[wp-testers] Upload and use of Images

[David House]

On 05/12/05, Owen Winkler <ringmaster at midnightcircus.com> wrote:
> The define you want is not CACHE_PATH, it's UPLOADS:
>
> define('UPLOADS', ABSPATH.'/wp-content/upload-location');

Erm... Oops :) How on earth did I manage to come up with CACHE_PATH?

> For example, I organize images into directories like
> /images/2005/December, which are only slightly yet annoyingly different
> from the method WordPress uses.  But when I have a large group of
> related photos, I like to put them in directories like
> /images/2005/PalmSprings, which is something that the current system
> doesn't allow.  One of the things that leaves me scratching my head
> about this is that while there's an almost obsessive-compulsive need to
> keep things out of my server's web root directory, there's very little
> concern for organization of the stuff I actually give a damn about.  Oh,
> well.

I think a plugin would suit this role well.

> If you want to override the date-based directory creation behavior,
> you're going to need a plugin.  It will likely need to circumvent the
> checking of the core-defined upload directory entirely if it is not to
> create the date-based directories.  This includes writing all-new
> uploading, thumbnail, and naming routines, and I suspect it will affect
> a few bits that install images as subposts.

It shouldn't involve writing too much code. In reality, we should
anticipate this as a fairly common need, and just pass the upload
location through apply_filters, or perhaps extract the code that
determines this location into a pluggable function.

> I have serious doubts about how complete this functionality will be at
> 2.0's launch.

I think that applies to a lot of 2.0, to be honest. We need real
rigorous testing of:

* Image uploading
* TinyMCE
* Cache
* Roles system

All the big bits of new code. Although they're not as buggy as they
have been, there are still a lot of bugs floating around here.

> * Can't set the size.
> * Can't store them in a subdirectory.
> * Can't customize their names.
> * Can't create thumbnails (even placeholders) for non-image mime types.
> * Can't use alternate routines for thumbnail creation (Imagemagick, et al).

The first seems like a candidate for a core option, the second, third
and fifth candidates for a plugin, and the last one should come when
the uploading supports more mime types.

--
-David House, dmhouse at gmail.com, http://xmouse.ithium.net