[wp-hackers] Attaching photos to multiple posts

[William Davis]

Thanks for your response, Andrew. I agree, the problem needs to be  
more thoroughly defined, and I definitely want to hear others' use  
cases so a plugin can be built that solves as many as possible as  
eloquently as possible.

Will


On Feb 3, 2011, at 6:56 PM, Andrew Nacin wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 6:40 PM, William Davis <will.davis at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> On uploading it again: That's a lot of extra work (finding the image,
>> uploading it, editing the cutline and crop, etc.) that a lot of  
>> newsrooms
>> don't have.
>>
>> Jane: On choosing it from the media library: You can't select a  
>> photo from
>> the media library that's attached to another post except to embed  
>> it. As
>> mentioned below, we don't embed images.
>>
>> Otto: I mentioned postmeta and taxonomies earlier. Two reasons I  
>> rejected
>> these were that oftentimes we want to edit the caption between two  
>> different
>> use cases (for example, a photo of our governor on one story might  
>> have a
>> full description of what he's doing, while the other might just  
>> simply state
>> his name and use the photo for illustrative purposes; and that we  
>> would want
>> to order the photos as well, which can certainly be done with  
>> postmeta and
>> taxonomies but not as easily as, for example, defining menu_order.
>>
>> The problem is as follows: For our purposes (and I understand this  
>> probably
>> isn't a core feature) we need an easy way to attach file photos to  
>> posts
>> (for example, on many continuing stories we'll use the same photo  
>> three,
>> four, five times). As I mentioned already, uploading it multiple  
>> times is
>> rather cumbersome.
>>
>> Thanks for your thoughts thus far already.
>> Will
>
>
> One problem is that you can't have your cake and eat it too.
>
> Allowing a photo to be associated with more than one post at a time  
> means
> that you can't edit the caption. And yes, coming from journalism, I
> absolutely see the use case in associating the caption with the  
> distinct
> point of attachment of the photo, rather than the photo itself.
>
> That leads me to the next point, which could be that uploading it  
> again
> might actually be the most painless way to do it. That allows you to  
> crop or
> scale things as well as customize captions and metadata. (Even media  
> credit
> could be customized at the point of attachment, rather than the  
> photo; for
> example, over time a photo might become a 'file photo' rather than the
> original photographer, which sometimes the policy in media  
> organizations.)
>
> The solution? I'm not sure, but I see it less as a technical one and  
> more as
> one that is custom to your particular implementation.
>
> Perhaps a method that allows copying of attachments -- the record is
> inserted as a new attachment and new files are generated. But you  
> can still
> keep them linked via postmeta fields and synchronize the data you
> specifically want, whenever you wish to modify one or the other.  
> That keeps
> the burden down of downloading then uploading a file whenever you  
> want to
> reuse it.
>
> I also like the simple approach of tying attachments to posts not  
> only via
> post_parent but also with postmeta on the parent post. (Taxonomy  
> works too.)
> Then to get attachments tied to a post, you'd query by postmeta value
> instead. This doesn't break the conventions of how WordPress stores
> attachments, but still provides the ability of not needing to embed  
> images
> in post content. You still have issues with attachments but perhaps  
> that's
> another thing that can go into postmeta.
>
> I agree strongly with Otto that it isn't about the solution, it's  
> about the
> problem. Identify exactly what you want to achieve, and then find a  
> solution
> that fits your needs. If our use cases are close, I'd be willing to  
> work on
> this as well, as I'd like to leverage it myself somewhere, so let me  
> know
> offline.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Nacin
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