How to Manage Your WordPress Media Files

The WordPress Media Library provides a convenient and easy way to track and organize the media files in your Uploads folder. After all, if you’ve been running your WordPress blog for any length of time, you can easily forget what files you’ve uploaded with the WordPress uploader.

To use the file uploader to find an image, video, or audio file you’ve already uploaded so you can by using the file uploader and to use that file in a new post, follow these steps:

Click the Upload Media icon to open the File Uploader window.
Click the Media Library link at the top of the window.

All the files you’ve ever uploaded to your blog appear because of the File Uploader feature. Files you uploaded through other methods, such as FTP, don’t appear in the Media Library.
Select the file that you want to reuse and click the Show link.
In the settings menu that appears, set the options for that file: Title, Caption, Description, Link URL, Order, Alignment, and Size.
Click the Insert into Post button.

The correct HTML code is inserted into the Post text box.

You can find some great WordPress plugins for audio and video handling. Here are a few:

Audio Player by Martin Laine: Embeds a Flash MP3 player in your blog posts without any special HTML
1 Bit Audio Player by Mark Wheeler: Autodetects MP3 files on your site and inserts a stylish player
Podcasting Plugin by TSG: Supports several media formats and automatically creates a podcast RSS feed
Smart YouTube by Vladimir Prelovacn: Inserts YouTube videos into blog posts, comments, and RSS feeds
WP-Vidavee by Vidavee Labs: Uploads, manages, organizes, and displays video in your blog
Video Embedder by Kristoffer Forsgren: Embeds video from various sources

If you want to view only the files you’ve uploaded, click the Edit link in the Media menu, found in the left navigation menu of the Dashboard, which opens the Media Library page.

The Media Library page lists all the files you’ve ever uploaded to your WordPress blog. By default, the page displays all types of files, but you can click the Images, Audio, or Video link to specify which file type you want to see.

You can do the following tasks on the Media Library page:

Filter media files by date: If you want to view all media files that were uploaded in July of 2010, select that date from the drop-down list and click the Filter button; the page reloads and displays only the media files uploaded in the month of July, 2010.
Search media files by using a specific keyword: If you want to search your Media Library for all files that reference kittens, then you type the word kittens in the Search box in the upper-right side of the Media Library page. Then click the Search Media button; the page reloads and displays only media files that contain the keyword or tag kittens.
Delete media file: To delete files, click the small white box that appears to the left of the file’s thumbnail on the Manage Media page; then click the Delete button, which appears at the top left of the page. The page reloads, and the media file you just deleted is now gone.
View media files: On the Manage Media page, click the thumbnail of the file you want to view. The actual file opens in your web browser. If you need the URL of the file, you can copy the permalink of the file from your browser’s address bar.