seperate database structures at hand is far far far miles away better than this crappy wordpress concept

I always see drupal developers said: no WYSIWYG in core, you able to install CKedit, tinymce or any you liked. OMG, do you think WordPress can't do it ?

I hope all drupal developers never come up this in their mind anymore. a WYSIWYG & Media handle in Core meant alot. Yes, WP DB structure is crappy. But every images in WP are record in DB.

Media module, now only provide you a way to upload stuff. It's useless. for example, no way to click and insert image into textarea. It's a BIG UX mistake.

I used WP as CMS

Yes, WP DB structure is crappy. But every images in WP are record in DB.

You deliver the contradictions with your own saying. So I don't need to say anything else.

OMG, do you think WordPress can't do it ?

Who says that? Both can do it. But Drupal things you are able to make two/three mouse-clicks to make a choice for the best to your need. And now?

Media module, now only provide you a way to upload stuff. It's useless. for example, no way to click and insert image into textarea. It's a BIG UX mistake

http://drupal.org/project/media and the following links on that project page speaks for itself. Especially the Features part.

Please don't get me wrong, I appreciate any other opinion. but I would like to suggest to read and try a lil' bit more around with Drupal before saying that a module is useless or having such a strong opinion like yours sounds like.

Again, to compare Wordpress and Drupal from the user experience point of view is useless since the clientel isn't 100% the same. It may make sense for Core developers and involved companies to have a look to think out of the box on other business models or something, but what sense does it make to try to be Wordpress? There is already a Wordpress. Sorry, I don't get it. Why nobody writes about for what reason the White House choose Drupal instead of Wordpress? Why nobody writes a long post like this here about the reason for so many Wordpress users using Drupal beside of Wordpress? I think we both know the answers. These "What can Drupal take from Wordpress" posts are all only about one thing: The wish to have such a "one click install" Website ready like they think Wordpress is, but with the power of Drupal. But that's exactly what I try to say the whole time: This is one of the biggest failures in thinking of our century. THERE IS NO EASY ONE CLICK SUPERPOWER TOOL. As more options you get as more complicated an application gets. Period. Live with that. Any many people start to understand that. That's why Drupal grows more and more.

I'm marking this as fixed as the original issue was to write an analysis of Wordpress handling of media and comment #2 does just that!

Just my $.02

I know that this issue is closed. And that:

• Drupal is leaps and bounds ahead of Wordpress in SO many respects.
• Drupal is will ALWAYS server a different segment of the overall CMS market than wordpress.
• Drupal is not promising to be a "Wordpress replacement" by any means..

Still I think it would be helpful to read these two post, and approach this from more of a "marketing" mindset.
http://friendly-machine.com/posts/2012/marketing-drupal
http://friendly-machine.com/posts/2012/hey-drupal-you-forgot-something

If you don't get why drupal needs to Atleast have parity with Wordpress on these important fronts, then you're missing the point!

And btw, I read this whole thread.. I'm not refering to anyone specifically. I'm just stating my opinion on the matter:
Mainly the Costs in marketshare that we're going to lose if we don't get media right, eventually, are unnacceptable.

I spent the last 12 months going from total Drupal noob to learning how to build fairly advanced websites on this platform. And I have to be honest: that experience has been a total pain in the ass. So many times, I almost wanted to give up..

But I *stuck* with Dupal because this is the BEST CMS out there! It is constantly and consistently improving.. and I've never seen anything quite like this Awesome community that is drupal.org!

Remember that /you/ are a part of the awesome community at Drupal.org. :) The Media initiative has periodic office hours where they hand out tasks to help move the ball forward. There's another meeting coming up on March 15. See http://groups.drupal.org/media for more information, and please get involved! The only way this stuff ever moves forward is if someone is motivated to actually dive in and push it that way.

Media handle in drupal is few years behind WP, I would guess that in maybe 2-3 years it could be ahead when whole entity thing is fully developed, but this should have been a priority and and the core in drupal 6. If you are buidling sites without media, what are you doing? living in 1995?

Copy of the revision from December 13, 2011 - 11:11.