Background of the issue:
I am managing a website with 254 products in 4 languages: Dutch, German, English, and French. Each product in the Dutch version has 4 to 5 photos, and the other languages use the same photos. However, there are now more than 56,000 photos on the website. I tested by deleting photos in the English Media Library, but they still appeared in the English product page, which is expected behavior.
Symptoms:
The Media Library in languages other than Dutch contains photos that are not used, leading to an excessive number of photos (over 56,000).
Questions:
How can I prevent this from happening again?
How can I delete 56,000 photos?
it's an urgent issue . so let me know if anyone is there to help . On top of that i have anothe quick question currently i have deactivated the WPML Media Translations plugins . so my question is : once i have deleted all the products images then only main images will be on the media folder so for example my one product that has 4 language version , and i have only one image for that so how i can connect that one image to show on all of the 4 laguages ? like if i have 5 images for one product that should be display for all of the languages i don't want any image duplication any more ! so pleaes help on that and i have also send you large explation on top.
and also when i have turn of the media translation then on header 4 flags are gone only dutch flags is showing although i have active main wpml plugin and sting tranlstion as well. can you take a look on that as well ?
Welcome to the WPML support forum! Before we proceed with optimizing your media library, I’d like to clarify a few important points:
- WPML does not duplicate physical files on your server, so there's no need to worry about server space.
- WPML only duplicates database entries for images, allowing it to store translations of image-related texts (such as captions, alt text, and descriptions).
- Your media library should be quite similar in each language because, when you translate a post with images, the database entries for those images are duplicated. That's quite similar of the translation of a post, where another post is added into the database.
- The "Media Translation" add-on is only necessary if you want to translate the image itself, for instance, if you need a different image in the translated version (like an image containing text that needs translation). In that case, you’d need to upload the translated image, which obviously would increase the number of images on your server. If your images don't need translation, you don’t need this add-on.
Thanks ! So as per you said if i delete all unnessary images then my website should display all images like one product if that has image and this image will also display on other languages as well ?
1. I would recommend to keep the "duplicated" images (again that's not a physical file) generated by WPML because their entry in the database contains all the text-related information. It's a good SEO practice to translate the ALT texts from images.
2. If - while Media translation add-on was active - you manually uploaded images for your secondary language but now you want to use the same image as the original language: then yes, you can delete those images as - in this situation - they are real files.
